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What Is Creative? - Part1

Although there has been a growing awareness over the last few years that "this creative thinking bit" might be worth looking into by a company, actual knowledge of just what makes thinking "creative" lags somewhat behind. This is true not only in business, but in science, education, and even the arts that have always prided themselves on being "creative."

Because most people aren't too sure just what creativity really is, they use such terms as "original," "talented," and "imagina­tive" almost interchangeably with "creative." Of these, the most misused term is "creative."

We speak of a woman hobbyist who turns out copies of her evening-school art teacher's ceramic ash tray designs as "creative." Likewise, the husband who uses his basement workshop to make tables from mail-order patterns. Or the skilled cabinetmaker who faithfully reproduces exact copies of Chippendale or Sheraton pieces. We call "creative" the child prodigy who can play a Mozart piano sonata at ten years of age, and the television comic whose sense of timing lets him read his script-writer's gags with rib-splitting results. We call such people "creative" when what we really mean is "talented."

Now if our woman hobbyist eventually acquires the confidence to develop her own ceramic designs; or if the husband switches to planning his own furniture and using his own plans or begins to make original adaptations and changes from the mail-order plans; or if our cabinetmaker uses his years of skill and disciplined taste to develop a new family of fine furniture; or if the child prodigy begins to compose pleasing little tunes of his own; or if the comic assumes the leadership of his gag-writer's efforts—if any of these changes come about, then these people start to earn the right to be called "creative." But creativity is more than just talent.

Related terms include small town businesses and business ppt.