which one is more important creativity or knowledge essay

Which Is More Important: Creativity or Knowledge?

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Which is more important: creativity or knowledge? Find here the answer! This creativity vs. knowledge essay explains the relationship between imagination and intelligence and gives examples.

Introduction

• Creativity vs. Knowledge

Works Cited

Schools are institutions that are set up with the aim of impacting students with knowledge. This being the primary focus of most education systems, generating new knowledge through creativity becomes secondary to most scholars. This leads to the question of which, between knowledge and creativity, is more important? This question is more relevant to students in higher institutions of learning since this level of learning is developed enough to generate creative thinking, in addition to impacting students with knowledge.

Creativity Is More Important than Knowledge

As such, a college student should ponder on this question, considering that such a student is almost ready for the job market. As a college student, creativity is more important than knowledge since creativity allows one to explore ideas with no boundaries, it gives birth to innovation, and it provides room for developing practical solutions to real life challenges, unlike knowledge which is limited to one’s expertise and experience.

While knowledge is limited to one’s skills, creativity has no boundaries since it goes as far as one’s imagination can reach. Knowledge hardly goes beyond one’s training or experience in a certain field, whereas creativity/imagination follows intuition and transcends one’s acquired skills (Ox and van der Elst 84).

Creative minds do not necessarily focus on achieving good grades in school. This is because good grades do not always imply creativity; instead, good grades are usually a reflection of one’s knowledge in a given subject since schooling systems are more oriented on impacting knowledge than creating an environment that enhances creativity.

Knowledge is determined by set standards and systems, but creativity transcends these systems since a creative mind is more flexible and imaginative. With specific focus on great people like Albert Einstein, who came up with the laws of relativity, it is very clear that Einstein exercised more creativity than knowledge in coming up with the laws (Gardner 108).

Although it is acknowledgeable that his prior knowledge in the field of physical science created an environment for developing the laws of relativity, his sense of imagination was far much important than the acquired knowledge. It is for such a reason that college students should be more creative, other than just acquiring knowledge in their course of learning.

Creativity births innovation since it is not bound by experience, unlike knowledge that is limited to acquired skills and experience. Creativity encompasses the intrinsic motivation to pursue a certain interest, and this gives birth to innovation. Creativity allows college students to think in a flexible and imaginative way such that when a motivating environment is provided, students can end up creating very impressive solutions to problems. Global success is pegged on innovation.

Virtually every sphere of life in the current world is competitive in its own way. This calls for innovative minds in order to emerge successful (HR Focus 8). On the other hand, new ideas cannot be generated by relying on knowledge alone since knowledge is limited to the skills that are acquired through a formal or informal process of learning.

As such, creative thinking remains to be the solution to innovation in the current world. It is said that contemporary organizations are encouraging creative thinking as a way of remaining competitive. College students can supplement the existing gap in innovation by being more creative, in addition to being knowledgeable in their fields of study. To a college student, divergent and convergent thinking are a recipe for success, even outside college (HR Focus 8).

Creativity holds promise to providing solutions to the numerous challenges in the work environment and the larger society. Combining expertise with imagination, which encompasses flexible thinking, would help explore problems beyond the limited human understanding and develop effective solutions.

Colleges, among other institutions of higher learning, should offer the best platform for developing individual creativity. College students have the right environment to develop creativity since university-level education encourages individual learning more than pedagogical structured learning.

The wide access to information and elaborate interaction and networking available in colleges should ignite students to be more creative and become problem solvers. Moreover, college students should realize that they are under preparation for the great roles they will later play in the society, especially in their places of work (Livingston 60). For this reason, creativity is far much important than knowledge to a college student.

Combined knowledge and creativity can generate greater achievement, thus the importance of both cannot be underestimated. For instance, while someone like Einstein used imagination to come up with the laws of relativity, he also relied heavily on his immense knowledge of physical science to draft these laws (Gardner 104). Thus, while it is right to argue that creativity is more important than knowledge to a college student, it does not mean that knowledge has no place in fostering creativity.

In fact, it is right to argue that creativity is boosted by one’s knowledge, thus a very thin line exists between knowledge and creativity. Creativity comprises of expertise, flexible thinking and imagination, and motivation. Hope (39) acknowledges that creative potential is build over time and calls for consistent study with a particular goal in mind. The study must be focused on a specific field for creativity in that field to be developed.

This implies that knowledge must be acquired under certain structures, such as schooling structures, to develop creative potential. An environment that does not foster creative thinking kills creativity. In addition, creativity is developed by acknowledging knowledge in a particular field (Ox and van der Elst 84). As such, college students cannot afford to ignore the need for structured learning and pursue creativity solely. Such an approach may not give birth to creativity since creativity is built on knowledge.

The world today is need of creative and innovative minds for global success to be achieved, and creative college minds can meet this need. To a college student, creativity will help in thinking and developing solutions beyond one’s acquired knowledge and skills.

Moreover, creative college students will find relevance in the present work environment since they will be able to come up with innovations. This notwithstanding, it is important for college student to acquire knowledge since creativity in any field is catalyzed by accumulated knowledge in the field of study.

As a college student, imagination should be given a priority in the course of acquiring knowledge if one wants to be creative. Moreover, college education should foster flexible thinking and provide a motivating environment that will give birth to creativity. Creativity among college students should be encouraged than the sole pursuit for knowledge in order to develop solutions that are so much needed in the working world and the society at large.

Gardner, Howard. Creating Minds: An Anatomy of Creativity Seen Through the Lives of Freud, Einstein, Picasso, Stravinsky, Eliot, Graham, and Gandhi . New York, NY: Basic Books, 2011. Print.

Hope, Samuel. “Creativity, Content, and Policy.” Arts Education Policy Review 111.2 (2010): 39-47. Print.

HR Focus. “Creativity and Innovation: Must-Haves for Global Success.” HR Focus News Briefs (2007): 8. Print.

Livingston, Larry. “Teaching Creativity in Higher Education.” Arts Education Policy Review 111.2 (2010): 59-62. Print.

Ox, Jack, and van der Elst Judith. “How Metaphor Functions as a Vehicle of Thought: Creativity as a Necessity for Knowledge Building and Communication.” Journal of Visual Art Practice 10.1 (2011): 83-102. Print.

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Bibliography

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Which one is more important – Creativity or Knowledge?

Knowledge is the information that we have through the experiences of our predecessors and our own at present. Information of all things discovered or experienced is knowledge. But, creativity is needed to put that information together to come up with new results and solutions.

Albert Einstein said “Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.”

Let’s discuss a simple example that all of us must have surely come across: In school, we all knew that one guy/girl who would mug-up the whole book from top to bottom. No question would be left in the book which was not known to him/her. And there would be another guy/girl who would not toil so much. He/she would only understand how to solve the questions, the methodology, and the reasoning behind all of it. Come maths exam. Let’s say a few questions were asked which were not in the book. The first guy/girl would cry foul over not being able to solve the questions since they were “out of syllabus”. While the other guy/girl, though slower in speed, would solve all the questions(even the new ones) and get a better score than the latter.

In light of the above discussion, it can be concluded that knowledge is definitely required but only knowledge in isolation cannot help us. Knowledge has to be accompanied by creativity in order to make true progress in life. These rules apply to every sphere of our life.

Image by Rudy and Peter Skitterians from Pixabay

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Which Is More Important: Creativity or Knowledge? Essay

1. introduction.

The essay titled "Which is more important: Creativity or Knowledge?" explores the importance of creativity and knowledge and discusses their interplay. The introduction provides background information and clarifies the purpose of the essay. The first section focuses on the importance of creativity, defining it and highlighting the benefits it brings, such as problem-solving abilities and innovation. The second section discusses the significance of knowledge, defining it and outlining its advantages, including serving as a foundation for creativity and enhancing critical thinking and decision-making skills. Additionally, knowledge is emphasized as a way to become an expert in a specific field. The final section explores finding a balance between creativity and knowledge, discussing their interplay and how to cultivate a harmonious relationship. This includes encouraging lifelong learning and fostering a creative environment.

1.1. Background information

In the late 19th and early 20th century, a period of change known as the Industrial Revolution was taking place in the United States. This was a time when the nation was shifting from a rural agricultural society to an urban industrial society. People were leaving the farms and countryside and moving to the cities to work in factories. They were leaving a life that had been basically unchanged for the past hundred years. It was a time of great innovation and new ideas. People were building railroads, constructing great buildings, developing new machines and finding new, faster, and better ways to manufacture things. But many people were not happy about the changes that were taking place. They missed the simple way of life and living off the land. They felt that life in the cities was crowded, dirty and had few real benefits. And they could see that the workers in the factories were leading lives of hard work and drudgery. They also saw that a few people, the owners of the factories and the machines, were becoming very rich. These observations set the stage for a conflict that was going on in many people's minds. Is it better to have the creative, imaginative ideas and the ability to make them work - a kind of knowledge that we refer to as "know-how" - or is it better to have a great deal of information and know the facts - a kind of knowledge that we refer to as "knowledge-that?" As we consider the knowledge and creativity components associated with the Industrial Revolution and with other periods in history, it is important to remember that new ideas can occur at any time. Sometimes great ideas have come from the most unlikely places. And sometimes great ideas have come from people who, like Thomas Edison, have spent long hours and a lot of hard work getting knowledge and putting it to use.

1.2. Purpose of the essay

The purpose of the essay is to discuss the two concepts of creativity and knowledge. The essay begins by defining what creativity is and what it means to be creative. According to the essay, creativity is the ability to introduce new ideas, new solutions to old problems, and to make something new. In order to emphasize why creativity is important, the essay gives an example that shows the importance of creativity in a real-life situation. Then, the essay moves to the definition of knowledge and how knowledge can be obtained. Knowledge is defined as facts, information, and skills obtained by a person through experience or education. There are mainly two ways in which knowledge can be obtained, one is learning from experience and the other one is learning from education. The essay states that knowledge plays an important role in helping a person develop his full potential. Next, the essay lists a few types of knowledge such as knowledge from experience and knowledge from education and shows the differences between them. After that, the essay explains how knowledge can help to boost a person's creativity. The essay argues that while some people may think knowledge is useless in fostering creativity, it is actually a precondition of creativity by providing the necessary materials and tools to develop creativity. However, the essay also shows the limitations of knowledge in fostering creativity, where turning knowledge into creativity requires certain personality traits like 'conscientiousness' and the possession of knowledge itself can hinder the development of creativity. Next, the essay discusses the relationship between knowledge and creativity. It argues that both knowledge and creativity are products of humans. And it is not necessary to create a clear distinction between knowledge and creativity because they often intersect with each other in a dynamic way. The essay goes on to propose that in any study of human activities, either individual or collective, the interaction of knowledge and creativity should not be overlooked. By doing so, the essay concludes that in fact, knowledge and creativity should be considered together in any study of human activities and this interaction and dynamism lead to the development of human cultures throughout history.

2. The Importance of Creativity

The significance of creativity is unmistakably highlighted in everyday living, in problem-solving skills and innovation in businesses, and also in a society filled with high-technology advancement. Defined by an educator, Sir Ken Robinson, creativity is now as significant in education as literacy, and we should treat it with the same status. Creativity can be recognized as a problem-solving skill which is very important in our life. Every day, we are demanded to work out problems such as how to organize our work, children, or time. To solve all these challenges, we have to think of many potential outcomes until we come up with a suitable solution. This is when we step on creativity. All the hard work, failures, and researches are summed up to invent new products, services, technology, or work methods, and these have changed the world and improved human lifestyle. For example, the smartphone that we can't live without now was a creative invention by Martin Cooper. He was an American engineer who first invented the first handheld portable mobile phone in 1973, and he got the patent on it in 1974. So, it's obviously shown that knowledge alone doesn't guarantee a good invention, but through combining research, learning, and creativity can give benefits to both the individual and the end users. Moreover, creativity also can bring a big difference in the form of a new solution, development, or invention, which shows the outcome of creativity. By doing different things and finding a different way to achieve certain goals, it makes the possibility of a wide range of options that are offered. It's very supportive of the statement given by Robert E. Franken, who was an author for two creativity guidebooks. He claimed that "creativity is the tendency to generate or recognize ideas, alternatives, or possibilities that may be useful in solving problems." Therefore, creativity is the seed of any invention; it's the push for improving satisfaction and a good lifestyle. Lastly, Randy Kersch, Creative Director of Jones Kersch Industries, once said that "innovation is the creation and implementation of new ideas in the marketplace."

2.1. Definition of creativity

What do we mean by 'creativity'? There have been many descriptions and definitions of creativity. For some, creativity is about originality, coming up with brand new ideas. For others, it's about taking existing ideas and creating something new and useful. But when we think about creativity, it's to do with a person's unique ability to express themselves, understand and interpret the world around them. It's the ability to see things differently, to see things in new ways, making new connections between different ideas. So, it follows that creativity isn't only about one branch of the arts - like painting or music. When we're being creative, we can express ourselves through all sorts of different subjects, whether it be through gardening, design technology or a piece of music. Music, for example can be thought of as a very creative subject, but because of its mathematical structure - counting beats, following rhythm patterns - it also offers children the chance to study something in a very logical way. So music can promote logic and creative science. This is a crucial part of creativity - you take something that is very logical or scientific, and make it into a creative process for yourself. This allows you to make new connections, exercise your ability to think in new ways and develop your brain in different ways. So when we're being creative, we're not simply making 'something', but we're developing our ability to see things in new ways. And this process of 'creation' allows us to transform things, to take one idea and make it new and useful. So in turn, this transformation of things is one of the most important parts of the creative process.

2.2. Benefits of creativity

In addition to enhancing knowledge and understanding, there are strong personal, social, cultural, professional, and economic benefits to cultivating creativity. Cultivating creativity in education also has its own range of advantages: there is strong evidence that it can improve motivation and engagement and also boost the acquisition of skills and knowledge through a more enjoyable learning experience. Through participating in engaging creative practices, the essay titled "Which Is More Important: Creativity or Knowledge?" explores the importance of both creativity and knowledge. It begins with an introduction that provides background information and states the purpose of the essay. The importance of creativity is then discussed, including its definition and the benefits it brings such as problem-solving abilities and innovation. The significance of knowledge is also explored, including its definition and advantages such as providing a foundation for creativity, enhancing critical thinking and decision-making, and developing expertise in a specific field. The essay then delves into the interplay between creativity and knowledge and discusses how to cultivate a harmonious relationship between the two. This includes encouraging lifelong learning and fostering a creative environment. Overall, the essay highlights the importance of both creativity and knowledge and emphasizes the need to find a balance between the two.

2.2.1. Problem-solving abilities

Problem-solving is a universal job skill that applies to any given position and will increase a candidate's hireability. The phrase "creativity in problem-solving" most often refers to the ability to effectively employ inventive skills in finding a solution to a given problem, regardless of the magnitude or complexity of the problem. Creative problem-solving is learning or teaching how to solve difficult problems in life. With a better problem solver, we will have better lives. To bring out this ability of problem-solving in an individual, especially our younger generation, it is important to encourage them to be creative. When they do their math, don't just ask them to solve the equations. Instead, ask them to come up with as many methods as possible on how to solve the given math problem. Also, think that it is important to let them know that "there is no such thing as a meaningless contribution". Make sure that teachers give appropriate and positive feedback and suggestions. In addition, we can also engage in certain creative activities like drawing, painting, crafting, and writing. Usually, when someone engages in different kinds of creative activities, it will definitely enhance the creative problem-solving skill. When they are on a project of their own interest and passion, there is always a motivation that drives them to look for solutions. Moreover, creative thinking and creative problem-solving can also be achieved by experiments on our mistakes, learning from experiences of the past and beginning to seek out the ways of getting resources for effective measures that are to be taken. This type of approach is important especially for successful life where only creative solutions of problems. Success will be possible. This is the reason that it is important to stress that there is no exclusive right way to practice creativity in solving the given problems, and certainly the Internet is a proper place to do so. But all it needs is the willingness and comfort of sharing and exploring new ideas and solutions. Help others to learn about creative problem-solving techniques. What an individual knows, it will add. Additionally, if someone shares what he knows in creative problem-solving techniques, which can be fruitful to others and let them be successful. On the other hand, if someone finds interest in some new creative problem-solving methodologies, just go ahead and explore. This is really a reality that with the advent of modern technology, creative problem-solving can be learned or taught through the help of the Internet. It will guide someone through the ways of creativity in problem-solving and this is what technology has provided for people today.

2.2.2. Innovation and advancement

So much of the literature regarding the importance of creativity has underscored its role in advancing innovative systems and processes for a broad range of industries. As it turns out, the relationship between creativity and innovation is often characterized as cyclical; while it is certainly the case that providing a solution to a given problem is a product of creative endeavor, it is also the case that the act of exploring that problem and the solution's nature is itself the ebb and flow of the procedural and generative process creativity. In other words, the nature of the innovative task - to analyze the solution and offer critique, or likely to attempt a more innovative solution - is reliant upon the type of creative thinking employed. This reiterative approach is not simply the hallmark of creative strategies but is dependent upon an innovative ethos that sits at the core of creative cultural reliance in general. For societal and cultural progression, not only is there reliance upon a workforce that can accommodate change and offer lateral solutions to problem solving through creative processes, but there exists a requirement to foster an environment built upon continual improvement through the pursuit of new and progressive pathways. Such attitudes and practices are reflective of the transformative nature of creativity and its inseparable relationship to advancement; as history has shown, each great technological or social leap forwards has been greased by the wheels of a particularly unique kind of innovative criteria which does not seek a singular fixed answer, but entertains the present and the well-argued through the applications of creative scientific and theoretical practice to question and critique accepted norms. Creative thinking is not simply focused on the generation of solutions. When placed in a contemporary global context that is increasingly cerebral and information based, the ability to critically assess given parameters and then search for a mode of solution that goes beyond what has been accepted is undoubtedly the golden ticket of advancement. In being encouraged to look for the next possible effect to a given cause, to question more and more the validity of what is and to critically analyze the possibility of what could be, we see critical thinking and creativity not as polarized modes of thought but as collaborative methodologies that give acceleration to the sustainability of real progress. Creativity is no longer to be perceived as an outward expression but is understood to also reside in the actions of conception and interpretation. From this, to understand why creativity is vitally important, we should recognize the drive and effect that creative thinking fosters when working to some form of innovative progress. Indeed, it can be postulated that the act of utilizing creativity as the natural course for progression both engages the mind to stay within problem exploration and can lead to the fruition of substantial and seminal creative discovery.

3. The Significance of Knowledge

The understanding of knowledge encompasses it as a foundational support to creativity. Knowledge is not limited to a repository of recognized facts. Its significance can be linked to individual development as one acquires more knowledge. According to Schneider (2000), to admire a creative space programmed for children, there is a need to respect the knowledge base to ensure successful creative expression. He further elaborated that "to provide for students, to give them what we think they need in terms of objects or materials, to offer components or to provide raw materials for some creative activity, does not do justice to children's ability to create" (as cited in Schneider, 2000). This stance underscores the principle of knowledge in promoting creativity. As apparent in predefined knowledge, creativity thrives in the disintegration of norms. When knowledge is employed to critique and transform established information, it relates to 'critical thinking', and that it fosters more 'with critical knowledge of self'. Knowledge often imparts discipline specific literatures. Mastery of a particular discipline often serves as a medium to platform an individual's originality and ability to explore further frontiers for new and challenging applications. This is in line with Besemer and O'Quinlivan (as cited in Lee, 2005) where it was proposed that "knowledge provides the brain with the source to think creatively, and that knowledge orientates people to think creatively in certain environments" because 'when people are open to new knowledge, there is the potential for creative outcomes'. It is fair to assume that the knowledge here functions as a prototype, signifying that with proper base support, what we all need next is the 'openness' to new knowledge and the 'courage' to try new things. These expert opinions essentially address the central idea that under current exponential expansion of knowledge, creativity does suffice. However, it is essential to understand that with growing knowledge, the requirements for work and life in the future will demand more than just creative solutions. In essence, the degree of critical creative thinking necessitated is equally important. And, in the realm of probability and informed option selection, the critical thinking aspect seems to claim the prominence vis-a-vis creative thinking, emphasizing on the fact that probability is not always an uncertain measure. Yet, we cannot adopt this as a blanket statement in every scenario demanding a selection. Students equip with a rich knowledge base tend to generate more questions and arguments, as knowledge is often a stimulus for critical thinking.

3.1. Definition of knowledge

One key direction that the response to the title question 'Which is more important: creativity or knowledge?' could take is settled in the importance of the terms themselves. Whereas it is genuinely easy to see what is planned by creativity, we must be clear approximately the idea of information and why it is assumed more important than this. The essayist does moreover clear up various sorts of knowledge, such as experiential, envisioned and demonstrated knowledge. I think this highlights an basic component of the talk almost information, speculatively recommending that knowledge can as it were be important in case it moves forward something indeed better than itself, such as substantial and significant advancements in a field. Nonetheless, it too appears the inadequacy of information without a better understanding as to what creativity comprises - of course, there's continuously a chance for the answer to go in a more balanced course close to clarification and analysis of why a relationship between the two terms is a more fitting topic to be investigated.

3.2. Advantages of knowledge

Greater knowledge is associated with many advantages in life. Knowledge can be gained in many different ways and it can benefit individuals in various areas. Firstly, many historical examples have shown that a solid knowledge base is crucial in the process of creation. Take the scientific revolution in the 18th century as an example. What really set off this era was not only the urge of combining observations and past knowledge to understand the world better, but also the extensive existing knowledge. Without the incredible amount of knowledge that researchers, such as Darwin and Newton, have accumulated over the years, it could be much more difficult to start any 'revolution' at all. In addition, knowledge is like a torch which can guide us to explore the unknown. When the extinction of the Neanderthal was discovered by a group of curious and knowledgeable archaeologists, a multidisciplinary discussion was launched regarding the reasons leading to the extinction. It was the combination of the accumulated knowledge - the known social structure of the Homo sapiens, the change of climate at that time, and many other different pieces of evidence - that brought about what is now known as the 'overkill' theory, which enhanced our understanding in the intelligent level comparison between Neanderthals and Homo sapiens. Also, a Religious Studies teacher in 'A' Level once told me that the Latin word 'scientia' means 'knowledge'. She stated that this is because the main focus of Science, which the word originates from, is to increase our understanding of the surrounding by 'accumulating what is known'. I definitely agree with her view. Having knowledge can enable us to do new things, and in similar cases, creativity arises from the different ways we can do those new things. Also, when creating, we will without doubt make use of our existing knowledge developed from past experiences. This is known as 'tacit knowledge'. Tacit knowledge is something that we tend to take for granted, but it is actually a very important asset for a creator. For example, when designing a flyer using the knowledge of concise wording obtained from Media Studies and the color-matching skill learned in Art can help to create a better visual impact on the audience. In addition, gaining further new knowledge is just as important in the progress of creation as existing knowledge. It's knowledge that eradicates the vicious cycle of a single ruler who perpetuates that he or she will always be right without the need of providing any satisfactory evidence to the public. With knowledge, people will start to question and use their own reason; autocracy can then no longer manipulate them. Mengzi, a great ancient Chinese philosopher, first put forward this point by using a child analogy 'the people' and 'the ruler'. He stated that if a child holds a belief in the almighty power of the ruler, being taught that way from the very beginning, he will never gain his own knowledge. However, if the superior status of the ruler is doubted, new understanding and hence knowledge can consolidate his independence in thinking. This suggests that it is the gaining of knowledge that undermines despotism.

3.2.1. Foundation for creativity

The foundation for creativity is the most important reason why knowledge is so essential. Creativity is identified as a vital element of knowledge; it is a highly important element for knowledge. First and foremost, foundation is defined as self-esteem, an essential aspect of the knowledge base: something from which data, skills, and all the experiences can be drawn. Knowledge is the foremost thing to realize the creative ideas. It helps us for the better understanding, demands, and needs. In fact, we can also find that most of the creations are originally derived from the knowledge. It is impossible to create something new without having a base. For example, all inventions and discoveries are based on knowledge. The knowledge provided a base; so that, creativity has been applied to create a new thing. When we have the knowledge, it would be easier for us to generate new ideas. With the knowledge, the ideas will become more sophisticated. Moreover, the knowledge could be used over and over again. Nowadays, a lot of information is available. We need the skills to critically analyze and use the information. One important point is creativity is combined with knowledge and experience. This means that one should not be afraid to discard something that is not working and be prepared to search for new ideas. The knowledge becomes the foundation for our next new ideas. It is important to realize that knowledge is not static. Knowledge is growing and it is the power to change. This could also be the main foundation to enhance creativity through the search of knowledge. The curiosity is triggered by the knowledge. The desire to know more and to get a better understanding will keep the mind active. The process of discovery would lead to new ideas. So, when the new ideas are being created, the creativity will start to work and the phase of creation is now begun. Furthermore, knowledge opens the door to imagination. The buildup knowledge will become the resource for the imaginative processes. In contrast, knowledge will become the key to translate the imagination into reality. Only by having the knowledge on the certain issue, one can get the clear picture of the issue. Therefore, the practical solution is more possible. Michael Michalko, the author of the creativity books, said that knowledge is the most creative thing. This statement is supposed to be agreed. If someone who is creative is doing something that never be done before, that means the creative person is using the knowledge to create a new thing. With the knowledge and the creativity, the ultimate accomplishment will certainly be achievable. Last but not least, it is clear that the foundation of knowledge greatly brings up creativity. Many scholars use the 'know-how' as the knowledge. In fact, the 'know-how' is the professional knowledge. With different and innovative 'know-hows', the professionals will become more productive and more efficient. This is because people can do projects in the way that it has been proven to be successful and the risk of failure will be minimized. On the other hand, it is not possible to stop the idea flowing with created 'know-how'. As a result, many new creative ideas can be found in these professions. So, having knowledge means mastering the expertise of a certain field. Once someone becomes an expert in the particular field, the given advice and the opinion on the field will be listened. This will yield to the new invention or any improvement on the old ways to handle the same knowledge. In this case, the creation is highly expected to happen when knowledge exists.

3.2.2. Critical thinking and decision-making

Another key advantage of knowledge is that it fosters critical thinking and decision-making skills. Critical thinking is the ability to apply and consider various forms of knowledge in a disciplined way. It involves analysis, reasoning, resourcefulness, creativity, evaluation, and making conjectures and decisions. Critical thinking is pivotal, especially in the world of creativity, because it can help to avoid creating repetitive or even obsolete work. When creative people have the ability to apply critical thinking processes to their work, it can make that work more relevant and advanced. Friedrich Froebel, the founder of the first kindergarten, believed that all humans are inherently creative and that education should focus on the satisfaction of a child's mental and emotional needs. He proposed that young children should be engaged in active, self-directed learning for a portion of the day, with the teacher serving as the facilitator of learning. Froebel recognized that children often learn through a spiral process, in which they first have a concrete experience and later reflect on that experience, followed by an abstract process that allows them to apply the knowledge gained through the reflective process; this is how knowledge and creativity are related. On the other hand, decision-making is the mental process resulting in the selection of a course of action among several alternatives. Every decision-making process produces a final choice. Knowledge and experience, in particular, are the keys to developing critical thinking. When you have knowledge and experience, you can make better decisions since you have the intellectual underpinnings to enable you to firstly generate options, i.e., different, action-oriented ways forward, and secondly, assess how to select the best solution and therefore take the most appropriate actions. When decisions are to be made, the knowledge on what has led to choosing a specific action is important for drawing conclusions and reflective practice. If we observe professionals in any given field, we can see a clear example of how knowledge and critical thinking and decision-making are interwoven. For instance, doctors have to know all the specific details about a particular illness before being able to effectively assess symptoms and identify a diagnosis. At the same time, they will need to critically evaluate all decisions in order to decide what the best course of action might be and finally make a decision that they will be able to justify to colleagues and the patient. All in all, it is knowledge and experience which provide the framework for enabling us to achieve success in our decision-making.

3.2.3. Expertise in a specific field

It is mentioned in the table of contents that knowledge offers many advantages, and one of them is the development of expertise in a specific field. In modern society, this point is especially significant as technological advancement and globalization have led to the rise of highly specialized areas of research and work. In academic research circles, it is important to have a deep understanding of a narrowly defined area so that one can contribute to the field's body of knowledge. For example, in the field of English literature, the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing offers several grants to support projects in which the knowledge and expertise of the applicants in the specific area of focus are assessed and judged. Expertise is obviously needed to further a scholar's own career, but is also - and perhaps more importantly - necessary for maintaining the standards of the discipline. In addition, expertise in a field can be applied in a practical setting, and in many cases having such knowledge is essential for performing a task. For instance, in the medical field, the expertise of surgeons is vital as the success of an operation directly depends on the surgeon's ability to apply his or her knowledge in a specific area. Knowledge in a given field can also assist professionals in making sound decisions in the workplace. It can lead to the development of new techniques or the discovery of new possibilities that were previously overlooked, and this, in turn, can foster creativity and innovation. Spending time documenting simple knowledge can provide the opportunity to better understand what is known and what areas are still obscure. In other words, the author of something new in the world, informed by the expert's knowledge, can move the field forward decisively. Such pushing of the boundaries of knowledge often manifests in published journal papers, and so expertise often becomes associated with getting work into the public eye and establishing authority in the field. From what is discussed in section 3.2.3 so far, it seems that knowledge and creativity are connected and complement each other. We analyze the interplay between creativity and knowledge and study how to find a balance in the next section. Sounds like an interesting essay? It is not always easy to form a judgment about which is more important, knowledge or creativity. But in life, most of the time, it is a product of the correct application of both that brings us the success.

4. Finding the Balance

It is said that "both creativity and knowledge are important." This is easier in theory than in practice. Not forgetting the key to the above statement, it is essential to seek to find and integrate creativity and knowledge in work and personal life. According to a study conducted by neuropsychological researchers, the balancing point between creativity and knowledge is defined by their synchronization. When knowledge is used, neural creativity can be fostered. This shows that knowledge is not something that kills creativity as one might think. In fact, it is able to drive and direct that creativity into something that is concrete and effective. Also, when knowledge primes conceptions for categories and maps, the creative thinking that results provides flashes that may be assembled into new ideas. Scientists had long realized that the brain does not work in the form of isolated centers. It is the linking and integration among several brain areas that matter. Thus, working with certain knowledge nurtured creative growth in a more significant way. On the other hand, the intentional use of divergent thinking can free the mind to generate many ideas from a single starting point. The subsequent use of convergent thinking enables one to apply logic and knowledge to arrive at a single solution that can be addressed. This only serves to explain the vital role creativity plays as an accelerating factor to formal knowledge and learning. In addition to the above benefits of creativity's profile, the problem-solving abilities and solutions founded in creativity can avert life's possible problems and obstacles. In general, when we say creativity always equates to innovation - doing something new or different. This reflects that creativity is enjoyable when the mind is left free to let spontaneous and 'natural' solutions to flow. Knowledge is not about control, whereas creativity involves uncalculated syntax to suffers the same fate with knowledge. It is this element of 'surprise' that is often the focus of creative thinking which has a meaning of opening up one's mind to accommodate a new idea that might break down present knowledge or norms on hand. With such characteristics of both creativity and knowledge, it is a political fact that finding a way to balance between them is essential. An individual should realize that given workmanship operative and inert entities from life deserve a new perception to work with. This is because the construction of meaning is viewed as a dynamic creative process that evolves in developmental times. This suggests that giving work and receiving knowledge is a sort of creativity, and creativity itself is a process of the fresh making of knowledge. The bottom line is, both creativity and knowledge are important but it is the integrating of both in finding the balance to ensure a conducive and effective approach towards work and life. Startup businesses embrace such elements of creativity and knowledge cultures. This is because they find success amidst chaos and limited resources thanks to the presence and fine management of balancing between creativity and knowledge.

4.1. The interplay between creativity and knowledge

Instead of seeing knowledge and creativity as two competing forces, we should see them as being used and exercised in tandem with one another. In fact, the various examples of the interplay between knowledge and creative thought are more often than not borne out of the two coexisting within the same processes. For example, considering a musicologist's knowledge of composition techniques in the 20th century, and then actual composing practice, creative decisions are informed by that knowledge. A similar parallel can be drawn to someone working in - quite literally - a more practical form of creative art; a chef draws on culinary knowledge in making creative decisions about what ingredients go together well and what foods might be popular. The everyday analogy to such highbrow examples of the interplay between knowledge and creativity in specific fields is problem-solving. For example, considering a scientist working on a cure for a specific illness, they draw on the knowledge of others and of what is known in that field. However, in a situation when a solution is not immediately obvious, creative thought is required to act as a catalyst to find a way through the problem. In this sense, creativity can be seen as more of a 'discovery'. New solutions to problems can in turn create yet more research questions or new problems - thus improving our knowledge. Knowledge can mean anything from a discovery, to information that is specific to a single person. So, that being said, the clear indication is that for any one person, knowledge must come first. But if we take a step back and consider the wider impact of creative thinking as a force that shapes human development and knowledge, we might find that creativity takes pride of place. Indeed, it has long been noted that the most successful thinkers in any discipline are those who are able to approach a particular problem in a way that is creative and original. When applied, creativity brings about an alternation to a set pattern of knowledge: this means that new knowledge is formed as a result of creative thinking. This is a view that is now supported by cognitive science- Holyoak and Thagard (1997) described creative thought as an 'inter-translation' of knowledge from one representation to another, but it gives rise to something new and is unique. This is fundamentally important in any scientific or artistic discourse. Every great advance made in science or in the arts is in fact a creative act. Therefore, creative thinking and actions are 'new': it brings about the end of a specific strand of knowledge and an eventual change/progression of an entire domain. So, from the conclusions of many studies, creativity is something that is not just desirable. It's actually typically defined as an act of altering the expanse of knowledge in that domain and has the unusual ability to change the world around us. Knowledge is certainly very important - after all, it's the foundation of the creative process. But as much as accumulating facts and figures is all very well, a more important skill is being able to find ways to apply that knowledge in a useful way- if not for the benefit of the individual then in a broader sense. It stands to reason that one of the main advantages of education should be to teach this method of creative thinking at a young age, so that children can grow up able to make well-thought out creative decisions for themselves. Every individual can learn to start moving forward with their own ideas, take risks and be curious. This makes creativity a valuable experience, which can in turn lead to something that is more relevant to those who may not overtly see the benefits to creative acts- the forming of new knowledge and as a consequence, new creative acts. So in that sense, creativity can 'steer the way' towards the formation of new knowledge.

4.2. Cultivating a harmonious relationship

Both overwhelming the reader with the necessity of creativity or the significance of data can create chaos. According to my research, many specialists appear to agree that a harmony between those two important components of development and enhance 'instruction' should be taken care of. Creativity and data, once in a while alluded to as collected information, have been increasing its significance in the advanced world. From one viewpoint, data conventionally has assumed a substantial part in the instructive framework and society especially. It is characterized as actualities, information, and aptitudes acquired through experience or training; the theoretical or practical comprehension of a subject. Without data, development will be very inconceivable on the grounds that it fills in as the establishment of imagination and the harbinger of new contemplations and contemplations. Then again, creativity is not quite the same as data in various techniques. It is characterized as the inclination to create new and novel thoughts; the capacity to create original and modern thoughts or things. As an imaginative individual increases aptitude in utilizing creative methods, those novices would then be able to create their very own original work utilizing those procedures. Imagination could be considered as an 'reward' of data and now and again, a harmonious relationship can be kept up. Both data and creativity are significant and every one of them is supplemented to one another. Educators should structure their training in manners enable guardians to have a harmony between the scholastic information on subjects to show the educational programs and the unlimited conceivable outcomes presented by kids' creative deduction. While empowering and advertising children's creative brains through diverse exercises, for example, craftsmanship, music and mold exercises, such equalization can help keep up inspiration and mindfulness in learning and by the meantime improve kids' interest towards the scholarly areas. Continuous use of invention and substantial conceptualization of critical and boundless trade ideas among scholars.

4.2.1. Encouraging lifelong learning

Firstly, it is important for adults to set an example to the younger generation by embracing lifelong learning themselves. This may involve attending adult education classes, obtaining further qualifications or learning a new skill. Secondly, embracing challenges and being open to new experiences is essential in developing a mindset that is both knowledgeable and creative. By overcoming various challenges and trying new things, individuals are able to slowly adapt to an environment full of change - a skill that is essential in today's fast-paced society. Moreover, being able to adapt and act upon new experiences will undoubtedly create a more versatile set of skills, enabling the use of knowledge and creativity in tandem. Next, the essay moves on to describe the conditions needed to enable lifelong learning. It argues that individuals need to have both autonomy and ownership of their own development, whilst being free from excessive pressures such as targets or restrictive timescales. This point is particularly relevant to the workplace, where cramming knowledge for an exam or completing tasks in order to meet tight deadlines only promotes short-term retention of information as opposed to a deeper understanding and ability to apply that knowledge creatively. At the same time, independent learning neither constitutes effective learning; it is emphasized that individuals should be given access to the guidance and support that they may need. For example, line managers or supervisors should be able to assist employees in planning their own development, identifying suitable opportunities for learning and providing constructive feedback along the way. This point reinforces the view that lifelong learning can only be fully realized if the 'lifelong' aspect of learning is shared and properly facilitated by various parties, all of which are with the combined interests of promoting both personal and professional development. Finally, cultivating a pleasant and positive learning climate is recognized as one of the most effective ways in fostering a love for learning that can last throughout an individual's lifetime. As per the viewpoints of Professor Alane Jordan Starko on the topic of creativity and lifelong learning, the essay mentions that a harmonious climate consists of the acknowledgement of individual ideas, respect for various viewpoints and an enjoyment of learning for its own sake. Such climate, according to the work of Professor Starko, is conducive to the development of creativity, since it builds up a number of creative habits of mind over time; these habits include creative self-discipline, confidence and most importantly the love of learning.

4.2.2. Fostering a creative environment

Fostering a creative environment involves allowing people to take intelligent risks and encouraging their creative ideas. This may mean shaking up the status quo by allowing for a degree of chaos and risk. Research has shown that ideation and creativity can be improved by as much as 33% when individuals are given the freedom to work on what they want, in the manner they want. Additionally, the sharing of new ideas and different experiences in a creative process can only lead to better methods, solutions, and products. It's important to also provide a space in which people are free from prejudice and discrimination. Creativity, innovation, and thinking differently are things that should be taught and encouraged at all levels in education and embraced as core life skills in the world of work. A focus on a diverse workforce and diverse creative functions is seen as a benefit, but it is not always noted that valuing diversity and running a recruitment drive based on wanting to hire a 'diverse team' may not actually always lead to a range of people with different backgrounds and experiences. In a scientific study conducted by Kang, Milkman, and Chugh (2014) titled 'Reap the future', the team found from four separate studies that individuals of higher and lower power stood to gain in creative output by enacting 'the future' in the present day. While a creative environment is imperative to maximize an individual's ability to create, it is also beneficial for effective and practical teamwork. Engaging in team-building exercises and constructing a team plan based on restoring creative thought processes and embracing change may support in facilitating a successful background for creative collaboration and optimum idea development in a group setting. Pioneering companies that have fostered a creative environment include Google, Johnson & Johnson, and Intel. These companies have introduced schemes such as '20% time', a project that allows employees to spend 20% of their working hours on whatever they want. Such innovative strategies, research shows, have been attributed to 50% of the company's revenue and creating substantial job satisfaction for employees. It is clear that the implementation of creative strategies such as '20% time' and 'blue sky' thinking, meaning thinking without any barriers or limits, not only promotes a high incentive for individuals to succeed and expand their knowledge but creates room for diversity and expansive idea sharing that benefits the function as a whole.

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Creativity or Knowledge – What do you prefer?

“ Which is better Knowledge or creativity? ” is a question that is hard to answer because both things have their own impact. Both are used to find the solution to the problem. Creativity and knowledge are like two rooms the creative side is filled with ideas, thoughts, and imagination while the other room is having information, a set of facts, and figures. The end goal of both things is the same but the way of reaching to goal is different. A creative person refers to identifying a new way of doing the work to find something new. On the other side people who prefer knowledge always follow a predefined way to achieve the end goal.

Both things are applicable to all fields and help a person grow. But there is some philosopher who thinks that in order to achieve true creativity a person needs to detach himself from knowledge. Where some people argue without having knowledge about something how you can achieve pure creativity? For example ” A person wants to create a new dish but without the knowledge of cooking, spices how he or she will able to create a dish?” Now let’s find out which one is more important creativity or knowledge.

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What is knowledge.

All of us possess some kind of knowledge whether it’s related to education, art, sports, or any other domain. Knowledge can be defined as the information or fact that we have learned about a thing. It is the most basic but the most important need of a person’s life. Knowledge is the application of the information which is already known to the person. For example, solving a math problem by using predefined formulas. Acquiring Knowledge is an ongoing process it starts from birth and remains till the last breath. In-can be gained from two sources mentioned below

Many times people confused knowledge with reading books or having a classroom education. But it is more than that, “ a lifelong journey without any stop “. It can be earned in many ways – from education, from videos, from friends, from mistakes, and from the experiences of others. Knowledge not only teaches us what to do, and how to do it but also what not to do.

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Why having Knowledge is essential?

“ There is no wealth like knowledge, no poverty like ignorance. ” – Buddha

• Having knowledge helps a person grow as a person and makes us gentle human beings.
• Gaining new knowledge developed new skills and opens the gate to new opportunities for us.
• In comparison to creativity using knowledge is reduce the chances of risk. The reason being the knowledgeable approach uses facts and figures and previously used information to find the solution.
• Knowledge provides quicker solutions in comparison to creativity.
• Having a good amount of knowledge in a particular subject will also improve the ability of thinking of a person.
• As all of us know that knowledge is the basic need of every creature for survival. Like human beings, animals also acquire knowledge from their parents.
• For getting the success we need to face new challenges every day and knowledge helps us in developing a zeal to learn.

What is Creativity?

Creativity can be defined as the process of creating or generating something new or capable provide new solutions to problems. It does not have any boundaries and also the outcome of creativity is not predictable. In order to become a creative person, one needs to see things from a different perspective. Creative skills not only required how many solutions or ideas you can provide but the uniqueness of each idea or solution. Also, one does not need any knowledge to become a creative person but it’s better to have it.

Creativity is something that makes people say “wow” reason it offers something new to us in a unique way. Imaginative and innovative skills make a person playful, curious, and responsible but also put them in an uneasy state. It does not guarantee success but the ideas or solutions generated from creativity have more impact. Creativity is the only way to find solutions that are unknown to us.

Why Do People Favoring the Creativity over Knowledge?

“ Creativity doesn’t wait for that perfect moment. It fashions its own perfect moments out of ordinary ones.”  – Bruce Garrabrandt

• Creativity provides you with a way to express yourself in a different way. It helps us stand apart from the crowd of people.
• It removes anxiety and stress, according to some psychological reports creative people are happier than others.
• Solutions that come from creativity are more feasible and have a great impact on others.
• Creative skills help all of us to find the things which are unknown to us. And that’s why the creative person survives easily in the toughest situations.
• It creates a limitless world for you as all of us know there is no boundary for creativity. It enables the imagination beyond knowledge to find solutions.

Which is More Important Creativity or Knowledge?

As said earlier in this article both things have their own impact and help a person to grow. Based on the nature of the problem both creativity and knowledge are used. If a person wants to create a painting then creativity skills are a must for him on the other side if a scientist wants to create a rocket then he or she needs in-depth knowledge of rocket science. In most cases, both things are used together in order the get the best result. Knowledge will help you with all the information and creativity will use that available information to create a new solution. It’s like inventing a new bike for an engineering student after gathering information about it through formal education.

Knowledge may limit the world for you but it’s the best tool to find the answer to the question of what not to do. While creativity may not guarantee success but the ideas, and innovation are way more impactful than existing solutions. Both can be used separately but for reaching new heights in creativity one needs to gain proper knowledge. And for the best use of knowledge, you need creative skills. So both things are significant and complete each other.

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Why is creativity important?

Creativity is not a skill that is reserved only to artists or designers. It is a skill that is useful to everybody no matter your profession or age. Developing and nurturing creativity is more important than ever and more and more new researches show how creativity can positively influence all aspects of our lives.

Here are 10 reasons why creativity is important

1. Creativity helps you solve problems

Creativity is one of the best tools, if not the best, to help you with problem-solving. If your creativity skill is well trained, it will help you find the solutions to the difficult and complex issues you’re facing. If you always find your way out of something , this also means that you’re very flexible and have an easier time adapting to different situations. And since creativity and the ability to find solutions also help you better and quickly recover from difficult situations, in the long run it will also help you build resilience.

2. Creativity is the skill of the future

More and more jobs are being automated and replaced by machines. So the question is, which jobs will remain for humans? Despite all the big advancements of AI (artificial intelligence), for now humans still have the upper hand when it comes to coming up with novel and creative ideas and solutions. AI is great at identifying the patterns within the data it has been fed, but it is not so great at anticipating changes of a pattern or making connections to unrelated patterns , which are a key aspect of creativity. No matter if or when AI will catch up, the creativity skill is a skill that will help you and be useful to you throughout your whole life.

3. Creativity fuels positive emotions

Positive affectivity indicates how much people experience positive emotions, sensations and sentiments. Turns out that if we engage in creative activities we achieve a higher positive affectivity (PA) and this can lessen depressive symptoms, and ultimately positively influence our mental health. So, if your day is fueled by positive emotions you will develop psychological resources such as optimism, tranquility and life satisfaction.

4. Creativity makes you live longer

Those who are creative are usually more open to new and different concepts, ideas and feelings and have a higher imaginativeness and openness to new experiences. Researchers have found that higher openness predicts a longer life , and in specific it was creativity, and not overall openness or intelligence, that decreased the mortality risk. Therefore, creativity helps to protect our health and to maintain the integrity of our neural networks, and it can even be of help with dementia in older age.

5. Creativity helps to reduce stress

Another great aspect of spending time doing a creative activity is that it can reduce your cortisol level , a hormone produced when you’re stressed. Besides helping you to reduce stress , engaging in creative activities also helps to reduce anxiety , as it enables us to fully immerse ourselves in the creative task at hand and enter a state of creative flow which positively contributes to our mental health.

Flow: a flow state, also known colloquially as being in the zone, is the mental state in which a person performing some activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of the activity.

When we’re in a flow state we usually forget our surroundings, the passing of time and feel removed from the stressors and worries of our lives, while our body produces dopamine, the “feel-good” hormone which increases happiness.

6. Creativity increases self-esteem

When you’re creative you give yourself permission to create without being too harsh on yourself and without limiting the work you do. Creative people know the importance of being free of judgement , whether from ourselves or from our peers, in order to come up with innovative and creative ideas. Creative people know that at first, some ideas may sound foolish or impossible but that one thing might lead to something else. The more you develop your creative skill the more you learn about yourself and to respect and trust your inner self and your ideas, which in return will help to build up and grow your self-esteem.

7. Creativity fuels your energy

In our brain we have a task-positive network, which is in action whenever we perform attention-demanding tasks, and also a default network, which is more active when we’re engaged in passive tasks such as self-generated thought, remembering and mind wandering. When we’re engaging our brain in creative activities we’re engaging our default network and giving the task related network a break. This helps us to refuel our energy for subsequent attention-demanding tasks.

8. Creativity creates value and drives profit

Creativity is not only in high demand because it is a skill difficult to replace, but also because it is one of the main factors that create valuable businesses. In fact, more and more businesses shift their focus on fostering creativity rather than efficiency and cost-saving solutions, as creativity drives business innovation and growth and ultimately value and profit.

9. Creativity lets you see opportunities

When your creativity is well trained, you’re used to connecting the dots between different ideas and concepts. In order to do this, you need to be open and receptive and always on the lookout for possibilities and “what ifs” . This makes you not only a good observer, but it also lets you spot and exploit existing and possible opportunities which others might easily overlook.

10. Creativity drives innovation

If we advanced as a society it is in big part also thanks to the creativity that constantly led us to innovate and make our lives easier and better. Creativity is the ability to use imagination and think outside traditional ways so to create something new . Innovation is putting that in practice. If we advanced as a society it is in big part also thanks to the creativity that constantly led us to innovate and make our lives easier and better.

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Why is Creativity Important and What Does it Contribute?

If you’ve landed on this page, you may also be interested in the SPARK Youth Arts Festival , taking place from February 20th – 24th!

Following on from last week’s blog, this second reflection developed by youth workers and artists in Cork as part of the Creativity and Change programme is on the role of creativity in contributing to the competences, values, attitudes and characteristics we want to nurture in ourselves and others to grow as global citizens.

The reflections were not just theory. Thirty people immersed themselves in creativity, reflection and connection to each other. The following reflections emerge from this shared experience.

Why is Creativity Important What Does It Contribute?

Creativity engages the mind.

Creativity frees the mind in a way that enables a person to absorb knowledge more easily. It makes processing learning more efficient

Creativity enables alternative ways of thinking.

It unblocks old patterns or habits of thinking. It allows for non-linear thinking.

Creativity enables empathy.

Creativity connects us to ourselves.

It opens our hearts and doors to our mind. It brings us to hidden parts of ourselves. It allows recognition of uniqueness and identity. It can help draw out what is already there within – hidden talents and inner capacities can emerge. It connects us with our passions.

Creative participation nurtures a sense of togetherness.

It brings people together and can nurture skills in teamwork and cooperation.

Creativity challenges.

Creativity can connect reflection with action.

Creativity builds intercultural connections.

It connects us to different cultures and sub-cultures.

Creativity nurtures confidence.

Creativity builds confidence. When they are confident, young people are less easily influenced by others

Creativity instills curiosity.

It encourages questions.

Creative expression gives a voice.

It can help capture ideas, thoughts and visions about the world. Young people can

advocate for themselves and for others.

Creativity is participatory and interactive.

When engaging with creativity, young people are not passively listening/absorbing, but are exploring, discovering and communicating. It can support young people to be more active and present as members of society.

Creativity stimulates and motivates.

Creativity brings us beyond words.

It allows exploration and communication beyond the limitation of words.

Creativity is fun and joyful and surprising.

Creativity keeps the mind active.

Creativity engages different learning styles.

Creative methods enable engagement through a variety of learning styles. Everyone learns and engages differently.

Creativity allows us to view and solve problems more openly and with innovation.

Creativity opens the mind.

A society that has lost touch with its creative side is an imprisoned society, in that generations of people may be closed minded. It broadens our perspectives and can help us overcome prejudices.

Creativity inspires collective thinking.

Creativity nurtures ideas.

Creativity supports resilience.

You can access the two publications developed during the week together at

Creativity. Resilience and Global Citizenship, Explorations, Reflections and  Recommendations.

Creativity Resilience and Global Citizenship- Toolkit

If you are interested in these themes and topics there are several ways you can get involved in the Creativity and Change programme.

-An Accredited Level 8 special purpose award that involved 16 days of experiential learning workshops

-Link in with our one day training programme that take place around the country.

-Look out for new editions of our international creative youth worker training programmes

-Access our resources on our website

www.creativityandchange.info

Jessica Carson

Privacy overview.

I have been involved with the voluntary and youth services sector for many years, first as a participant coming up through my local youth services, then as a volunteer and finally I took on a finance position over 25 years ago with Catholic Youth Care. Over the last 25 years I have seen much change and gained much experience within the sector.

I am a qualified member of Certified Public Accountants of Ireland. I am the Head of Finance of Youth Work Ireland National Office. Youth Work Ireland is part of a Federation with 20 Member Youth Services, that I have the pleasure of working alongside. Being part of a Federation, I also engage in looking at nationwide issues around financial, compliance and governance that may arise alongside my National Office & Federation colleagues. Given my current role, along with my years of financial experience within the Youth Sector, I believe I have the necessary skills to bring to the role of Treasurer of NYCI.

Youth work has played a significant role in my life, and its importance cannot be overstated. I consider myself lucky to be part of such a sector.

Carmel Walsh is the Youth Work Services Manager at Belong To, responsible for strategic planning and delivery of LGBTQ+ Youth Work in Dublin, as well as overseeing the Family Support Service and the National Network of LGBTQ+ youth groups in Ireland. With a strong background in youth work and European funding, Carmel brings extensive expertise in strategic implementation, research initiatives, and cooperation projects to enhance the quality of youth work for LGBTQ+ young people.

Michael Power is CEO of Involve Youth and Community Service, having worked within the organisation since 2008 where he held a senior role in the organisations national publication, Travellers’ Voice Magazine. In Michael’s time as Manager of the Travellers’ Voice CSP, he has brought to fruition various campaigns which highlighted Travellers in education and various employment settings in order to dispel the often negative stereotypes associated with the community. His most recent education campaign, “Degrees Ahead”, highlighted Travellers in third level education and the various paths to continued and adult education. He has also ensured the publication has become a platform for lesser heard voices within the community, highlighting individual’s achieving above and beyond the expectations imposed on them.

In Michael’s time as CEO he has been responsible for the development of Involves latest strategic plan which aims to improve the work of the organisation in the areas of Youth Mental Health and Employment, as well as putting in place structures to improve the collaborative work of the organisation to highlight and challenge educational disadvantages for the Traveller community.

Michael is a member of the Traveller community, and brings first-hand experience of the benefits of youth work in influencing future development. Throughout his career with Involve, Michael has developed extensive experience in the youth sector which brings together his love of working with young people and his passion for the rights of his community and marginalised people.

Dear [constituency] TDs, We are constituents from [Constituency] who are calling on you to support young people in Budget 2024 by investing €9.4 million in young people and youth work. It is a hard time for young people. COVID-19 impacted their mental health and social connections, and now, the cost-of-living crisis means many are struggling financially. Youth work organisations say that deprivation among young people they work with is on the rise, and the need for youth services is growing dramatically as young people and their communities feel the effects of the cost-of-living crisis.  Youth workers are often a lifeline for young people, particularly for those who have the least. The wide range of activities provided by youth organisations support young people in their personal and social development, positive mental health, physical wellbeing, job skills and much more.   The rising cost of living is also placing a huge strain on youth work organisations themselves. A recent survey by the National Youth Council of Ireland revealed that nearly 3 in 5 organisations struggle to deliver vital youth work services because of inflation.  The Government must provide the necessary resources for these organisations to meet the growing needs of young people in [Constituency], and to provide an Ireland where young people can live, grow, and flourish. That is why we are supporting the National Youth Council of Ireland in calling on the Government to invest an additional €9.4m in youth work services in Budget 2024, to provide more supports and activities for young people and meet the needs of our growing youth population. The NYCI and its members across the country believe this increase is needed to help ensure the sustainability of the sector, and deal with current challenges facing many services. We request that you act on this call and use whatever avenues available to you to ensure that we see a Budget 2024 that invests in our young people. Your constituents, [Your names]

I have over 30 years experience in the voluntary Youth Work and Youth Sector in Ireland.

I am currently the Volunteer Development Manager with Forόige. In this role I am responsible for key tasks such as managing, developing and supporting the involvement of thousands of Forόige volunteers in all aspects of the organisation. I also lead on the design, dissemination and implementation of best practice standards in volunteer recruitment, management and retention policies and procedures. I am a member of Foróige’s child safeguarding and protection internal working group. I also was a member of the Ministerial advisory group for development of the National Volunteering Strategy, launched in late 2020, and I am currently on the communications working group for the role out of the strategy.

I believe that youth work’s essential role in young people’s lives has been made all the more obvious as a result of the pandemic. The restrictions caused by the need to protect vulnerable people in particular from COVID 19, were imposed on young people without them having any say in the matter. They became takes of others rules and priorities, without input or choice. This, while necessary at the time, is the exact opposite of what we want for young people. We want them to be heard, to be helped to develop their own views and values (not just absorb ours). We want them to be involved in decisions that impact on them and to feel they have an influence, with which comes connection to society and hope for the future. The National Youth Council of Ireland plays a huge role in representing the shared interests of the organisations who are its members. These organisations, large and small, bring a range of youth work approaches arising from various traditions and a focus on particular youth needs. The diversity of organisations provides choice and opportunity for young people to pursue their own interests.

This diversity presents a challenge too, in identifying and agreeing their shared interests on which NYCI can represent, advocate and influence. This calls for a president who will listen support, facilitate. It calls for an NYCI which is effective, well governed and compliant with all relevant governance and financial, management requirements.

I believe I have the necessary skills for this role from my role in Foróige and my previous experience on the board of NYCI, including a term as its vice president. I am aware of the need to represent negotiate, assert firmly but respectfully, to act together in seeking to influence government departments and politicians. I understand the need for a strong working relationship between president and CEO.

Nicola has been involved in Girl Guiding for over 44 years and has been employed in the CGI National Office in Dublin since 2013. Nicola has also been a volunteer leader with CGI in Wexford for the last 19 years.

In her role as National Office Coordinator, Nicola works closely with the NYCI and members of other youth organisations, through the Specialist Organisations Network and represents CGI at numerous meetings. Nicola also attends meetings with the Department of Children and Youth Affairs representing the uniformed bodies of the Youth Work Electoral College.

Nicola has held voluntary positions within CGI of National Secretary and National Commissioner for Ranger Guides and was a member of the National Executive Board. Nicola continues to attend CGI Board meetings in her current role.

Before moving to Ireland, Nicola worked for the UK Government and the Environment Agency in the nuclear industry regulation division and was also a youth member and then volunteer with the Guide Association UK.

I am currently a Senior Manager with Crosscare Youth Services with over 20 years’ experience having started my youth work career in CYC in January 2000, and was part of the merger with Crosscare in 2013. I line-manage our 6 Dublin West and East Wicklow youth projects, and also have responsibility for Youth Information and Outdoor Learning in Crosscare.

I have a Bachelor of Arts in Applied Social Studies from Maynooth University, and last year I completed a masters qualification, gaining a (MSc) Master of Science in Innovation & Strategy in the Maynooth Business School. I feel there is a need to be innovative and strategic in future plans for the sector, as we seek to be sustainable and receive full cost recovery for the delivery of quality youth services.

I am currently a member of the Board of Adamstown Youth and Community Centre. This is in an area with broad cultural diversity and we are trying to develop some youth provision in this under-resourced area. We were recently approved for a new part-time youth worker and a dedicated Youth Diversion Project for Adamstown, to increase the Lucan Boundary. Greg has been a NYCI Board member for the last 3 years.

Eve is an active leader in her locality currently working with girls between the ages of 5 and 7, and previously worked with Irish Girl Guides’ older branch for 10- to 14-year-olds. Eve has previously represented Irish Girl Guides at the Erasmus+; Get Active! Human rights education among young people workshop.

In addition, Eve sat on the Membership, Equality, Diversity and Inclusion committee for Irish Girl Guides. Eve is a primary school teacher and focused her college dissertation on the impact of period poverty in schools. Eve has been a NYCI Board member since 2021.

Claire Anderson has been working with Scouting Ireland since October 2020 in the role of Communications Officer. She is an experienced journalist, marketing manager and communications expert. Claire graduated with an MA in Journalism and New Media in 2015. She is based in Cork and has worked with several high-profile businesses including the Irish Examiner. Working in marketing communications from 2017, Claire has created and implemented advertising and communications strategy for company expansion into eight new markets. She has worked closely with colleagues to build effective communication practices and systems. She has managed all content production from production to publishing and most recently developed a new central website for Scouting Ireland. Claire has over seven years of experience leading content production and successful marketing campaigns. She completed a Diploma in User Experience and User Interface Design this year. She also runs her own marketing business. Claire has been involved in dance since she was a child and is a keen supporter of the arts. She has volunteered with Cork Feminista and Husky Rescue Ireland, however, she is not actively volunteering at present. Claire lives in the countryside with her partner, dog, cats and hens. She enjoys sea swimming and hiking in her spare time as well as training for her first 10k race.

Mick Ferron is currently the Regional Youth Services Manager with Sphere 17 Regional Youth Service.

Qualifications: BA Social Science from UCD Higher Diploma in Youth and Community work from NUI Maynooth.

Sphere 17 is a community-based regional youth service covering Dublin 17 and the Kilbarrack area of North Dublin. The service operates from four different youth centres in the catchment area providing a range of different programmes, activities and support for young people 10-24 years. Sphere 17 believes all young people can achieve great things. Their mission is to support young people to be the best that they can be, and they do this in different ways for different young people, as they need it, through the varied services provided.

In addition to the UBU funded youth service activity, Sphere 17, in collaboration with local partners, also provides a youth counselling service – The Listen Project, manages the Woodale Youth Justice Project, and is the lead organisation behind Creative Places Darndale.

Prior to his 16 years in management with Sphere 17, Mick has worked in community-based youth service provision in Ballyfermot and in the eastern suburbs of Melbourne, Australia. He has also worked in the homeless sector, and in a drugs education project in Cork.

Originally from Canada, David Backhouse has been an active youth worker in Ireland since 2008. Chiefly through the YMCA, his involvement in many youth and community initiatives has brought him into partnership with Léargas, Cork City and County Councils, Irish Aid, CDYS, Youth Information, SpunOut, Comhairle ná nÓg, Foróige, Hub ná nÓg, Youth Work Ireland, CYPSC and many other local arts and community associations.

In 2016 David took up the role of Cork Regional Director for YMCA and in November 2019, began his current role as Deputy National Secretary, responsible for YMCA Ireland operations in the Republic of Ireland as well as providing support to all YMCA agencies north and south. He is passionate about Youth Participation, Creative Methodologies and the provision of high quality, well supported professional youth services to those in Ireland most in need.

Rose Marie Maughan Is the National Traveller Youth Programme Coordinator with the Irish Traveller Movement. She has been working in the Irish Traveller Movement since 2004 on a local, regional, national and international level in different capacities such as Board member, National Accommodation Officer, Membership Officer, Education Officer, Project coordinator.

She has both a lived experience of being a young Traveller in Ireland and issues facing young Traveller youth today alongside an in-depth analysis of youth work and issues facing the sector. She strongly believes in youth’s right to self-determination and meaningful participiation in finding solutions to issues affecting their lives.

In her current role as National Traveller Programme Coordinator, she is overseeing the implementation of the Irish Traveller Movement’s Traveller Youth 5yr strategy working towards giving Traveller Youth a voice in all sectors of society.

Garry McHugh is National Director of Young Irish Film Makers, Ireland’s national youth film organisation. Responsible for strategic planning, fund raising, artistic and programme development. Managing partnerships with national funding bodies such as the Arts Council, Dept. of Children & Youth Affairs, Screen Ireland and the Education & Training Board.

Since taking over the National Development of the organisation in 2014, Garry has worked with the team at YIFM to grow the capacity of YIFM programmes to work with double the number of young people over the past five years, delivering five times the number of contact hours with participants. Young Irish Film Makers now work with over 1500 young people annually across Ireland through the youth arts practice of film and animation. Demand is continuing to grow as YIFM film making and animation workshops are recognised for their ability to deliver high quality outcomes for young people from all backgrounds.

Garry is heavily involved in the programme design and delivery of informal education workshops delivering quality personal, social and creative outcomes for young people across Ireland. With a focus on film and animation workshops for secondary schools, youth development agencies and youth workers nationwide.

Before he became involved in youth development and youth arts work, Garry was a professional filmmaker, musician and enjoyed treading the boards as an actor. He believes this grounding in the creative industries led him to where he works now, with young people through youth film programmes. He has twenty five years of experience in film production, broadcast radio and informal education & training. His CV ranges from corporate communications and music video production to training and informal education programmes in film, animation and digital media production.

My experience comes from my many years within the Irish Second-Level Students Union, chiefly as president during 2020-21 where I represented student’s throughout the covid-19 pandemic, working with the Department of Education and education stakeholders as part of the State exams Advisory group to do what was best for our young people through an extremely challenging time.

My other experience across other organisations such at Spuntout.ie national action panel or partnering with other organisations here such as ICTU on young workers rights gives me the necessary experience to bring a new perspective to the governance of the NYCI.

I have been a representative of young people for the last 5 years at a local, regional national and international level – with my particular focus on youth representing and how that can be best achieved – I hope you can put your confidence in me to work as a member of the NYCI board to deliver this for you and continue the outstanding work of the NYCI.

Niamh Quinn is a Manager with Foróige. Niamh has extensive direct youth work and management experience within the youth work and non formal education sector. With Forόige since 2004, Niamh’s previous roles include Outreach Youth Officer working with young people aged 14 – 18 years most at risk; Senior Youth Officer and Acting Area Manager.

Niamh’s current role is supporting the development, roll out and delivery of CPD training and processes for the national School Completion Programme.

Niamh is the current Vice President of NYCI. Niamh is also the current Chair of the NYCI HR & Governance Sub Committee.

Niamh is a graduate of Trinity College, Dublin.

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5 Reasons Why It Is More Important Than Ever to Teach Creativity

• Education Leadership

On the laundry list of skills and content areas teachers have to cover, creativity doesn’t traditionally get top billing. It’s usually lumped together with other soft skills like communication and collaboration: Great to have, though not as important as reading or long division.

But research is showing that creativity isn’t just great to have. It’s an essential human skill — perhaps even an evolutionary imperative in our technology-driven world.

“The pace of cultural change is accelerating more quickly than ever before,” says Liane Gabora , associate professor of psychology and creative studies at the University of British Columbia. “In some biological systems, when the environment is changing quickly, the mutation rate goes up. Similarly, in times of change we need to bump up creativity levels — to generate the innovative ideas that will keep us afloat.”

From standardized tests to one-size-fits-all curriculum, public education often leaves little room for creativity, says EdNews Daily founder Robyn D. Shulman . This puts many schools out of sync with both global demand and societal needs, leaving students poorly prepared for future success.

What can education leaders do about it? For starters, they can make teaching creativity a priority. Here are five reasons to encourage teachers to bring more creativity into the classroom:

1. Creativity motivates kids to learn.

Decades of research link creativity with the intrinsic motivation to learn. When students are focused on a creative goal, they become more absorbed in their learning and more driven to acquire the skills they need to accomplish it.

As proof, education leader Ryan Imbriale cites his young daughter, who loves making TikTok videos showcasing her gymnastics skills. “She spends countless hours on her mat, working over and over again to try to get her gymnastics moves correct so she can share her TikTok video of her success,” says the executive director of innovative learning for Baltimore County Public Schools.

Students are most motivated to learn when certain factors are present: They’re able to tie their learning to their personal interests, they have a sense of autonomy and control over their task, and they feel competent in the work they’re doing. Creative projects can easily meet all three conditions.

2. Creativity lights up the brain.

Teachers who frequently assign classwork involving creativity are more likely to observe higher-order cognitive skills — problem solving, critical thinking, making connections between subjects — in their students. And when teachers combine creativity with transformative technology use, they see even better outcomes.

Creative work helps students connect new information to their prior knowledge, says Wanda Terral, director of technology for Lakeland School System outside of Memphis. That makes the learning stickier.

“Unless there’s a place to ‘stick’ the knowledge to what they already know, it’s hard for students to make it a part of themselves moving forward,” she says. “It comes down to time. There’s not enough time to give them the flexibility to find out where the learning fits in their life and in their brain.”

3. Creativity spurs emotional development.

The creative process involves a lot of trial and error. Productive struggle — a gentler term for failure — builds resilience, teaching students to push through difficulty to reach success. That’s fertile soil for emotional growth.

“Allowing students to experience the journey, regardless of the end result, is important,” says Terral, a presenter at  ISTE Creative Constructor Lab .

Creativity gives students the freedom to explore and learn new things from each other, Imbriale adds. As they overcome challenges and bring their creative ideas to fruition, “students begin to see that they have limitless boundaries,” he says. “That, in turn, creates confidence. It helps with self-esteem and emotional development.”

4. Creativity can ignite those hard-to-reach students.

Many educators have at least one story about a student who was struggling until the teacher assigned a creative project. When academically disinclined students are permitted to unleash their creativity or explore a topic of personal interest, the transformation can be startling.

“Some students don’t do well on tests or don’t do well grade-wise, but they’re super-creative kids,” Terral says. “It may be that the structure of school is not good for them. But put that canvas in front of them or give them tools so they can sculpt, and their creativity just oozes out of them.”

5. Creativity is an essential job skill of the future.

Actually, it’s an essential job skill right now.

According to an Adobe study , 85% of college-educated professionals say creative thinking is critical for problem solving in their careers. And an analysis of LinkedIn data found that creativity is the second most in-demand job skill (after cloud computing), topping the list of soft skills companies need most. As automation continues to swallow up routine jobs, those who rely on soft skills like creativity will see the most growth.

“We can’t exist without the creative thinker. It’s the idea generation and the opportunity to collaborate with others that moves work,” Imbriale says.

“It’s one thing to be able to sit in front of computer screen and program something. But it’s another to have the conversations and engage in learning about what somebody wants out of a program to be written in order to be able to deliver on that. That all comes from a creative mindset.”

Nicole Krueger is a freelance writer and journalist with a passion for finding out what makes learners tick.

• artificial intelligence

Why Knowledge Leads to Creativity

By: Author Valerie Forgeard

Posted on Published: December 8, 2021  - Last updated: June 27, 2023

Categories Creativity , Self Improvement

The power of knowledge lies in its ability to provide us with the tools to create. Knowledge empowers us by providing insight into how things work and what can be done. When we understand something, it becomes much easier for our creative juices to flow.

The Difference Between Knowledge and Creativity

We’re born with the curiosity to learn, and from what we learn we create.

You’re reading this article because you have a certain question, and after a few lines your mind will “ form an opinion ” from what you’ve read. What you read is “knowledge ” and what your mind “ creates ” is an opinion.

Creativity and knowledge are two different things.

An original idea comes from making connections . It’s about recognizing the relationships between things. We do this when we tell stories, make jokes, or make connections between seemingly unrelated concepts.

Knowledge is simply the information, facts, and skills we’ve acquired through experience or education.

New Knowledge Is Important for Creativity

Without knowledge sharing, no new ideas would emerge.

Knowledge is the basis for creative thinking skills.

Innovation occurs when certain ideas are combined and built upon applicable existing knowledge that can be translated into a tangible product or service.

A house has a foundation, walls, and a roof. The house is the product, while creativity is the process of building the foundation, walls, and roof. Existing knowledge is the foundation of creativity because it’s needed to build upon. The foundation and the walls are provided by knowledge. The roof, on the other hand, is created by creativity.

Knowledge is needed to build the house, while creativity is needed to design it.

Creativity is the process by which something new and potentially useful is created. It’s a process that can be encouraged, supported, or inhibited.

Knowledge is important for us to improve our creative potential.

You’re More Creative Than You Think

Humans are constantly learning, taking in information, and creating activities, thoughts, and actions from it. The scientific term for this is “ cognition .” The modern view is that our cognitive abilities develop with learning.

The Balance Between Knowledge and Creativity

At first glance, it seems like creativity and knowledge should go hand in hand.

To be creative, you need to have lots of ideas, and if you’ve lots of ideas, you’re most likely to have lots of knowledge.

Can knowledge get in the way of creativity?

That’s true to some extent, but you can also drown in so much knowledge that it becomes impossible to see anything creatively.

The French saying goes, “ Trop d’information tue l’information ” (too much knowledge kills knowledge).

Hundreds of years ago, this was just about knowledge management in our brains, which is relatively easy to do, but how does this fit in with today’s world where we’re bombarded with information from screens and social media?

The idea that too much knowledge management could be a bad thing seems ridiculous, but the more you think about it, the more you realize that perhaps knowledge can sometimes stifle creativity.

What if a creative genius like Albert Einstein had known everything we know today? Would he have come up with the theory of relativity?

Knowledge comes from experience, but too much experience can cause the mind to become set in its ways. When that happens, it becomes difficult to find new ways of thinking.

From experience, I’d say that: “if you try to create something with limited knowledge, your creation will probably be bad. If you focus too much on knowledge management, you leave too little room for imagination.“

Creativity Without Knowledge

In art, there’s always a question, “ Can you be creative without knowledge? “

And the answer is quite simple: NO.

Because even if you lock yourself in a room, you’re still learning something.

As long as you’re breathing, you’re acquiring knowledge. Some of us more than others. And as long as you have the knowledge, you have the power to be creative.

Necessary Knowledge for Creativity

Facts (descriptive knowledge), objects (acquaintance knowledge), and skills (procedural knowledge) are the most common types of knowledge . However, we can also talk about another type of knowledge – “ knowledge about a particular subject. ” This is the information that makes you a guru on wine, biology, or whatever else you know.

Knowledge is a basic prerequisite for creativity.

It forms the basis for an idea or is the catalyst for creativity.

Without facts, skills, and objects, there’s no knowledge .

For knowledge to lead to creativity, it must be put in the right place: first as an asset for creativity, second as a prerequisite for it, and finally, as something that supports its growth.

Five Ways to Acquire Knowledge to Be More Creative

1. be open-minded.

When you’re open-minded, you automatically gain more experience, and with experience comes knowledge. Being open-minded can alert us to some of the opportunities that are right in front of us, and it allows us to explore more ideas and possibilities that can help us grow professionally and personally.

2. Try New Things

It’s also important to try new things. If you always do the same things, your mind won’t generate new ideas or thoughts. It not only stimulates your imagination but also changes your perception and brings forth new concepts.

3. Learning About Others

It’s much more interesting to learn about the world around you than to study yourself. If you want to learn something new today, observe someone else doing an everyday activity. Learn about their situation and how they do things. This may start with extrinsic motivation but it will teach you a lot about your own abilities and may even give you new creative ideas for creative problem-solving.

4. Test Your Creative Thinking Skills

Experimenting is a way to gain more knowledge because we learn more from our own mistakes than from our successes. With each failure, you learn what not to do or what not to repeat.

Author and creative thinker Sir Ken Robinson said that

Creativity requires an atmosphere where risk-taking and experimentation are encouraged rather than stifled. SIR KEN ROBINSON

5. Read/Watch Movies

Stories are powerful. They teach us about ourselves and our world, and they provide an escape from the everyday. They can change the way we think about our own lives and give us ideas for new possibilities in our future. They can also be an incredibly powerful teaching tool, giving us the opportunity to share complex ideas with others in an easy-to-understand way.

Five Ways to Improve Your Creative Process

Creativity is the process of coming up with original ideas. It often involves thinking outside the box or divergent thinking.

Improve your creativity as you acquire knowledge.

1. Be Willing to Be Wrong

Have you ever been told that “wrong” is really a way of being right? Because to be a creative person, you must first break out of your comfort zone. Try doing things differently than you normally do, and encourage others to do the same.

2. Keep Your Mind Open to New Ideas

Don’t hesitate to ask questions and be willing to learn from others, no matter how old they’re or how much experience they’ve. Learn from failures as well as successes, as this will help you improve your imagination in the future.

3. Listen to the Ideas and Suggestions of Others With an Open Mind

Whether you agree with them or not, especially if it’s another creative person with authority over you. Even if you don’t agree, you should consider what she or he’s saying; sometimes it can spark original thoughts!

4. Take Risks

Take risks by trying a new creative way. It may not lead to the creative solution you’re looking for but it will lead you to a new path of creativity research.

5. Do Research

Fact-checking can help you avoid making major mistakes. This is especially important when you’re trying to express a new creative thought because it’s much harder to be objective about something unusual.

Knowledge vs. Intelligence

The difference between knowledge and intelligence is that knowledge can be acquired from books or through experience, while intelligence is usually a part of a creative thinker’s personality trait.

Intelligence is referred to as a person’s ability to learn and adapt, while knowledge is referred to as the gathering of facts.

Intelligence is usually considered more important than knowledge because a knowledge base is relatively easy to obtain.

However, intelligence, which enables a person to acquire new knowledge, cannot be acquired simply by reading a book or listening to someone talk about it.

The only way to acquire intelligence is through personal experience and self-reflection. Ultimately, intelligence and knowledge are both very important for fostering creativity.

Do Creative People Have a Higher Intellect?

Creative people tend to be more intelligent than average, but intelligence alone isn’t enough to produce creative work. There are also different types of intelligence (spatial, verbal, interpersonal, etc.). The type of intelligence you’ve may help you in a certain area, but it may not help you in other areas.

Telling a good joke requires a high level of verbal intelligence while writing or composing music requires a high level of musical intelligence. Someone who’s good at both can be considered highly intelligent overall.

However, if you ask someone with high verbal intelligence to design an instrument to measure gravitational energy, they’ll have great difficulty doing so.

This is because high intelligence manifests itself in one kind of creative activity and has nothing to do with the other.

The Eight Types of Intelligence

1. spatial intelligence.

People with high spatial intelligence can imagine things easily. This makes it much easier for them to design products, plan events, and work creatively. They’re able to immediately grasp creative ideas and concepts that are difficult for others to understand.

For example, they can imagine the design of a room before any furniture is in it.

2. Physical-Kinesthetic intelligence

Known as BK, is your ability to use your body and physical movements to do a task well. This includes a range of skills such as dancing, gymnastics, sports, or martial arts.

3. Musical Intelligence

Musical intelligence is the ability to perceive, create, or respond appropriately to music. People with high musical intelligence are very talented and have the potential to make a living from their ability to perceive and play music.

4. Linguistic intelligence

Everyone has high linguistic intelligence, which enables us to excel in writing, reading, and learning. The greatest writers and readers – including Shakespeare, Tolstoy, and Hegel – are considered to have high linguistic intelligence.

Linguistic intelligence is the ability to produce, understand, and enjoy language (both written and spoken).

5. Logical-Mathematical Intelligence

The ability to analyze problems logically, perform mathematical operations, and investigate questions scientifically.

People with this intelligence, such as Albert Einstein and Bill Gates, are adept at developing equations and proofs and solving abstract problems.

6. Interpersonal Intelligence

Interpersonal intelligence is the ability to interact effectively with other people.

Those with high interpersonal intelligence are good at assessing other people’s motivation and feelings, and dealing with them is often easy and straightforward.

7. Intrapersonal Intelligence

Intrapersonal intelligence is the ability to recognize what’s going on inside oneself and then plan, prioritize, understand, and strategize so that one acts not only as effectively as possible but also in accordance with one’s goal.

It’s the ability to understand and be aware of one’s own limitations, strengths, fears, and desires.

8. Naturalistic Intelligence

Naturalistic intelligence is most commonly used in biology but applied to the natural world.

It primarily involves understanding the structure and behavior of living things and their relationship to each other and their environment.

How to Become More Intelligent, Knowledgeable, and Creative

Everyone has their own definition of intelligence, individual creativity, and knowledge.

What one person considers intelligent, another may find quite boring.

That’s because being intelligent, creative, and knowledgeable means something different to everyone.

It takes intelligence to become more intelligent, knowledge to become more knowledgeable, and innovation to become more creative.

Improving your overall intelligence and knowledge is similar to playing sports to improve your physical fitness. Both involve constantly practicing a skill, whether it’s lifting weights or reading.

A creative mind opens up many possibilities that require critical thinking, intrinsic motivation, and creative endeavor such as problem-solving, innovation, and inventing new and better systems.

Related links:

New York Times: How to get your mind to read

Science Direct: Torrance Test

Creativity Research journal: Creative knowledge environments

Cambridge University Press: Handbook of intelligence

Stormz: Convergent Thinking and Divergent Thinking

Video of Tim Leunig: Why real creativity is based on knowledge

Knowledge vs. Creativity

Do you agree or disagree with the following statement?

It is more important to learn knowledge from studying than to develop creativity.

Use specific reasons and examples to support your answer.

SAMPLE ESSAY

My teachers are always encouraging the students to memorize lots of different facts. However, I feel this is the wrong approach to education. Instead, it is more important to develop students’ creativity than to learn knowledge from studying.

For one thing, creative people are often more successful. It does not take intelligence to do well in life. In fact, many of the most successful people were the most creative. One example is Henry Ford. He did not invent the assembly line. Instead, he used his creativity to adapt it to make cars on it. That made his company incredibly profitable. Additionally, there are many artists and other individuals who lack “book learning.” Instead, they have huge amounts of creativity. These people range from Pablo Picasso to Steven Spielberg, but they all have two things in common: They were highly creative and highly successful.

Additionally, creative people can dramatically change the world. This is possible because they think “outside the box.” They are open to new ways of seeing the world and are willing to explore them. Bill Gates is one such example. He never graduated from college. Instead, he quit school to help form Microsoft. His creativity made Microsoft a world leader in computer technology, and now the great majority of people in the world use its software products on their computers. Steve Jobs of Apple is another success story through creativity. He too never graduated from college. Thanks to his creative mind, however, he has led Apple to success after success. Thanks to Jobs, people listen to music on their iPods and call their friends on their iPhones today. Creative people like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs have improved the world by introducing new ideas and products.

Therefore, developing creativity is more important than learning knowledge from studying. Creative people usually have more success and can also change the world in a positive way. I would much rather be creative than have lots of book knowledge.

(327 Words)

Related posts:

• Knowledge gained from experience vs. knowledge gained from books
• School Teach for Careers or General Knowledge?
• Teachers: Relate Well or Pass on Knowledge? – TOEFL Essays Score 27 +
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How knowledge can stimulate creativity?

Improve knowledge to increase your creativity

It turns out that knowledge and creativity are not rivals but friends. Moreover, their relationship is co-dependent.

What is creativity?

Creativity is often considered a skill connected with art, architecture, design, etc. Judging from this site, if we are not in the movie industry, don`t paint beautiful artworks, or do anything from scratch, we are not creative, right? Well, that`s not entirely true.

In the broader sense, creativity is the new combination of knowledge we already have. Its main function lies in discovering new ideas or modifying existing concepts. 

Creativity vs. knowledge

Where knowledge is facts and information, creativity is how we use them. 

To produce new ideas, implement effective solutions, build strategies and see things from fresh perspectives, we need to know much. 

Think of knowledge as a house construct and creativity as an architectural design for more metaphoric images. Without a profound understanding of how to build the house, you won`t be able to implement any original concept. That`s why knowledge is the basis for creative thinking skills.

Becoming more intelligent is necessary to boost creativity because it provides us with a wide range of information and connections between things we might use to make something new. Without a solid knowledge base, it is impossible to pursue a career, have a reputation as a skillful worker, or feel more confident in daily conversations. Knowledge is restricted with rules, facts, and deep research. It has a foundation of millions of people`s minds and has been time-proofed. 

On the other hand, creativity is limited only by your imagination, for there is no string attached. There is a saying that creativity is intelligence having fun, and well, that`s quite true. Without knowledge and creativity working in tandem, nothing new can appear.

Why do we need to be creative?

If we are smart, we know many facts, grasp much information, can quickly multiply 25×25, that`s great. There is but, though. Living in the Google era, everyone has information at their fingertips, but only by enhancing creativity can we transform it into new ideas and use it in a non-conventional way. 

Creativity enables non-linear thinking to see things from the other angle and make unusual decisions to solve problems. It pushes us to think out of the box, makes us curious and less judgmental, more innovative, and open to new experiences.

As a cherry on the top, creativity decreased mortality risk. According to Scientific American, being engaged in a creative process helps reduce stress, let go of negative emotions, and feel less anxiety.

How to increase creativity?

Creativity is not a talent; it is a skill that demands training and challenge. We want to highlight five tips on how to acquire knowledge and, as a result, how to improve creativity. The starting point, of course, is boosting your intelligence.

Use Nerdish

Research-based learning can advance our knowledge to a higher level ASAP. That`s why we created Nerdish. Our app provides you with cutting-edge information on everything on Earth, from technology, history, and science to everyday things, health, and art. To get information is one thing, but to know how to connect those dots requires a wide life frame, so Nerdish here provides you with those instruments. Apart from articles, we prepared quizzes to make sure new information is stuck in your head for good. If you need a magic kick, we added a tracker to measure time spent on reading.

Nerdish: bite-sized knowledge about everything in the world

Get the app with educational topics about everything in the World

Try new things

Suppose you are a pro in your job, like super Python-developer, accounter, or a chef at a restaurant. Surely, you are primarily interested in your field and try to keep up. However, when we do the same things, read the same journals\news channels, interact with the same people, we might find ourselves in the informational bubble so that we run over and over the same ideas all the time. To push those boundaries, we should try something new every day. Listen to podcasts instead of just music, read about Mental Health Guide in addition to your regular news update, watch “How to” videos, and try to learn something unusual, like playing an instrument, making pottery, or a foreign language. The more new things we try, the more insights of different kinds we get. And by connecting and rethinking those insights, we can create new senses.

Learn through collaboration

Working in teams helps us find the best solutions through communication and collaboration. Old but good brainstorming technique proves to be efficient in discovering creative ideas in teamwork. Working hand-to-hand can boost your creativity immensely because you are interacting with others, seeing things from their point of view. Moreover, we interact with people from different countries with diverse cultural backgrounds and life positions in our globalized world. So, teamwork is one of the best ways to stimulate creativity.

Read quality literature and watch movies

Stories, even fictional ones, are powerful instruments to stimulate creativity and innovation. They plunge us into the other reality, send us through time and space, teach us life lessons in a harmless way, give us opportunities to understand characters better, and, consequently, know about ourselves as well. Books and movies are unlimited sources of inspiration that show how creative minds think and provide us with new ideas and patterns.

Stay curious

Staying curious is the inner fuel that drives you to explore the unknown and look for new information. As we learn something about one topic, we find out about other things that we still don`t know. Consequently, our curiosity pushes us to close that gap. 

Staying curious is closely connected with open-mindedness. It allows us to learn from others` experiences, listen to different points of view, see another side of the medal (actually, many-many sides). Simply speaking, being open-minded leads us to new opportunities and solutions unseen before, which helps us stimulate creativity.

There is no place for debates over what is more important: creativity or knowledge? Both things are closely connected and important to gain success in all life aspects.

More on this story

11 ways to become smarter that work for us, wondering “how long should i read a day” here is an answer., 8 ways to improve your personal development skills, learn something new every week.

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Essay on Success Knowledge And Creativity

Students are often asked to write an essay on Success Knowledge And Creativity in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Success Knowledge And Creativity

Success: striving for excellence.

Success is a journey, not a destination. It requires determination, hard work, and a positive attitude. Successful people set goals, work towards them with unwavering focus, and learn from their failures. They embrace challenges as opportunities for growth and continuously strive for excellence.

Knowledge: The Foundation of Success

Knowledge is the foundation upon which success is built. It empowers us to make informed decisions, solve problems, and navigate the complexities of life. Acquiring knowledge is a lifelong pursuit, and successful people are always eager to learn new things. They read widely, seek out new experiences, and surround themselves with people who can teach them something.

Creativity: The Catalyst for Innovation

Creativity is the spark that ignites success. It is the ability to think outside the box, come up with new ideas, and find innovative solutions to problems. Creative people are not afraid to take risks, experiment, and challenge the status quo. They are open to new experiences and perspectives, and they see the world in a unique way.

250 Words Essay on Success Knowledge And Creativity

Success: the ultimate goal.

Success is a widely sought-after goal, regardless of age or background. It comes in various forms, from achieving personal milestones to making significant contributions to society. While there is no one-size-fits-all formula for success, a combination of knowledge, creativity, and perseverance forms a powerful foundation.

Creativity: The Spark of Innovation

Creativity is the ability to generate new ideas, perspectives, and solutions. It is the spark that ignites the fire of innovation and drives progress. Creative individuals are often able to see the world from different angles, come up with unconventional approaches, and find unique ways to solve problems. Creativity can be nurtured through exposure to diverse experiences, encouragement of curiosity, and involvement in activities that stimulate imaginative thinking.

Perseverance: The Key to Overcoming Obstacles

Perseverance is the unwavering determination to continue striving towards a goal despite setbacks and challenges. It is the ability to pick oneself up after failures, learn from mistakes, and maintain focus on the ultimate goal. Perseverance is a crucial ingredient for success, as it allows individuals to overcome obstacles, adapt to changing circumstances, and stay motivated even when faced with adversity.

Success is a journey, not a destination. It requires a combination of knowledge, creativity, and perseverance to navigate through life’s challenges and achieve meaningful accomplishments. By continuously striving to acquire knowledge, nurturing creativity, and cultivating perseverance, individuals can unlock their full potential and achieve their desired success.

500 Words Essay on Success Knowledge And Creativity

Success: a journey of perseverance and achievement.

In the quest for success, unwavering perseverance and determination are essential ingredients. Obstacles and setbacks are inevitable, but those who maintain their focus and refuse to give up ultimately triumph over adversity. Consider the example of renowned scientist Marie Curie, who faced numerous challenges and prejudices as a woman in the scientific field. Yet, through her unwavering commitment and relentless pursuit of knowledge, she achieved extraordinary success, leaving an indelible mark on the world of science.

Knowledge: The Foundation of Accomplishment

Success is inextricably linked to knowledge and the acquisition of valuable skills. The adage “knowledge is power” holds true, as individuals who possess a strong foundation of knowledge are better equipped to navigate the complexities of life and achieve their goals. Embracing a lifelong pursuit of learning opens doors to new opportunities and empowers individuals to make informed decisions, solve problems effectively, and adapt to changing circumstances.

The Interwoven Tapestry of Success, Knowledge, and Creativity

Success, knowledge, and creativity are intricately connected and interdependent. Knowledge provides the foundation upon which creativity can thrive, while creativity fuels the pursuit of new knowledge and innovative solutions. Together, these elements form a virtuous cycle that drives individuals towards greater success. By cultivating a mindset that values lifelong learning, embraces creativity, and sets ambitious goals, individuals can unlock their full potential and achieve remarkable accomplishments.

Conclusion: Striving for Excellence

Success is not a destination but a continuous journey that requires unwavering perseverance, dedication to acquiring knowledge, and a creative spirit. Those who possess these qualities are well-positioned to overcome challenges, seize opportunities, and leave a lasting impact on the world. As you navigate your own journey towards success, remember that knowledge is the key that unlocks doors, creativity is the spark that ignites innovation, and perseverance is the force that propels you forward. Embrace these virtues and strive for excellence in all that you do.

Apart from these, you can look at all the essays by clicking here .

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Few things shape the human experience as profoundly or as pervasively as creativity does. And creativity raises a wealth of philosophical issues. Since art is such a salient domain of creativity, you might assume, at first, that the philosophy of creativity is the philosophy of art or aesthetics, or a branch thereof. But creativity invites questions of its own that go beyond the purview of those other fields.

Note that the adjective “creative” can be applied to three kinds of things: a person (“Beyoncé is creative”), a process or activity (“Tell us about your creative process”), or a product , where the latter is taken broadly to include an idea in someone’s mind or an observable performance or artifact (“That’s a creative design”).

Now suppose you are looking at a creative product, like a painting or sculpture. The philosophy of art may ask, “What makes this a work of art?” and aesthetics may ask, “What makes this beautiful?”. By contrast, the philosophy of creativity asks, “What makes this creative? Is it just that it’s new, or must it meet further conditions?” We may ask the same question not just of artworks but of any creative product, whether it be a new scientific theory, a technological invention, a philosophical breakthrough, or a novel solution to a mathematical or logical puzzle. Beyond creative products, we can ask about the creative process : Must it proceed without following rules? Is it conscious, unconscious, or both? Must it be an expression of the creator’s agency, and, if so, must that agency be exercised intentionally? Exactly how does the process manage to produce new things? Can it be explained scientifically? Furthermore, we can ask about creative persons, or more generally, creators. What does it mean for a person to be creative? Is it a virtue to be creative? What capacities and characteristics does a being need to have in order to be creative? Could a computer be creative? These are the kinds of questions animating the literature we’ll survey below.

Some of these questions have an empirical dimension, most obviously those which pertain to how the creative process is actually carried out. Thus, much of the research we’ll canvass falls under the inter-disciplinary umbrella of cognitive science, with contributions not only from philosophers but also from researchers in neighboring fields like psychology, neuroscience, and computer science.

1. The Philosophy of Creativity: Past and Present

2.1 challenges to the value condition, 2.2.1 surprise, 2.2.2 originality, 2.2.3 spontaneity, 2.2.4 agency, 2.3 is creativity a virtue, 3. can creativity be learned, 4. can creativity be explained, 5.1 preparation, 5.2.1 blind variation, 5.2.2 the default-mode network, 5.2.3 imagination, 5.2.4 incubation, 5.3 insight, 5.4 evaluation, 5.5 externalization, 5.6 worries and future directions, 6. creativity and artificial intelligence, 7. conclusion, other internet resources, related entries.

Given the significance creativity has in our lives and the deep philosophical questions it raises, one might expect creativity to be a major topic in philosophy. Curiously, it isn’t.

To be sure, some of the most prominent figures in the history of Western philosophy have been fascinated with creativity—or what we now call “creativity”. According to some scholars, the abstract noun for creativity did not appear until the nineteenth century—but the phenomenon certainly existed and many philosophers took an interest in it (McMahon 2013; Nahm 1956; Murray 1989; Tatarkiewicz 1980: chapter 8).

To name just a few examples: Plato (4 th century BCE) had Socrates say, in certain dialogues, that when poets produce truly great poetry, they do it not through knowledge or mastery, but rather by being divinely “inspired” by the Muses, in a state of possession that exhibits a kind of madness ( Ion and Phaedrus ). Aristotle (3 rd century BCE), in contrast, characterized the work of the poet as a rational, goal-directed activity of making ( poeisis ), in which the poet employs various means (such as sympathetic characters and plots involving twists of fate) to achieve an end (of eliciting various emotions in the audience). Margaret Cavendish (1623–1673) and Émilie du Châtelet (1706–1749) championed the creative use of the imagination to pursue freedom, overcome prejudice, and cultivate natural abilities even despite social and political oppression . Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) conceived of artistic genius as an innate capacity to produce original works through the free play of the imagination, a process which does not consist in following rules, can neither be learned nor taught, and is mysterious even to geniuses themselves. Schopenhauer (1788–1860) stressed that the greatest artists are distinguished not only by the technical skill they employ in the production of art, but also by the capacity to “lose themselves” in the experience of what is beautiful and sublime (Schopenhauer 1859: Vol. I: 184–194 and Vol. II: 376–402). Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) argued that the greatest feats of creativity, which he took to be exemplified by the tragic poetry of ancient Greece, was being born out of a rare cooperation between the “Dionysian” spirit of ecstatic intoxication, which imbues the work with vitality and passion, and the “Apollonian” spirit of sober restraint, which tempers chaos with order and form (Nietzsche 1872 [1967]). William James (1842–1910) theorized about creative genius exerts the causal power to change the course of history (Simonton 2018). This is just a glimpse of what each of these philosophers had to say about creativity, and many other figures could be added to their number.

Nevertheless, while some of the topics explored by earlier thinkers have come to occupy a central place in philosophy today—such as freedom, justice, consciousness, and knowledge—creativity is not among them. Indeed, “philosophy of creativity” is still a neologism in most quarters, just as, for example, “philosophy of action” and “philosophy of gender” were not too long ago. However, philosophical work on creativity has been picking up steam over the last two decades (as shown, for example, in a few important collections of essays: B. Gaut & Livingston 2003; Krausz, Dutton, & Bardsley 2009; Paul & Kaufman 2014; B. Gaut & Kieran 2018). We’ll now dive into those contributions, along with earlier work, beginning with what is perhaps the most basic question one can ask in this field.

2. What is Creativity?

As we noted at the outset, the term “creative” can be applied to three kinds of things: a person , a process , or a product (where a product could be an idea, performance, or physical artifact).

Most definitions focus on the product. According to one common approach, persons or processes are creative to the extent that they produce creative products, and a product is creative if it meets two conditions: in addition to being new it must also be valuable . Many theorists argue that novelty is not sufficient, because something can be new but worthless (e.g., a meaningless string of letters), in which case it doesn’t merit the compliment of being called “creative”. Immanuel Kant is often cited as anticipating this definition of creativity in his discussion of (artistic) genius. According to a common interpretation, Kant defines (artistic) genius as the ability to produce works that are not only “original”—since “there can be original nonsense”—but also “exemplary” (Kant 1790: §§43–50 [2000: 182–197]). (Hills & Bird [2018] challenge this reading of Kant.) This definition is so widely accepted among psychologists that it has come to be known as “the standard definition” of creativity in psychology. In practice, “creativity is often not defined” (J.C. Kaufman 2009: 19) in psychological experiments—more on this in §5 below. When psychologists do explicitly adopt a definition, however, they usually say that creative products are not only new, but also valuable in some way, though they variously express the product’s value in terms of its being “useful”, “effective”, “worthwhile”, “fit”, or “appropriate to the task at hand” (Bruner 1962: 18; A. J. Cropley 1967: 67; Jackson & Messick 1965: 313; Kneller 1965: 7; Cattell & Butcher 1968; Heinelt 1974; J.C. Kaufman 2009: 19–20; S.B. Kaufman & Gregoire 2016; Stein 1953; Sternberg & Lubart 1999: 3—for an overview, see Runco & Jaeger 2012). A few psychologists have suggested that the standard definition doesn’t fully capture the concept of creativity (Amabile 1996; Simonton 2012b). As for philosophers, at least one of them defends the standard definition with qualifications (Klausen 2010), but many of them challenge it, as we’ll soon see.

While it is uncontroversial that novelty is required for creativity, philosophers have refined that point. Certain examples may seem, at first, to suggest that novelty isn’t really necessary for creativity. Newton’s discovery of calculus was creative even if, unbeknownst to him at the time, Leibniz got there first—one of many examples of what are called “multiples” in the history of science (Simonton 2004). A beginning student’s idea that freedom is compatible with causal determinism might be creative even if, as she will soon learn, philosophers have been defending such “compatibilist” theories for millennia. However, examples like these do not force us to abandon the novelty requirement, but only to qualify it. Newton’s calculus and the student’s compatibilism were not new in all of history, but they were new to their respective creators, and that is enough for them to count as creative. In the terminology of philosopher Margaret Boden, these ideas are “psychologically creative” (P-creative) even though they are not “historically creative” (H-creative). Notice that P-creativity is more fundamental. Anything that is new in all of history (H-creative) must also be new to its creator (P-creative). Thus, creativity always exhibits psychological novelty, though it doesn’t always exhibit historical novelty.

Again, no one denies that a creative product must be new, at least to its creator. But as we’ll now see, some philosophers depart from the standard definition of creativity by rejecting the value condition ( §2.1 ), or by proposing some further condition(s) ( §2.2 ), or by doing both.

Some theorists have argued that although creative things are valuable, we shouldn’t build value into the definition of creativity, because doing so is not informative or explanatory:

Knowing that something is valuable or to be valued does not by itself reveal why or how that thing is. By analogy, being told that a carburetor is useful provides no explanatory insight into the nature of a carburetor: how it works and what it does. (Stokes 2008: 119; Stokes 2011: 675–76)

Those who maintain that value is required for creativity might reply that it doesn’t need to be informative or explanatory. Being a man is required for being a bachelor even though it’s not informative or explanatory to say that bachelors are men. Stokes notes that “creative” is a term of praise, and uses this point to argue that what is creative must be produced intentionally (since we don’t rightly praise what is unintentional or accidental)—an idea we’ll return to below. But the same point also seems to imply that what is creative must also have value (since we don’t rightly praise what doesn’t have value). And while the concept “carburetor” is value-neutral, as shown by the fact that a carburetor can be worthless or useless (if it’s broken), “creative”, one might argue, is a value-laden concept, like “progress”. Progress necessarily involves novelty or change, but we don’t praise change as progress unless it’s good change. Likewise, defenders of the value condition urge, creativity necessarily involves novelty, but we don’t praise novelty as creative unless it’s good novelty.

Other critics use counterexamples to argue that value isn’t necessary for creativity, the most prominent cases being ones of immoral creativity. (For a collection of essays by psychologists on the phenomenon of immoral or so-called “dark” creativity’, see D. Cropley et al. 2010). Putative cases of immoral creativity include creative accounting to cheat investors or creative testimony to mislead jurors, and the stock example in the literature is creative torture or murder. One can imagine novel and well-designed murders, as Thomas De Quincey once did in a satirical essay:

[S]omething more goes to the composition of a fine murder than two blockheads to kill and be killed—a knife—a purse—and a dark lane. Design, gentlemen, grouping, light and shade, poetry, sentiment, are now deemed indispensable to attempts of this nature. Mr. Williams has exalted the ideal of murder to all of us […] Like Æschylus or Milton in poetry, like Michael Angelo in painting, he has carried his art to a point of colossal sublimity. (De Quincey 1827; see also discussion in Battin et al. 1989)

Innovative ways of inflicting needless agony and craftily designed murders are not good (they have no value), and yet they can be creative. If this is right, then it seems to follow that creativity doesn’t require value.

One way of trying to save the value condition is by flatly denying that torture methods can be creative, and by denying more generally that creative things can be bad (Novitz 1999). But such denial seems ad hoc and implausible—“evil creativity” is not a contradiction in terms—and some have argued that this denial faces other problems besides (Livingston 2018).

Other theorists revise or qualify the value condition in order to accommodate examples of immoral creativity. Paisley Livingston (2018) proposes that a creative product only needs to be instrumentally valuable or “effective” as means to its intended end, regardless of whether that end is morally good, bad, or indifferent. Berys Gaut (2018) distinguishes between something’s being good (or good, period) versus being good of its kind . In his view, a new way of wielding blades and pulleys may be creative if it’s a good of its kind—good as a method of torture—even though it isn’t good. In order for something to count as creative, Gaut says, it doesn’t need to be good; it just needs to be good of its kind.

Alison Hills and Alexander Bird (2018) are unconvinced by such qualifications. They contemplate an elaborate torture device that ends up killing its victims immediately, “without enough suffering on the way”. The device may still be creative, they hold, even though “as a method of torture, it’s no good” (2018: 98). Indeed, they argue, a creative item needn’t be good in any way at all, not even for its creator. The ineffective torture device just described doesn’t satisfy its creator’s preferences, it doesn’t give him pleasure, it isn’t an achievement, it doesn’t contribute at all to his well-being—and yet, they contend, it may be creative, provided that it’s new and was produced in the right way. Exactly what “the right way” amounts to is the topic we turn to next.

2.2 Other proposed conditions

With or without the value condition, some theorists argue that a product must satisfy one or more further conditions, beyond being new, in order to count as creative. The four most prominent proposals are that the product must be (i) surprising, (ii) original (i.e., not copied), (iii) spontaneous, and/or (iv) agential. Each of these is a condition on the process of creativity. To be clear, we are still concerned with what it means for a product to be creative, but the proposals we’ll now consider say that in order for a product to count as creative, it must be brought about in the right way.

Margaret Boden holds that a creative product must be “ new, surprising, and valuable ” (2004: 1; cf. Boden 2010; 2014). It is perhaps most natural to assume that being surprising—like being new and valuable—is a feature of a product. But while Boden does think of creative products as surprising, her interest is more fundamentally in the underlying generative process, in how a creator manages to make something surprising. In her view, there are “three types of creativity”—combinatorial, exploratory, and transformative—“which elicit different forms of surprise, [and] are defined by the different kinds of psychological processes that generate the new structures” (2010: 1, italics added).

Combinatorial creativity occurs when old ideas are combined in new ways. Obvious examples include fictional hybrid creatures or chimeras: add wings to a horse (Pegasus), add the tail of a fish to a woman’s head and upper-body (a mermaid), add a lion’s body to a woman’s head and torso (Sphinx), and so on. Other combinations are found in analogies, such as when Niels Bohr compared an atom to the solar system. The term “combination” can refer either to the product of things combined or to the process of combining them, but Boden’s focus is on the process here, on the fact that one way to generate new ideas is to begin with old ideas and combine them in new ways.

To explain her other two kinds of creativity, Boden invokes the notion of a “conceptual space”, which is roughly a system comprising a set of basic elements (e.g., basic ideas or representations) as well as rules or “constraints” for manipulating or re-combining those elements. A conceptual space is not a painting, song, or poem, for example; it’s a way of creating a painting, song, poem, or theory. The rules or constraints are “the organizing principles that unify and give structure to a given domain of thinking”. And so a conceptual space is

the generative system that underlies that domain and defines a certain range of possibilities: chess moves, or molecular structures, or jazz melodies. (1994: 79)

We could think of a conceptual space as not just a set of thoughts but also a style of thinking defined by rules for generating new thoughts.

“Within a given conceptual space”, Boden observes, “many thoughts are possible, only some of which may have been actually thought” (2004: 4). Some conceptual spaces contain more possibilities than others. Consider different games. Tic-tac-toe is such a simple game that all of its possible moves have already been made many times over. The same is not true in chess, by contrast, which allows for a mind-boggling number of possible moves. The range of possible ideas is also practically inexhaustible in literature, music, the visual and performing arts, as well as the various domains of theoretical inquiry. And within those pursuits, there are various “structured styles of thought”—genres, paradigms, methodological orientations—which Boden thinks of as conceptual spaces.

Boden argues that the elements as well as the operating rules of a conceptual space can be, and in some cases have been, captured in computer programs. She has used this point not only to argue that computers can be creative (a topic we’ll return to below in §5 ), but also to suggest that we should employ the computational model of the mind in order to explain how humans create.

With her notion of conceptual spaces in hand, Boden says that exploratory creativity occurs within a given conceptual space. The new idea that emerges is one that was already possible within that space, because it was permitted by its rules. “When Dickens described Scrooge as ‘a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner,’” Boden writes, “he was exploring the space of English grammar” in which “the rules of grammar allow us to use any number of adjectives before a noun” (Boden 1994: 79). Dickens’s description may strike us somewhat surprising, unexpected, or improbable, but it doesn’t have an air of impossibility about it.

By contrast, Boden argues, another form of creativity does. In this kind of case, the creative result is so surprising that it prompts observers to marvel, “But how could that possibly happen?” (2004: 6). Boden calls this transformational creativity because it cannot happen within a pre-existing conceptual space; the creator has to transform the conceptual space itself, by altering its constitutive rules or constraints. Schoenberg crafted atonal music, Boden says, “by dropping the home-key constraint”, the rule that a piece of music must begin and end in the same key. Lobachevsky and other mathematicians developed non-Euclidean geometry by dropping Euclid’s fifth axiom. Kekulé discovered the ring-structure of the benzene molecule by negating the constraint that a molecule must follow an open curve (Boden 1994: 81–3). In such cases, Boden is fond of saying that the result was “downright impossible” within the previous conceptual space (Boden 2014: 228).

Boden’s definition of creativity has perhaps been most influential among researchers who share her intertest in computer creativity (e.g., Halina 2021; Miller 2019: ch. 3; du Sautoy 2019). In a variation of Boden’s account, one philosopher proposes that what makes a mental process creative is not that it actually involves “the recombination of old ideas or the transformation of one’s conceptual space”, but rather that the creator experiences the process as having one of those features (Nanay 2014).

Maria Kronfeldner (2009; 2018) argues that the process of making something creative must exhibit originality . As she uses the term “original”, it does not simply mean “new”; instead, it has to do with the kind of causal process the creator must employ. She motivates her view by asking why it’s the case that, as we noted earlier, psychological novelty is required for creativity while historical novelty is not. Why is it, for example, that Newton’s invention of calculus was creative even if Leibniz invented it first? The answer, of course, is that it’s because Newton didn’t copy his calculus from Leibniz. Insofar as Newton came up with calculus independently, on his own, then he exhibited originality in his discovery, even though someone else got there first. This originality, Kronfeldner argues, is essential to creativity.

Kronfeldner (2009; 2018) also argues that spontaneity is required for creativity. An idea occurs spontaneously to the extent that it is produced without foresight or intentional control. If you were to foresee the output of the creative process at the beginning of that process, then you wouldn’t need any further process to come up with it. So if an idea is creative, you cannot have fully seen it coming. To that extent, insight comes as a surprise, hence the common phenomenological observation that creative breakthroughs feel like they come unbidden or out of the blue: “Eureka!”, “Aha!”, a lightbulb turns on.

Gaut (2018: 133–137) agrees that creativity requires spontaneity, and he points out, as Kronfeldner does, that it comes in degrees. He explains that you do something spontaneously to the extent that do it without planning it in advance. If you are going to act creatively, he argues, you cannot set out to follow an “exact plan”—a mechanical procedure, routine, or algorithmic rule—which would give you advance knowledge of exactly what the outcome will be and exactly the means you'll take to achieve it. At the outset of a creative act, you have to be to some extent ignorant of the end, or the means, or both. That ignorance opens up room for spontaneity and creativity.

Some philosophers argue that an item does not count as creative unless it has been produced by an agent. Consider a unique snowflake with an intricate shape, a distinctive sunset with stunning layers of red-orange hues, a novel patterning of dunes across a wind-blown desert. All of these things are aesthetically valuable and new. None of them are creative, however, insofar as they all occurred naturally and were not made by an agent. Gaut uses examples like these to argue that creative things must be created by agents (B. Gaut 2018: 129–30; cf. B. Gaut 2010, and B. Gaut 2014b) and several other philosophers agree (Carruthers 2006, 2011; Kieran 2014a, 2014b; Stokes 2008, 2011, 2014; Paul & Stokes 2018).

Of course, many theists would maintain that everything in nature is the handiwork of an agent—namely, God—and so arguably it would make sense for them to regard a natural phenomenon as creative if it is valuable and new. For theists, the unparalleled beauty of nature is a reason to praise the Creator. But this only supports the conceptual point that creativity, by definition, requires agency. We may coherently regard valuable new things as creative if we attribute them to a creative agent, as the theist does with the natural world; otherwise, we can’t. So again, it seems, creativity requires agency.

This leaves open the question of exactly how a creator’s agency must be exercised in order for the result to count as creative. Some philosophers argue that the agent’s act of creation must be intentional . Suppose you are snowboarding on a powder day and, unbeknownst to you, the tracks from your board result in a pleasing new pattern as viewed from high above. The new pattern has aesthetic value, but it isn’t creative. And that is because you didn’t intend to make it. Underlying this intuition, as well as our intuitions about the natural phenomena above, is the fact that “creative” is a term of praise, and we do not extend praise (or blame) for things that are not done by an agent, or for things that an agent doesn’t do in some sense intentionally.

While a number of philosophers endorse some version of the agency requirement for creativity, many theorists make no mention of it, whether to endorse it or reject it, including all of the psychologists cited above. Further, at least two philosophers are willing to attribute creativity to natural phenomena like trees and evolutionary processes: Arnheim (2001) and, in recent work, Boden (2018). These latter theorists don’t discuss agency as such, but insofar as the natural phenomena they call creative are not the result of agency, their view would imply that agency isn’t required for creativity.

The four proposals we’ve just considered all say that a product must arise from a certain kind of process—a process that exhibits surprise, originality, spontaneity, or agency—in order to count as creative. While there is wide agreement among philosophers that creativity requires some special kind of process, not just a special product, there is no consensus on what is required of the process. Of the four process conditions described here, the agency condition seems to be the one that is explicitly endorsed by the greatest number of philosophers thus far, though even they are still just a handful. And as we’ve seen, the other proposed conditions have serious arguments in their favor as well.

Some philosophers argue that if any process requirement is correct, this has an intriguing corollary for judgements about creativity: Even when we are explicitly judging only that a product is creative, we are implicitly assuming something about the process by which it was made. Suppose, for illustration, that the agency requirement is correct—that being generated through an agential process is built into the very concept of a creative product. Suppose further that you are applying that concept competently. It follows that if you come across a captivating arrangement of stones on the beach and you judge it to be creative, you are at least implicitly assuming that it was created through an agential process. If someone later persuades you that the stones happened to be moved into place by the wind and waves, not by any agent but just by chance, then you may still regard the result as aesthetically interesting but you would have to rescind your judgement that it is creative. So if the agency condition is correct, whenever you point to some item and say, “This is creative”, what you are saying, in part is, “This resulted from a creative process”. Furthermore, on this view, analogous implications follow if any other process condition is correct (Paul & Stokes 2018).

Having considered what is required for something to count as a creative product , and whether it must be produced by a certain kind of process , we now turn to analysis of the creative person .

Some theorists suggest that creativity, as an attribute of persons, is an ability to perform creative acts or produce creative things (Boden 2004). Others argue, however, that creativity isn’t merely an ability. An ability is something you can possess without ever putting it to use. You might have the ability to learn Swahili, for example, without ever making the effort to learn that language, despite having ample opportunities to do so. Creativity is different in this regard. If someone has the ability to be creative but never uses that ability when given numerous chances to do so, we would not call that person creative. Creative people are not merely able to act creatively. They are, moreover, disposed to exercise that ability, such that they do act creatively, at least some of the time, when the occasion arises. On this view creativity is a disposition , also referred to as a trait (Grant 2012; cf. B. Gaut 2014b, 2018).

Philosophers have long distinguished virtues as a special subclass of dispositions or traits. In Western philosophy, the tradition of theorizing about virtues goes back to the ancient Greeks, and over the last half-century it has enjoyed a renaissance in ethics (see entry on virtue ethics ) and, more recently, in epistemology (see entry on virtue epistemology ) and aesthetics (Lopes 2008; Roberts 2018; Hills 2018). Traditional examples of virtues include wisdom, justice, temperance, and courage. Should creativity be added to the list?

The answer depends, of course, on what it means for a trait to be a virtue. At the very least, a virtue is a trait that is good or valuable. So whether creativity counts as a virtue in this minimal sense depends on whether creativity is necessarily valuable, a point which is contested, as we saw in the previous section. In fact, those who contend that creativity isn’t necessarily valuable often do so in order to prove that it isn’t a virtue.

But let’s suppose for the sake of argument that creativity is indeed a valuable trait. Is it also a virtue in some more robust sense? Virtue theorists commonly take their cue from Aristotle’s classic discussion in the Nichomachean Ethics . Citing justice and temperance as paradigm virtues, Aristotle asserts that a trait must meet at least three conditions to count as a virtue:

For actions in accord with the virtues to be done temperately or justly it does not suffice that they themselves have the right qualities. Rather, the agent must also be in the right state when he does them. First, he must know [that he is doing virtuous actions]; second he must decide on them, and decide on them for themselves; and thrid, he must also do them from a firm and unchanging state. ( EN II.4, 1105a28–1105a33)

So, for example, if you return something you’ve borrowed, that act exhibits the virtue of justice if and only if (1) you know that you’re returning what you borrowed, (2) you choose to do so because it is the just thing to do, and for no other reason, and (3) you are disposed to do the just thing across the range of circumstances when the opportunity arises. In addition to justice and temperance, Aristotle enumerates other ethical virtues like prudence, generosity, and courage, as well as the intellectual virtue of theoretical wisdom. In his view, each of these traits requires one to meet the three conditions above. While he does not consider whether creativity is a virtue, we may ask whether creativity also has these three criteria. Does one have to meet these three requirements in order to count as creative?

We’ll begin with the third requirement to set it to one side. Does a person’s act count as creative only “if he does it from a fixed and permanent disposition of character”? Examples suggest otherwise. Consider the poet Arthur Rimbaud, who abandoned poetry at the age of 21 to pursue a life of adventure. The fact that he never produced another poem after that does not count against the fact that he was a creative poet in his youth (B. Gaut 2014b). Unlike the Aristotelian virtues, then, creativity does not have to be a permanent disposition.

Even so, it would still be significant if creativity turned out to be like an Aristotelian virtue in meeting the first two requirements. And arguably, creativity does meet the first requirement. A person doesn’t count as doing something creative unless “he knows what he is doing”. This was already implied by the agency condition for creativity discussed earlier.

Where things get interesting is with Aristotle’s second criterion for virtue. In order for your action to count as virtuous, he says, you have to do it “for its own sake”—i.e., you have to do it because you value virtue as an end itself, and not as a means to some external reward like praise, money, status, fame, or winning a competition. Consider the virtue of generosity, for instance. If you give money to someone in need merely because it will make you look good in the eyes of your friends, then you aren’t really being generous. Your act may outwardly look like generosity, but it’s not the real thing. To exhibit real generosity, you have to pursue generosity as an end in itself; you have to help others just for the sake of helping others. Now contrast being generous with being polite. If you compliment your colleague on the good work she’s done, then even if you’re doing this in order to manipulate her, you are being polite to her. You can have an ulterior motive for being polite. So politeness is not a virtue the way generosity is.

Is creativity a virtue in this respect? That is, does being creative require acting creatively for its own sake? Matthew Kieran’s (2014a, 2014b, 2018) answer is a qualified yes. While he grants that you can be motivated by external rewards to exhibit “minimal creativity” in producing valuable new things, he maintains that “exemplary creativity” requires you to be motivated by the value of creativity itself. Thus, in his view, exemplary creativity is a virtue.

To support this claim, Kieran points to a research program in psychology which purports to show that creativity is driven by “intrinsic motivation” rather than “extrinsic motivation”. A classic experiment in this program is “the magic markers study”, in which kids end up producing less creative drawings when they are offered a prize (Lepper et al. 1973). Many other studies have reported similar results, which lead Teresa Amabile to conclude, at first without qualification, that creativity is enhances by intrinsic motivation and hampered by extrinsic motivation (Amabile 1983: 107).

Further research introduced complications. In some studies, subjects were given “immunization techniques” whereby they were first primed or trained to focus on intrinsically motivating factors like the pleasure or aesthetical value of engaging in artistic activities, and it was found that when they engaged in those activities afterward, external rewards actually enhanced their creativity.

As researchers interpreted these findings, offering reward can support one’s intrinsic motivation, provided that the reward works either to boost one’s sense of agency or to provide useful feedback about what’s working and what isn’t. Intrinsic motivation is still what fuels creativity, on this interpretation; rewards help only indirectly, when they reinforce intrinsic motivation. This lead Amabile to revise her hypothesis as the Intrinsic Motivation Principle (IMP):

Intrinsic motivation is conducive to creativity; controlling extrinsic motivation is detrimental to creativity, but informational or enabling extrinsic motivation can be conducive, particularly if initial levels of intrinsic motivation are high. (1996: 107)

Kieran takes this as evidence for his claim that creativity, or at least what he calls exemplary creativity, requires intrinsic motivation and is therefore a virtue in that respect.

Objecting to this proposal, Gaut cites evidence that extrinsic motivation is not always detrimental to creativity. In one study, students in an introductory psychology class came up with more creative short story titles if they were offered a financial reward (Eisenberger & Rhodes 2001). In the studies where immunization techniques were used, proponents of IMP argue that rewards enhance creativity only indirectly, by buttressing intrinsic motivation. But in this case no such techniques were used, and so it seems the prospect of a reward enhanced creativity directly.

Further, Gaut argues that this point coheres with the role that rewards seem to play in so many real-world cases of creative achievement. In their quest to discover the structure of the DNA molecule, Watson and Crick were driven “to imitate Linus Pauling and beat him at his own game” (Watson 1968 [1999: 46]). Picasso and Matisse were both spurred on by their rivalry with each other (Flam 2003: 37). Paul McCready says he was driven to invent his award-winning human-powered glider in 1977 because he needed the prize-money to pay off his debts:

I felt that I didn’t have the time to mess with such things, but I had this strong economic motivation to take an interest in man-powered flight, so I charged around trying to figure out a way to solve it. (quoted in Sternberg & Lubart 1995: 242)

One historian argues that in World War II the Poles beat the French in cracking the Germans’ Enigma Code because they were more terrified of German invasion (Singh 1999: ch. 4). Gaut quips: “Fear of death is a more powerful motivator than the intrinsic satisfactions of code breaking” (Gaut 2014b: 196).

Finally, Gaut points out that even if IMP is true, it is only a causal, probabilistic claim: intrinsic motivation is “conducive” to creativity; extrinsic motivation is “detrimental”. But for a trait to be a virtue, intrinsic motivation must be conceptually necessary for the exercise of that trait. If we learn that someone gave to charity just to enhance his reputation, we conclude that he wasn’t really being generous. By contrast, if we discover that someone created gorgeous artwork just for the fame and glory, we may then lose some of our admiration for her creativity, but we do not deny that she was being creative.

Kieran could remind us that, in his view, intrinsic motivation is not required for all creativity, but only for the special form of it that he calls exemplary creativity. Anticipating this reply, Gaut says that to distinguish between two forms of creativity is just to concede his point. There are not two forms of generosity, one that requires intrinsic motivation and another that does not. If your act of giving isn’t motivated by the right kind of reason, then it doesn’t count as an act of generosity at all. Thus, Gaut argues, to grant the possibility of non-exemplary creativity is to grant that, unlike generosity, creativity isn’t a virtue in the traditional Aristotelian sense.

Another way to examine relations between creativity and virtue is through the lens of virtue epistemology. Linda Zagzebksi defines a virtue

as a deep and enduring acquired excellence of a person, involving a characteristic motivation to produce a certain desired end and reliable success in bringing about that end. (1997: 137, italics added)

While there is a lot packed into this definition, what we’ll pinpoint here is the idea that virtue involves reliable success in achieving a desired end, and that the agent who is epistemically virtuous, in particular, is one who is reliably successful in achieving knowledge. Knowledge requires truth, of course, so an epistemic virtue is a trait that is “truth-conducive”. Epistemologists typically regard a process as truth-conducive to the extent that the beliefs it produces are more often true than false. But Zagzebksi proposes that a process or trait may be truth-conducive in a different sense, insofar as it is necessary for advancing knowledge in some area, even if it produces a very small proportion of true beliefs. Creativity, she claims, is truth-conducive in this sense, and thus it qualifies as an epistemic virtue (1997: 182). Also note the emphasis on agency. In contrast to contemporary western epistemology, virtue epistemology identifies the agent (rather than, say her beliefs) as the essential locus of epistemic valence; it is the agent who is epistemically good (or not). This emphasis comports well with the proposal, discussed above, that the creator’s agency is necessary for genuine creative achievement. A virtue-theoretic approach thus illuminates what may (as we will discuss again later) be essential to creativity, namely, a process that non-trivially involves a responsible agent.

We’ve seen that even after we fix a specific referent for the term “creative”—whether it be a person, process, or product—there are lively disagreements about what it means. These debates often seem to presuppose that the term always expresses the same concept, for which we can seek necessary and sufficient conditions. But we’ve also seen that some theorists distinguish between different concepts of creativity, corresponding to different senses of the term “creative”. In future work we may see theorists develop such pluralistic approaches in more detail. The trick, though, will be to give principled reasons for multiplying different concepts of creativity so that the analyses do not simply reduce to saying that anything goes.

There is a long tradition of thinkers who answer no to the question above. Two of the most influential are from the eighteenth century—Edward Young and Immanuel Kant—who were concerned specifically with genius , the capacity for achieving the very highest levels of creativity. In Conjectures on Original Composition (1759), Young says,

An Original may be said to be of a vegetable nature; it rises spontaneously from the vital root of genius; it grows , it is not made …. (1759 [1966: 7])

His idea is that originality emerges naturally from something implanted in us by nature, and it can only be hindered by learning. Young seems to think of learning as proceeding either through imitation or through the following of rules, and both, he thinks, are detrimental to originality. Regarding imitation he writes,

Born Originals , how comes it to pass that we die Copies ? That meddling ape Imitation … destroys all mental individuality…. (1759 [1966: 20])

And insofar as learning is “a great lover of rules”, he warns that it “sets rigid bounds to that liberty, to which genius often owes its supreme glory” (1759 [1966: 13]).

Kant makes similar claims in his Critique of Judgment (1790). Like Young, he takes genius to be a natural capacity, though a very rare one:

such a skill cannot be communicated, but is apportioned to each immediately from the hand of nature and dies with him. (1790: §47 5:309 [2000: 188])

It certainly cannot be learned through imitation:

genius is entirely opposed to the spirit of imitation . Now since learning is nothing but imitation, even the greatest aptitude for learning, facility for learning (capacity) as such, still does not count as genius. (1790: §47 5:308 [2000: 187])

Nor can it be learned through rules, Kant holds, for genius is

the talent (natural gift) that gives the rule to art … the inborn predisposition of the mind ( ingenium ) through which nature gives the rule to art. (1790: §46 5:307 [2000: 186])

For Kant, a genius does not follow rules; a genius invents the rules, indirectly, by creating exemplary works from which other artists might extract rules and undertake “a methodical instruction in accordance with rules” (1790: §49 5:318 [2000: 196]).

Young and Kant are concerned with genius, specifically, but if we extend their reasoning to creativity in general, as Berys Gaut (2014a) has noted, we can discern two lines of argument:

The imitation argument All learning is a form of imitation. Imitating someone or something is incompatible with being creative. So, one cannot learn to be creative. The rules argument All learning consists in the following of rules. Following rules is incompatible with being creative. So, one cannot learn to be creative. (2014a: 266)

Gaut points out, first of all, that both arguments are invalid. In both cases, what the premises would entail is that learning cannot be creative, that, in other words, you cannot learn creatively (a claim about how you can learn). But even if that were true, it wouldn’t follow that you cannot learn to be creative (a claim about what you can learn). If you absorb the advice of a creative writing manual then this act of learning may not itself be creative. But if the manual is effective—and we’ll see in a moment how it can be—then what you will learn is how to become more creative.

Gaut also challenges the premises of these arguments. To start with the first premise of the imitation argument, it simply isn’t true that all learning proceeds through imitation, as we learn many things through direct experience, trial and error, and many other means.

The second premise is also suspect. Something superficially close to it is true: mere copying is incompatible with being creative. But to the extent that we learn from others by imitating them, this is not merely a matter of copying them. When a child learns to speak the language of those around her, she doesn’t simply parrot the exact same sentences she hears; she absorbs the vocabulary and underlying grammar in a way that enables her to form new sentences of her own devising.

Now for the rules argument. Contrary to the first premise, it cannot be the case that all learning consists in following rules, Gaut argues, because for any given rule there will be hard cases where it is unclear whether or how the rule applies to them, and so an individual still has to use her own judgment in applying the rule.

The second premise is false too. Recall the distinction from §3 above between two kinds of rules. An algorithm serves as an exact plan, specifying both the outcome and the path for getting to it in exact detail. In contrast, a heuristic is a looser “rule of thumb” that leaves room for an agent to exercise her own judgment, choice, and creativity in determining whether, when, and how to follow the rule. While algorithms, in this sense, may preclude creativity, heuristics do not, which is why, as we’ll see below, the teaching of creativity so often takes the form of heuristics.

There is a sense in which the question at hand can be answered empirically: We can show that creativity can be taught simply by pointing to cases where it has been taught. Gaut himself discusses such examples as they occur in mathematics and fiction writing, which we’ll turn to below. But while such cases may suffice to show that creativity can be taught, Gaut further enriches our understanding by explaining how this is possible . He does so partly by articulating and then debunking the imitation and rules arguments to the contrary. But in addition, he offers the following positive argument to show that creativity can be taught and learned. He calls it “the constitutive argument” because it begins with his view of what constitutes or defines creativity itself.

The constitutive argument

• Creativity is a disposition—involving both the ability and the motivation —to produce things that are new and valuable, and to do so in ways that express one’s agency through “the exercise of choice, evaluation, understanding, and judgment” (Gaut 2014a: 273).
• At least some people can learn to enhance their creative motivation .
• At least some people can learn to enhance their creative abilities .
• So, at least some people can learn to become more creative.

Premise 1 recapitulates the point we’ve already seen Gaut and others defend (in §2.3 above), that creativity is not merely an ability but a disposition or trait, whereby the creative person is disposed or motivated to exercise that ability when given the opportunity.

In support of premise 2, Gaut argues that you can strengthen both your intrinsic motivation to be creative (when you take pleasure in your creative activities), as well as your extrinsic motivation to be creative (when you are rewarded with praise, grades, pay, etc. for your creative efforts).

Defending premise 3, Gaut points out that you can develop your ability to produce valuable new things by practising and strengthening the relevant skills. And this development can be substantially aided by learning certain heuristics.

Heuristics are indeed a staple of education in creative pursuits from mathematics (draw the figure; consider special cases; consider extreme cases; generalize the problem; look for a related problem, etc.—see Pólya 1945; Schoenfeld 1982, 1987a, 1987b) to creative writing (write what you know; be specific and detailed in describing sensory experiences; practice seeing similarities between dissimilar things; show, don’t tell, etc.—see Bell & Magrs 2001; Anderson 2006; Maybury 1967; S. Kaufman & J. Kaufman 2009). Gaut also identifies several heuristics that might be used to foster creativity in philosophy, even among children (cf. M. Gaut 2010; B. Gaut & M. Gaut 2011).

With this last theme, Gaut has a kindred spirit in Alan Hájek (2014, 2016, 2017, 2018), who has independently proposed that by using various heuristics, philosophers can enhance their abilities to make valuable contributions to their field, including ideas that are distinctively creative. It has been said that anyone of average talent can become a strong chess player by learning and internalizing certain chess heuristics: “castle early”, “avoid isolated pawns”, etc. Analogously, Hájek suggests, philosophy has a wealth of heuristics— philosophical heuristics —although they have not been as well documented and studied. Sometimes these take the form of useful heuristics for generating counterexamples, such as “check extreme cases”. Sometimes they suggest ways of generating new arguments out of old ones, as in “arguments involving possibility can often be recast as arguments involving time, or space”. Sometimes they provide templates for positive arguments (e.g., ways of showing that something is possible). Hájek offers a catalogue of such philosophical heuristics to show that, contrary to a common assumption, creativity, even in philosophy, can be compatible with, and enhanced by, following rules.

Upon observing the work of creative people, it is natural to wonder: How do they do that? How do people create? The issue we turn to now is whether we could, at least in principle, answer this question scientifically, using the methods of modern empirical psychology and other cognitive and behavioral sciences. Those who take a negative stance on this matter are not merely saying that, in practice, it would be exceedingly difficult for science to explain creativity. They are saying that it’s altogether impossible that science could ever explain creativity.

Hospers (1985) defends this kind of pessimism based on the variety and complexity of creativity, given that creativity occurs not only in art, but in science, theorizing of any sort, engineering, business, medicine, sport, gaming, and so on. At least two worries may follow. First, given the complexity of any one of these individual domains, one might worry that there are simply too many variables to allow for a clear explanation. Art provides a paradigmatic example. Consider an artwork that you judge to be masterful (a sculpture, a painting, a film). Now imagine attempting to describe or identify all the reasons for which you think it is masterful. Take as much time as you like but, the skeptic will urge, any long description you construct will invariably strike you as woefully incomplete by comparison to the artwork, and the experience thereof. So, if the creative achievements of artists, in all of their complexity, cannot even be adequately described, we have little reason to think that such achievements can be explained.

How can theorists respond to these skeptical worries? Both the complexity and generalizability worries might be partially disarmed by noting analogies between creativity and other phenomena. For instance, consider the range of bodily movement involved in some of the very domains of activities listed above: art, science, engineering, medicine, sport. The kinds of bodily action specific to these domains are complex and vary dramatically: the relevant physical movements of the surgeon are much different from the tennis player. However, it is not plausible that this complexity and variety precludes explanation of bodily action in those domains. It simply implies that some features of the explanation will be context-sensitive, that is, specific to that domain of activity. And further to the analogy: the fact that the long description of, say, the tennis serve is incomplete does not preclude it from being apt and explanatory. If this line of reasoning is sound for bodily action, why not also for creative action?

At this point, one might argue that while complexity and generalizability worries would only show that creativity is difficult to explain in practice, the very nature of creativity implies, more strongly, that it could never be explained, not even in principle. Resources to support this kind of pessimism may be adduced from various past philosophers. We need to tread carefully, however, since most of the figures we are about to consider were writing long before the rise of the relevant sciences, so they could not have made any explicit claim either way as to whether creativity could be explained by those sciences. Nevertheless, some of them did make claims which entail, or seem to entail, that creativity simply isn’t the kind of thing that could be explained through scientific inquiry as we understand it today.

The classic expression of such a view comes from Plato. In his dialogues, Plato features his teacher Socrates as a spokesperson for his own views, and in the Ion he has Socrates argue that poets do not produce poetry through knowledge or skill. When you exercise a skill ( technē ), you apply techniques, rules, or methods to perform a given activity, like charioteering, fishing, or commanding an army. In principle, one could explain these activities by identifying the techniques they involve, and a student or apprentice could learn these activities by applying and practicing those techniques. But poetry is not like that, in Socrates’ view. A poet can only imitate the application of rules or techniques, mimicking the surface appearance of skill. Voicing an idea that was familiar in Ancient Greek culture, Socrates suggests that poetry emerges instead through divine inspiration, whereby a human being is inspired —literally “filled with a spirit”, with a god or goddess, with a muse:

You know, none of the epic [or lyric] poets, if they’re good, are masters of their subject; they are inspired, possessed, and that is how they utter all those beautiful poems. … [They] are not in their right minds when they make those beautiful lyrics, but as soon as they sail into harmony and rhythm they are possessed by Bacchic frenzy. […] For a poet is an airy thing, winged and holy, and he is not able to make poetry until he becomes inspired and goes out of his mind and his intellect is no longer in him. As long as a human being has his intellect in his possession he will always lack the power to make poetry or sing prophecy. […] You see, it’s not mastery [ technē ] that enables them to speak those verses, but a divine power. That’s why the god takes their intellect away from them when he uses them as his servants, as he does prophets and godly diviners, so that we who hear should know that they are not the ones who speak those verses that are of such high value, for their intellect is not in them: the god himself is the one who speaks, and he gives voice through them to us. In this more than anything, then, I think, the god is showing us, so that we should be in no doubt about it, that these beautiful poems are not human, not even from human beings, but are divine and from gods; that poets are nothing but representatives of the gods, possessed by whoever possesses them. ( Ion 534a-d)

Socrates repeats this view in the Phaedrus : “Some of the greatest blessings come by way of madness, indeed madness that is heaven-sent” (244a). He adds that while a poet may have some kind of skill, anyone who aspires to make poetry purely by skill, without the madness or the muse, will fail (245a).

It’s important to note that “madness”, for Plato, is a supernatural affair. From the vantage of contemporary behavioral science, we think of madness—or rather, mental illness—as a pathology arising from some combination of genetic and environmental factors, and those factors can be studied scientifically. So even if creativity is linked to mental illness—a highly controversial proposition—it could still be entirely within the scope of science. However, Plato’s talk of “madness” does not refer to any naturally occurring pathology, but rather to the result of divine intervention: the poet is taken over or “possessed” by the muse and that is precisely why he is “out of his mind”. Plato’s poet suffers divine madness.

According to this story, then, the person we call a poet isn’t really a creator of poetry, but is merely the vessel through which a divine being delivers poetry. If it is literally true that the source of poetry is supernatural, then poetic creativity could never be explained by science, which is limited to the investigation of natural causes. (For more on Plato, see Asmis 1992.)

This kind of supernaturalism has enjoyed a long afterlife in Western thought. In ancient Rome, the Latin term “ genius ” referred to a guiding spirit that was thought to accompany each person throughout their lives. The genius of an artist would occasionally deliver art through that person in the manner of Platonic inspiration.

Conceptions of the artist take a new turn when the idea of genius is transformed in the eighteenth century. As we saw above, Immanuel Kant defines genius as a natural capacity that a certain kind of artist possesses innately and which partly constitutes that artist’s identity. So rather than saying that a gifted artist “has a genius”, Kant says that such a person “is a genius”. What distinguishes the genius is fundamentally an imaginative capacity—an ability to engage in a “free play” of imagination to produce artworks of “exemplary originality”. These works are exemplary not only in the sense that they have artistic or aesthetic value, unlike “original nonsense”; they are also exemplary in the more radical sense of providing an exemplar—a new paradigm and precedent—for lesser artists to follow. A work of genius sets a new standard of artistic value, and, looking to that exemplar, lesser artists may then extract techniques or rules for their own craft. The genius therefore “gives the rule to art”. In creating such works, the genius does not follow any rules or methods. Instead the genius creates art through a “free play of imagination”—where the terms “free” and “play” characterize the nature of an activity unconstrained by any pre-established methods or rules:

[G]enius … is a talent for producing that for which no determinate rule can be given, not a predisposition of skill for that which can be learned in accordance with some rule …. (1790: §46 5:307–8; 2000 trans., 186)

Kant thought that genius, so conceived, is limited to the fine arts, poetry being chief among them. Meanwhile, in Kant’s view, there is no room for genius in science, for example, where good theories and hypotheses must emerge from the careful application of scientific method, and so he said that even Isaac Newton, “that great man of science”, was not a genius. We’ll soon consider why this view might seem to entail that creativity is inexplicable, but first it will be helpful to bring another figure, Arthur Schopenhauer, who was deeply influenced both by Kant and by Plato.

Like Kant, Schopenhauer thought of genius as a natural capacity that is limited to the fine arts. He also echoes Plato’s sentiments about madness, famously stating that “genius and madness have a side where they touch and even pass over into each other” ( The World as Will and Representation , 1859, WWV I: 190), and that “Genius lives only one storey above madness” ( Parerga and Paralipomena , SW 2:53, PP 2:49). In a state of madness, Schopenhauer’s genius is like Plato’s poet in experiencing a momentary loss of self, but what displaces the self is not any divine being but rather a pure Idea which seizes the author’s being and becomes the object of both his fascination and his artistic expression:

We lose ourselves entirely in this object, to use a pregnant expression; in other words, we forget our individuality, our will, and continue to exist only as pure subject, as clear mirror of the object, so that it is as though the object alone existed without anyone to perceive it, and thus we are no longer able to separate the perceiver from the perception, but the two have become one, since the entire consciousness is filled and occupied by a single image of perception. ( World WWV I: 178–179, §34).

With their focus on genius construed as a natural capacity, figures like Kant and Schopenhauer abandon the supernaturalism of the Platonic muse. Nevertheless, they retain the idea that creativity—specifically genius-level creativity in the fine arts—is not a matter of exercising a skill or applying given rules, methods, or techniques.

As we noted earlier, these figures did not and could not have explicitly denied that creativity could be explained by the sciences of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, but they are commonly taken to represent such a denial (Kronfeldner 2018). Why?

Perhaps figures like Kant and Schopenhauer seem to make creativity, or at least creative genius, inexplicable insofar they suppose it to be innate and as they have no story to tell about how one came to acquire an innate capacity except to say that it was either an accident of chance (which is no explanation at all) or a gift from God (which again is not a scientific explanation). But while these figures seemed to think of artistic genius as being endowed entirely by nature with no contribution from nurture, modern genetic theory rejects that dichotomy. Instead of positing all-or-nothing natural abilities, behavioral scientists today think in terms of genetically inherited predispositions. In order for a genetic predisposition to develop into a trait with an observable phenotype, it needs to be triggered and shaped through a complex interaction between an organism’s genes and certain kinds of stimuli or environmental conditions. There are still open questions about exactly how, and how much, genes and environment feed into the development of any given trait, but it’s misguided to pose the binary nature-versus-nurture question as if the two were mutually exclusive (see Tabery 2014). Many researchers agree that some people have a stronger natural predisposition toward creativity than others, and that genius-level creativity partly stems from such a predisposition. Even so, the predisposition itself can be understood scientifically in terms of genetic heritability. (For a sampling of the relevant studies, see the essays collected in S.B. Kaufman 2013.)

Perhaps creativity seems inexplicable according to these accounts because it doesn’t follow rules or methods. In order to explain how to do something—how to build a boat or lead an army etc.—perhaps I need to be able to identify the rules or methods you should follow in order to practice and apply those skills. How-to explanations are instructions. But scientific explanations needn’t be instructions. A lot of good science explains how something happens—e.g., how heat melts ice or how a bat navigates its environment by echolocation—without explaining how to do it yourself.

Perhaps creativity seems inexplicable according to these accounts because creators themselves do not know how they create. But a scientific explanation needn’t be available through introspection. Most people cannot explain how their own digestive, circulatory, or perceptual systems work, but scientists who study those systems can.

Another line of thought is perhaps implicit in Kant but comes to the fore in Schopenhauer, who says that “the nature of genius consists precisely in the preeminent ability” to

consider things independently of the principle of sufficient reason , in contrast to the way of considering which proceeds in exact accordance with this principle, and is the way of science and experience. ( World WWV: I: 192, §36)

The principle of sufficient reason says that for every fact there is a cause which completely explains that fact. So the defining ability of genius is to see things in a way that transcends the causal order and defies all explanation.

A version of this view is defended more recently by Carl Hausman (1975 [1984], 1979, 1985) who frames it in terms of novelty that creativity involves. Hausman asserts that if a product is creative, it must be metaphysically novel (or in his terms, “genuinely novel”) in the sense that it cannot be predicted from, or explained by, prior events—not even in principle. Creativity is therefore incompatible with causal determination and causal explanation: “A causal view of explanation sets a framework for ways of denying that there is anything new under the sun” (Hausman 1984: ix). If something can be explained by prior causes, it is not metaphysically novel, and is therefore, in Hausman’s view, not truly creative.

Against Hausman’s skeptical charge, Maria Kronfeldner (2009) argues that creativity is compatible with causal determination. First, causal determinism does not preclude novelty or change. Determinism says the emergence of new kinds of things can at least in principle be predicted in advance. Importantly, though, when this prediction becomes true, then something new is added to the world. Of course, not all novelty instantiates creativity. The question is whether the kind of novelty involved in creativity must be metaphysical novelty, which is by definition incompatible with causal determination. This is doubtful. Notice that, by definition, metaphysical novelty defies natural laws. The production of something metaphysically novel would therefore require supernatural powers. Traditional Western religions conceive of God as performing the miracle of creation ex nihilo . But are we positing a miracle every time we describe a human artifact or achievement as creative? Surely not. As noted above, human creativity is manifest in things that are novel relative to the agent producing them or new to human history, but both of those kinds of novelty (psychological and historical) are perfectly compatible with causal determination. As Kronfeldner explains, creativity does not preclude causes in general; it only precludes certain kinds of causes. A creative product, she argues, must be original —which means that it cannot be produced through a process of copying something prior. And it must be spontaneous (not produced through a routine or mechanical procedure)—which means that it is to some extent independent of the agent’s intentional control and previously acquired knowledge. (For more on originality and spontaneity, recall §2.2 above). Intuitively, the causes of something creative cannot simply be a matter of copying or following a routine. But it may have causes nonetheless, and cognitive science can investigate those causes, at least in principle. Indeed, as we’ll see next, it is doing so in practice.

5. The Cognitive Science of Creativity

Although creativity has been relatively understudied by contemporary philosophers, as we noted in §1 , it has been receiving a great deal of attention from psychologists over the past few decades. In 1950, J. P. Guilford gave a presidential address at the American Psychological Association calling for research on the topic, and the field soon took off with waves of research investigating the traits and dispositions of creative personalities; the cognitive and neurological mechanisms at play in creative thought; the motivational determinants of creative achievement; the range of institutional, educational, and environmental factors that enhance or inhibit creativity; and more. Today, the blossoming of this field can be seen in the flurry of popular writing on its results; an official division of the American Psychological Association for the psychology of aesthetics, creativity, and the arts (Division 10); numerous academic conferences; dedicated peer-reviewed journals ( Psychology of Aesthetics , Creativity and the Arts ; Creativity Research Journal ; Journal of Creative Behavior ; International Journal of Creativity and Problem Solving ); special issues of journals ( Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences , Takeuchi & Jung 2019); literature surveys (Hennessey & Amabile 2010; Runco & Albert 2010; Runco 2017; Glaveanu 2014; Williams et al. 2016); textbooks (J.C. Kaufman 2009; Sawyer 2012; R. W. Weisberg 1986, 2006); and a comprehensive encyclopedia (Runco & Pritzker 2020). According to one overview, creativity has been studied by nearly all of the most eminent psychologists of the twentieth century, and “the field can only be described as explosive” (Albert & Runco 1999: 17). There is also a groundswell of new work on creativity in the fields of computer science, artificial intelligence (AI), and robotics.

The present section surveys empirical work in psychology along with some related work in neuroscience, while the next section ( §6 ) covers research in computing, AI, and robotics. Throughout, we’ll see that philosophers are actively in dialogue with these fields under the broad, interdisciplinary umbrella of cognitive science.

The vast body of empirical research of creativity can be seen as addressing a variety of issues, but the central question that concerns us here is the one we identified above as the challenge for explaining creativity: How are people creative? This question is analogous to a number of other questions in cognitive science: How do people perceive through sense modalities such as vision? How do they form concepts? How do they acquire a language? How do they make inferences? Just as psychologists investigate the psychological and neurological processes, systems, and mechanisms at work in these other mental operations, as well as the internal and external factors that either enhance or hinder these operations, they are doing the same for creativity. There is no pretension to achieving a complete explanation which would include each and every causal factor, and provide the basis for perfectly predicting creative outcomes in advance. But to the extent that we identify some of the relevant causal factors involved in creativity we thereby make progress in explaining creativity, just as we do with other features of the mind.

As we noted in §2 , the standard definition of creativity in psychology says that a product (idea or artefact) is creative to the extent that it is both new and valuable (“effective”, “useful” or “appropriate”), and, in turn, people and processes are creative to the extent that they produce new and valuable things. As we also noted, many psychologists do not actually employ this, or any, definition of creativity in conducting their research. In one sampling of studies of creativity published in peer-reviewed psychology journals, only 38% of them included an explicit definition of creativity (Plucker, Beghetto, & Dow 2004), as they rely in one way or another on the assumption that we know it when we see it. For example, many studies use the Consensual Assessment Technique (CAT), whereby experimental subjects produce things that are then rated for how creative they are by a panel of experts in the relevant field; so paintings are rated by professional painters, stories by published authors, etc. Many other research methodologies are used, as we’ll see below.

Empirical research on creativity departs in several ways from the traditional approaches that seemed to place creativity outside the scope of science. For starters, in stark contrast to Plato’s supernaturalism, empirical psychologists take creativity to be a completely natural phenomenon. Creative people may of course be “inspired” in the sense of feeling energized or filled with ideas, but rather than being literally “breathed into” by some god or muse, their thoughts and behaviors are presumed to have causes that are perfectly natural. While it is difficult in practice to identify these causes, they are not in principle beyond the reach of science.

Further, the range of phenomena that contemporary researchers countenance within the ambit of creativity is far broader and more diverse than the traditional focus on poetry and the fine arts, as creativity can be manifest in any kind of art or craft, as well as in the sciences, technology, entrepreneurship, cooking, humor, or indeed in any domain where people come up with ideas or things that are novel and valuable in some way or another. Departing from Kant, genius, the highest echelon of creativity, may be acknowledged in virtually any of these domains, not just in the fine arts. And while a few researchers (e.g., Simonton 1984, 1994, 1997, 2009; Root-Bernstein & Root-Bernstein 1999) venture to examine genius (so-called “Big-C” creativity), most of them focus instead on relatively ordinary creative feats (“little-c” creativity) including the kinds of story-making, drawing, and problem-solving that can be elicited on command from regular people in experimental settings. Some researchers propose that in order to understand how the mind generates new ideas, we should begin with even more rudimentary phenomena. For example, philosopher Jesse Prinz and psychologist Lawrence Barsalou focus on how we form new concepts to categorize the things we perceive, a process which they claim is creative, albeit in a “mundane” rather than “exceptional” way (Prinz & Barsalou 2002; Barsalou & Prinz 1997; cf. Child 2018).

Of course, many feats of human creativity, and the ones that are most interesting, go far beyond the basic formation of concepts. A major step toward explaining those feats is to recognize that what we call “the creative process”, as if it were a single, homogenous phenomenon, is in fact an assembly of multiple stages or operations. The simplest recognition of this fact is the Geneplore model which distinguishes just two stages: generating ideas and exploring ideas (Finke 1996; Smith, Ward, & Finke 1995). This distinction may be seen as echoing one made by philosophers of science in the early twentieth century, between the context of discovery and the context of justification (Popper 1934). Other theorists posit up to eight stages of creativity (for a summary of proposals, see Sawyer 2012: 89). But the most influential stage-theory traces back to Henri Poincaré’s lecture, “Mathematical Creation” (1908 [1913: 383–394]), in which he identifies four phases in his own innovative work as a mathematician:

• conscious hard work or preparation ,
• unconscious incubation ,
• illumination , and
• verification .

In his book, The Art of Thought (1926), the psychologist Graham Wallas endorses Poincaré’s four stages with corroborating evidence from the personal reports of other eminent scientists like Hermann von Helmholtz. Wallas’s scheme, as a development of Poincaré’s, is still the one that is most widely cited, and we employ a version of it here with some slightly different terminology and with two more substantive alterations: instead of “incubation”, we identify the second operation more generally as the “generation” of ideas, which may include unconscious incubation but may also occur in conscious, deliberate thought; and we add “externalization” for a total of five operations:

• Preparation —You invest a great deal of effort learning and practicing in order to acquire the knowledge, skills, and expertise required for work in a given domain.
• Generation —You produce new ideas, whether through conscious reflection or unconscious incubation.
• Insight —You consciously experience the emergence of a new idea, which would strike you with a feeling of surprise: “Aha!”, “Eureka!”
• Evaluation – You assess the idea to determine whether it should be discarded, retained, revised, or amended.
• Externalization —You express your idea in a concrete, observable form.

Artists provide compelling examples (though not the only ones) of each of these five operations. Such examples can be especially illustrative since they come straight from the artists’ mouths, as they reflect upon, and share, their creative process. The twentieth century painter Jacob Lawrence was known for painting in the style of visual narratives. Lawrence developed a system, much like a filmmaker’s storyboard, for the preparation of these paintings. He would lay as many as 60 wood panels on the studio floor, each with individual scenes and sometimes with captions. From these storyboards, Lawrence would generate and evaluate ideas and insights for a visual narrative, culminating in the paintings such as those in his Migration Series (see Whitney Museum, 2002, in Other Internet Resources ). Toni Morrison, the Nobel prize winning novelist, remarks on the labors and sustained effort required at the preparation, generation, evaluation, and externalization stages of a creative writing process. Commenting on her novel Jazz , she says,

I thought of myself as like the jazz musician—someone who practices and practices and practices in order to be able to invent and to make his art look effortless and graceful. I was always conscious of the constructed aspect of the writing process, and that art appears natural and elegant only as a result of constant practice and awareness of its formal structures.

She further notes that insight does not always come in a flash,

[I]t’s a sustained thing I have to play with. I always start out with an idea, even a boring idea, that becomes a question I don’t have any answers to. (T. Morrison 1993)

Writer Ishmael Reed claims that insight can come unexpectedly and in various contexts:

One can find inspiration from many sources. The idea of Japanese by Spring originated in a news item that claimed the endowment to a major university was traced to Japanese mob, the Yakuza. Flight to Canada began as a poem. The Terrible series began when I heard someone at party mention that there was a black figure, Black Peter, in the Dutch Christmas, and by coincidence I was invited to the Netherlands shortly afterwards, where I witnessed the arrival of Saint Nicholas and Peter on a barge that floated into Amsterdam with crowds looking on. I took photos of the ceremony …. (Howell 2020: 91)

And with signature profundity, James Baldwin suggested that all elements of the creative artistic process, from preparation to externalization, require a basic enabling condition: being (and willing to be) alone (Baldwin 1962).

As Wallas recognized (1926: 81), and as the above examples suggest, the “stages” of the creative process are not necessarily discrete steps that follow one another in a tidy sequence. Creative work is messy: over time you have numerous ideas, keeping some and abandoning others in multiple rounds of trial-and-error; you incubate new ideas for one problem while you’re busy externalizing your ideas for another; and your moments of insight, evaluation, and externalization trigger further generative processes that send you cycling through these operations many times over. It’s still important to distinguish these operations, however, because, as researchers are confirming, they are enabled and influenced by different causal factors.

Among the additional stages that researchers have posited, one of the most widely discussed is known as problem-finding. Psychologists often conceptualize creative thought in terms of problem-solving: the ideas generated within the creative process are seen as candidate solutions to a given problem—where “problems” are broadly construed to include any creative aim, like that of producing a particular kind of artwork or proving a particular theorem, etc. (Flavell & Draguns 1957: 201; Newell, Shaw, & Simon 1962). But following some early work by Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi (1965), many researchers came to appreciate that a lot of creative work is done not just in solving problems but in finding the right problem to begin with (Abdulla et al. 2020; Csikszentmihalyi & Getzels 1970; Getzels 1965; Getzels & Csikszentmihalyi 1975). While we agree that problem-finding often plays a key role in creativity, we have not assigned it to a separate stage, for the following reasons. Consider that you might settle on a problem to work on in either of two ways. On one hand, you might choose a problem to work on from a pre-existing menu of options. In that case, your choice would fall under the evaluation phase; it’s just that the idea you select is a problem that calls for the pursuit of further ideas. If, on the other hand, you develop a new problem, you would thereby be engaging in the generation of a new idea—the new problem—which may emerge in a moment of insight . Einstein and his colleague celebrated the novelty in such problem-finding:

The formulation of a problem is often more essential than its solution, which may be merely a matter of mathematical or experimental skill. To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle, requires creative imagination and marks real advance in science. (Einstein & Infeld 1938: 92)

Either way—whether you “find” a problem by picking a pre-existing one or by coming up with a new one yourself—problem-finding, though important, does not need to be seen as an additional operation beyond the five listed above; it’s just a special case of generation, insight, or evaluation.

The next five sub-sections will respectively examine the five operations of creative work. Notice that three of them—preparation, evaluation, and externalization—are uncontroversially ordinary activities that involve no apparent mystery; it’s a challenge to explain them but no one is tempted to regard them as inexplicable or as violating the laws of nature. As we saw in §4 , traditional skepticism about the possibility of explaining creativity is really focused on the two remaining phenomena: the generation of new ideas ( §5.2 ) and the experience of insight whereby an idea seems to come out of the blue, as if from a god ( §5.3 ).

It’s myth that outsiders are more creative. To put yourself in a position to create anything of value, you have to spend a great deal of time and effort acquiring the relevant knowledge, skills, and expertise. In what has come to be called “the ten-year rule”, Howard Gardner (1993) found that, on average, people spend about 10 years learning and being immersed in a domain before they make any significant creative contribution to it.

Though a certain amount of rote learning is required, gaining mastery in a field is not simply a matter of passively absorbing information. Much of it involves what Anders Ericsson calls deliberate practice, where you focus on tasks which are a little beyond your current abilities, but which you eventually conquer through feedback and repetition. Across a variety of domains—including physics, medicine, programming, dance, and music—Ericsson found that, on average, world-class performance becomes possible for people only after 10,000 hours of deliberate practice in their chosen activity. This finding also converges on the ten-year rule, because if you engage in deliberate practice four hours a day, five days a week, that would add up to 10,000 hours in ten years (Ericsson, Krampe, & Tesch-Römer 1993; Ericsson et al. 2006).

However, there seems to be a point at which too much formal training can dampen creativity. Simonton (1984: 70–73) has reported that the relationship between creativity and education level is an inverted-U, as too much schooling can reinforce familiar, pre-established styles of thought. Even so, the point remains that, before you run into diminishing returns, years of preparatory learning and practice are required for exceptional creativity.

5.2 Generation

In this section we discuss four kinds of mental capacities or processes that researchers have posited for generating new ideas.

Psychologist Donald T. Campbell (1960, 1965) proposed that creative thought proceeds through “blind variation and selective retention (BVSR)”. The “variations” he refers to are the various ideas that might occur to a creator, and the process of generating them is “blind” to the extent that it is not guided or directed by prior knowledge of how valuable or useful they will be: “Real gains must have been the products of explorations going beyond the limits of foresight or prescience , and in this sense blind” (Campbell 1960: 92, emphasis added). Once ideas have been generated, however, there is a subsequent stage where the creator selectively retains some of those ideas while discarding others, and Campbell says this stage is “sighted” rather than blind since it is guided by the creator’s judgments as to which ideas are valuable. While there is little debate that selective retention is sighted in this sense, there has been more controversy over whether the initial production of ideas is, by contrast, blind.

In his prolific body of work, Dean Keith Simonton has extended and refined Campbell’s proposal. His work nicely illustrates the interdisciplinary nature of creativity research as he, like Campbell, is a psychologist who engages with philosophers, some of whom are broadly sympathetic to the BVSR theory (Briskman, 2009; Nickles, 2003), while others are skeptical (Kronfeldner 2010, 2011, 2018). In earlier writings Simonton suggested, in a way Campbell did not, that BVSR is to be understood on the model of Darwinian evolution (Simonton 1999a, 1999b). But Simonton (forthcoming: 2–3) has come to rescind the Darwinian framing of BVSR, conceding that it is misleading. Reprising Campbell’s core idea, he says that a process of generating an idea is blind to the extent that it is not guided by “the creator’s prior knowledge of the variation’s utility” (Simonton forthcoming: 5; cf. Simonton 2011, 2012a, 2012b, 2018). He stresses that blindness is not all-or-nothing; it comes in degrees. An example of a highly sighted process is that of using the quadratic formula to find the roots of a quadratic equation: you know in advance that if you apply the formula correctly, it will yield the correct answer. Examples of relatively blind processes include remote association and mind wandering.

Despite the foregoing criticism of BVSR, recent neuroscientific studies suggest a network of brain activity that may serve the blind variation role. Brain activity doesn’t cease when one is not focusing on a task, when one is at rest, daydreaming, and so on. Following this insight, researchers have used neuroimaging methods to identify what is now called the default mode network (DMN). The precise anatomy of this network is still a matter of investigation, but it is supposed to be less active when one is focused on an external task (say a problem in the real world or in the lab) and more active when one is not so focused (Raichle et al. 2001; Buckner & DiNicola 2019). Notice then, that while this network is not creativity-specific—it is supposed to be active during memory recall, imagining future events, daydreaming, and so on—it does seem especially well-suited for creativity, and particularly for the random idea generation hypothesized by the BVSR (Jung et al. 2013). Creativity researchers in these fields often refer to this more “free” production of ideas as “divergent thinking”, and some argue on the basis of neuroimaging studies that creative thought requires cooperation between this mode of thought as well as that under “executive control”. As one team puts the point,

In general, we contend that the default network influences the generation of candidate ideas, but that the control network can constrain and direct this process to meet task-specific goals via top-down monitoring and executive control.. (Beaty, Benedek, et al. 2016; see also Mayseless, Eran, & Shamay-Tsoory 2015; Beaty, Seli, & Schacter 2019; Chrysikou 2019)

Notice how well this comports with both the Geneplore and the BVSR frameworks, perhaps identifying a way to keep some of the insights of both without commitment to a special creativity mechanism after all.

At least since Kant, theorists have identified an important link between creativity and imagination; indeed, the two are sometimes unfortunately conflated. Construed broadly, imagination can take various forms: sensory imagery, propositional imagination, supposition, free association. Berys Gaut (2003, 2009, 2010) and Stokes (2014, 2016) have both recently argued that, although imagination and creativity are distinct, imagination is especially well-suited to creative thought because of its characteristic flexibility. They both agree that imagination is decoupled from action (Gaut 2003) and “non-truthbound” (Stokes 2014) in the sense that, unlike belief, imagination is not limited by the proper function of accurately representing (some part of) the world. This freedom or playfulness of imagination is crucial to generating new ideas, since it allows one to safely “try out” hypotheses, conceptual combinations, strategies for solutions, and so on, without epistemic or behavioral commitment.

A series of studies illustrates both the need for non-truthbound capacities in creative thought, as well as the difficulty of employing them. When people—children and adults alike—are asked to imagine and draw non-existent houses, people, or animals, they depict things that are strikingly similar to their familiar counterparts in the real world: imagined people, for example, were generally drawn with some version of a head, limbs, eyes, and so forth. (Karmiloff-Smith 1990, 1992: 155–61; Cacciari et. al 1997; Ward 1994, 1995). This suggests that we are highly constrained in our creativity by the concepts we already have. Concepts of existing things are truth-bound: your concept of an animal, for example, has the proper function of accurately representing the range of things that are in fact animals. When you try to envision a new, fictional kind of animal, you begin with a mental image that exemplifies your existing concept of animal, which is why you are constrained by that concept. You then have to manipulate your initial image, varying its features in ways that abandon the aim of accuracy, using a capacity that isn’t truthbound. Generalizing this point yields the cognitive manipulation thesis , according to which creative thought requires cognitive manipulation, which involves thinking in ways that are not bound to the truth (Stokes 2014: 167). Plausibly, imagination is the mental capacity which is best suited to serve in this cognitive manipulation role. In the studies just cited, subjects must use their imagination to manipulate their existing concepts so as to form new ideas.

Recent empirical research on visual imagery seems to corroborate this claim. Various studies have identified positive correlations between creative problem solving and visual image generation, image transformation, and vividness of imagery (Finke 1990, 1996; Zemore 1995; R. Morrison & Wallace 2001; Pérez-Fabello and Campos 2007). A more recent study highlights the importance of image transformation ability—the ability to mentally manipulate a given image—and the ability to achieve high degrees of visual creativity. Further, the results of this study suggest that although vividness negatively correlates with the practicality of images created, vividness positively correlates with novel idea generation (Palmiero et al. 2015). The novelty involved is minimal, but again it appears that imagination, here in the form of imagery, well serves the role of cognitive manipulation.

Stokes observes further that we can voluntarily control imaginative states (in contrast with other non-truthbound states, like desires and wishes). And because imagination connects in important ways with inferential systems, as well as affective systems, the thoughts it produces can often be integrated with knowledge and skills to formulate an innovative strategy or solution to a problem. Finally, this role for imagination in creativity is not exclusive to the rich creativity of artists and scientists, but indeed seems to characterize the minimally creative behavior that we all enjoy. This claim is partly motivated by the empirical research just discussed. Here, as in the more radical cases, instances of novel achievement or learning by subjects requires more than rote memorization; it requires cognitive manipulation of the information in the relevant conceptual space (e.g., combining concepts about houses and persons). This kind of cognitive activity is best done by using the imagination.

Peter Carruthers has argued that imagination is important to creativity on evolutionary grounds (2002, 2006; see also Picciuto & Carruthers 2014). Like the above analyses, he focuses on the playfulness of imagination. Pretend play typically develops early in childhood in humans. And imagination in adults provides the right mechanisms for generating and exploring ideas (just as required by the Geneplore model). Carruthers argues that imagination evolves under adaptive advantage as a kind of practice for adult creativity—and may have been accordingly selected for, aligning with the putative creativity explosion of 40,000 years ago (Mithen 1996, 1998; Harris 2000). This, he argues, is the most parsimonious explanation of both the emergence and the ubiquity of creativity in the human species. See B. Gaut (2009) for a critique of Carruthers’ analysis.

While we may generate ideas consciously in imagination, we may also do so during a period of unconscious incubation, when we are focused on something else. This point is illustrated by any number of famous stories, though some are probably embellished after years of retelling. Isaac Newton witnessed an apple fall from a tree (on some accounts, falling upon Newton’s head) and thereby found the insight for his laws of gravity. August Kekulé is reported to have discovered the structure of the benzene molecule while daydreaming of a serpent circling upon and seizing its own tail. Henri Poincaré alleged that, while boarding a bus, he enjoyed a needed flash of insight that led to his discovery of non-Euclidian geometry. Richard Feynman, the Nobel prize winning physicist, claimed to find inspiration while sipping soda and doodling at adult clubs. And Einstein reported:

I was sitting in a chair in the patent office at Bern when all of a sudden a thought occurred to me. “If a person falls freely he will not feel his own weight”. I was startled. This simple thought made a deep impression on me. It impelled me toward a theory of gravitation. (Einstein, “Kyoto Lecture”, translated and quoted in Pais 1982: 179)

In each case, someone is suddenly struck with a flash of insight about one thing while engaged with something else entirely. The empirically-minded theorist rejects the notion that such ideas arise ex nihilo or through divine possession. So how are they explained in terms of natural mental phenomena?

Arthur Koestler, partly inspired by the work of Henri Poincaré (1908 [1913]), hypothesized that during creative thought processing, ideas are combined in novel ways, and this combination is performed largely unconsciously , by what Poincaré called the subliminal self (Koestler 1964: 164–5). For Poincaré there are only two ways we might think of the unconscious. One, we might think of the unconscious in Freudian terms, as a self capable of careful and fine discernment and, importantly, distinctions and combinations that the conscious self fails to make. Alternatively (and this is the option favored by both Poincaré and Koestler), we can think of the unconscious as a sub-personal automaton that mechanically runs through various combinations of ideas. Importantly, this unconscious process (or, if one likes, automaton) generates random conceptual associations and ideas. And these can then be further considered, examined, explored, and revised.

In the context of creativity in particular, there is precedent, or at least overlap, in Colin Martindale’s cortical arousal theory. This theory centers around the nature of focuses of attention (Martindale 1977, 1981, 1995, 1999; Martindale & Armstrong 1974; Martindale & Hines 1975). Martindale proposes a multi-stage model of problem solving, which if the right mechanism is possessed, leads to creative thought. In the initial stages, information is gathered, various approaches are taken to the problem, and there is a high level of cortical arousal with a narrow focus of attention. As information increases and the problem remains unsolved, two kinds of responses may occur. The first kind of response is to keep attempting the same solutions to the problem such that the arousal and attention focus stay high and narrow, respectively. Alternatively, some persons experience a decrease in cortical arousal coupled with a wider range of attention focus. Information then enters what Martindale calls primary processing: a kind of subconscious cognition not under the complete control of the agent. It is this kind of processing, and the arousal mechanisms that enable it, that distinguish creative insight or achievement from non-creative ones. The first kind of response typically results in frustration and failure (fixation), while the second often results in creative insight.

Some early studies on these phenomena centered around a familiar observation. Consider the tip-of the-tongue phenomenon, when you know that you know some bit of information (an actor’s name or the title of a song) but, try as you may, you just can’t recall it. It often helps to give up for a moment and allow the memory to surface without effort. Researchers found that the same approach—forgetting about a problem—works well to overcome fixation on ineffective ideas so as to allow the actual solution to pop up. Smith and Blankenship primed two groups of subjects with inappropriate or misleading solutions to problems. They left one group to continue struggling with the same problem, while they distracted the second group with a distinct but cognitively demanding task. The second group thereby overcame fixation and outperformed the first group when returning attention to the original target problem (Smith & Blankenship 1989, 1991; see also Smith, Ward, & Finke 1995).

These behavioral methods can be combined with contemporary understanding of neural plasticity and the effects of cognitive effort and attention. Neuroscientists have long recognized that the human brain is plastic —stable in genetic material but constantly undergoing functional change and development in neural networking in response to external stimuli, with the work of Donald Hebb in the middle of the twentieth century being one important early precedent. As Hebb put it, neural cells that “fire together, wire together”. Cell assemblies thus form as a result of the synchrony and proximity of the firing of individual cells.

[A]ny two cells or systems of cells that are repeatedly active at the same time will tend to become “associated”, so that activity in one facilitates activity in the other. (Hebb 1949 [2002: 70])

And continued attention to a problem, what some have called cerebral effort , causes changes in the networking of the brain’s cortex (Donald 2001: 175–8). Importantly, these changes can continue to take place, to “reverberate” even after one has removed attention from that problem. This motivates a simple (and somewhat unsurprising) hypothesis: attending to and performing cognitive tasks affects neural networking (Posner et al. 1997; Posner & Raichle 1994; see also Kami et al. 1995), and those changes can involve strengthening of synaptic connectivity (which correlate with conceptual connections and associations). These changes, again, can occur both when one is attending to a task and after one has diverted attention elsewhere. And, finally, the latter goes some way to explain a moment of insight after incubation (the so-called incubation effect): when one returns attention to the target problem, new or newly strengthened neural connectivity (as a result of previous cognitive effort) can give rise to a new idea. And because that neural process is not in any sense done by you, the emergence of the new idea can feel like a burst of insight (see Stokes 2007; Thagard & Stewart 2011; Ritter & Dijksterhuis 2014; and Heilman 2016).

There are also various recent studies on closely related topics: on mindwandering and spontaneous thought (Christoff et al. 2016; Irving & Thompson 2018; Murray et al. forthcoming), on so-called “divergent thinking” (Mekern et al. 2019), and more on the neural basis of insight (Jung-Beeman et al. 2004; Bowden et al. 2005; Limb & Braun 2008; Dietrich & Kanso 2010; Kounios & Beeman 2014).

It should be intuitive that creativity often involves solving problems and doing so in interesting or surprising ways. In exceptional cases, the individual identifies a problem solution that perhaps no one (including the creator) anticipated. But there are countless examples of more mundane instances of problem solving, where the solution may be surprising (or especially interesting) to only a few individuals, perhaps even only to the problem solver. One broad, standard experimental method used by researchers thus focuses on insight in problem solving. Some problems (thankfully!) can be solved by straightforward appeal to memory, or by applying some technique or method of calculation in a mechanical way. Solving the problem may still take time and effort, but the solution will come so long as one executes the appropriate strategy or applies the relevant knowledge from memory. An insight problem, by contrast, typically requires something new on the part of the individual, and one must often “change views” of the structure of the very problem. Predictably, there are a variety of definitions or characterizations of “insight” in the literature. Here are two recent, representative examples. Bowden et al. suggest that insight occurs

when a solver breaks free of unwarranted assumptions, or forms novel, task-related connections between existing concepts or skills. (Bowden et al. 2005: 322)

More recently, Kounios and Beeman write,

we define insight as any sudden comprehension, realization, or problem solution that involves a reorganization of the elements of a person’s mental representation of a stimulus, situation, or event to yield a nonobvious or nondominant interpretation. (2014: 74)

There are at least two, separable components of insight thus understood. First, an insight problem requires non-mechanical or non-algorithmic solution, and this in turn requires some kind of conceptual reorganization. A hackneyed phrase may come to mind here: one has to “think outside the box”.

The second element of insight as understood here is subjective or phenomenological. An insightful problem solution is often described as occurring suddenly and with little or no apparent effort. It is an aha moment, even if less dramatic than the traditionally romanticized Eureka moment. One way researchers have tested for this subjective feature is to ask subjects to report nearness or “warmth” relative to solving a problem. They find that for insight problems, by contrast to non-insight problems, subjects report that as they near solution they experience abrupt changes in the sense of warmth for solving the problem (Metcalfe & Wiebe 1987; see also Dominowski 1995; Laukkonen & Tangen 2018). More recently, researchers have begun to employ neuroimaging techniques to study insight and insightful problem solving (Luo & Niki 2003; Mai et al. 2004).

First, researchers have developed methods for using subjective report, where subjects rate whether they felt that they used insight in solving a designated problem (Bowden et al. 2005). And second, and coupled with those report methods, researchers have developed simple problems that can be solved with insight. One such example is the “Compound remote associates problem” (CRA). Here is an example of a CRA problem:

Each of the three words in (a) and (b) below can form a compound word or two-word phrase with the solution word. The solution word can come before or after any of the problem words. french, car, shoe boot, summer, ground [ 1 ] (Bowden et al. 2005: 324)

Because of their simplicity, these problems can be solved unambiguously and quickly, and with this speed comes better potential for neuroimaging study. In instances where subjects report insight solutions to these kinds of problems,

EEG shows a burst of high-frequency (gamma-band) EEG activity over the right temporal lobe, and fMRI shows a corresponding change in blood flow in the medial aspect of the right anterior superior temporal gyrus (Jung-Beeman et al. 2004). (Kounios & Beeman 2014: 78)

The question for neuroscientists is whether this convergence of evidence is sufficient to establish neural correlates of insight.

A moment of “insight” can be misleading, as what initially strikes you as a promising idea may ultimately turn out to be a dead end. You may have countless ideas in the course of undertaking a complex creative project, while only a few of them will make the final cut. A crucial part of your creative work therefore consists in evaluating your ideas. For any idea that occurs to you, you might have to ask: Will this work? Is it new? How does it fit in with other parts of your project? Do you have the resources and abilities to bring it to fruition? Is it worth the time and effort?

Much of the research on this phase of the creative process is concerned to identify and categorize the range of factors that people take into consider as they evaluate their ideas (Blair & Mumford 2007; Dailey & Mumford, 2006). Unsurprisingly, those factors vary from one domain to another. New culinary dishes are judged by factors like aroma, taste, texture, color, presentation (Horng & Lin 2009), whereas improved musical performances are judged according to their complexity, originality, and technical virtuosity (Eisenberg & Thompson 2003), and so on. Your understanding of the relevant factors is part of your internalized model of the domain (Bink & Marsh, 2000; Csikszentmihalyi & Sawyer 1995). And since you acquired and refined that model through years of preparation, your capacity for evaluation is largely a consequence of your efforts from that initial stage.

Somewhat more surprisingly, there is some evidence that people who are good at evaluating ideas are also good at generating them (Runco 1991; Runco & Dow 2004; Runco & Chand 1994; Runco & Vega 1990).

Other studies support what Sawyer calls Sawyer (2012: 131) calls the productivity theory, which says that the best way to get good ideas is to have lots of ideas and just throw away the bad ones. In historiometric studies, Simonton found that creators who yielded the greatest number of works over their lifetimes were mostly likely to produce works that were significant and stood the test of time. Even more striking, he discovered that, from year to year, the periods when creators were most productive were also the ones in which they were most likely to do exceptional work (Simonton 1988a, 1988b). Linus Pauling, who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1954 as well as the Nobel Peace Prize in 1962, summed up the productivity theory in a famous remark:

If you want to have good ideas you must have many ideas. Most of them will be wrong, and what you have to learn is which ones to throw away. (quoted by Crick 1995 [time 34:57])

The final operation of the creative process—externalizing ideas—may involve any number of disparate activities, which Keith Sawyer sums up as follows:

Creativity research has tended to focus on the early stages of the eight-stage creative process—particularly on the idea-generating stage. But a lot has to happen to make any idea a reality. Successful creators are skilled at executing their ideas, predicting how others might react to them and being prepared to respond, identifying the necessary resources to make them successful, forming plans for implementing the ideas, and improvising to adjust their plans as new information arrives. These activities are important in all creativity, but are likely to be even more important in practical domains such as technological invention and entrepreneurship (Mumford, 2003; Policastro & Gardner, 1999). (Sawyer 2012: 133–4)

It may be tempting to assume that the real creative work is finished once a new idea emerges in the moment of insight, and that externalization is just the uncreative, mechanical chore of making the idea public. But a closer look at the phenomenon reveals that externalization is often integral to creativity itself.

Vera John-Steiner (1985) interviewed, and examined the notebooks of, over 70 exceptional creators (ranging from author Anaïs Nin to composer Aaron Copland), and consulted the notebook of another 50 eminent historical creators such as Leo Tolstoy and Marie Curie. A recurring theme throughout was that at the beginning of each creative endeavor and continually throughout its development, creators manipulate and build upon their impressions, inklings, and tentative hunches using sketches, outlines, and other external representations.

Perkins (1981) corroborated this finding by analyzing the 61 sketches Picasso made en route to painting his famous work, Guernica , as well as Beethoven’s musical drafts and Darwin’s notebooks. In each case, the artist progressed by engaging with external representations.

Other studies found that people discovered and solved more problem when they used sketches during a task (Verstijnen 1997), and that people come up with better ideas for improving inventions when they work with visual diagrams (Mayer 1989).

One reason externalization is so vital to substantial creative work is because of our limited capacity to consciously hold and manipulate information in our minds. It helps to offload ideas and store them in the form of physical symbols and expressions in order to free up space for the mind to examine those ideas at arm’s length while entertaining new ones. Thus research shows that internal strategies like mental visualization can help with relatively simple tasks, but for more complex projects externalization is key (Finke et al. 1992: 60).

We close our survey of the cognitive science of creativity with a brief discussion of some general worries about current work, and some prescriptions for future research.

Some have worried about the validity of the psychometric measures employed in neuroimaging studies. One such concern regards the confidence that we should have that the tests employed are really tracking creative behavior. This is of course a general problem, partly symptomatic of the challenges that come with defining creativity (like other phenomena) and with the special challenges that attach to features such as insight and incubation. But there are particular challenges that come with using neuroimaging technologies such as fMRI scanning to attempt to study naturally occurring phenomena. Use of this technology is almost invariably ecologically invalid—one cannot run an fMRI in the artist’s studio. And because of the cost and sensitivity of these imaging systems, the correlative behavioral tests are often significantly abbreviated. This may impose constraints on space for occurrence of the target phenomena—novel thinking and insight—during the imaging session. As one researcher worries,

Too often single tests are used—or even single items! This is contrary of psychometric theory in general (where longer tests allow errors to cancel themselves out and are thus more reliable) and true of the research on creativity assessment in particular, where differences among items and even tests are common (Richards, 1976; Runco, Mohamad, & Paek, 2016 [sic should be Runco, Abdulla et al. 2016). Results from any one test will not generalize to other tests. Results from a single item of course have even less generalizability. (Runco 2017: 309–310; see also Abraham 2013)

Another empirical researcher criticizes what he sees as “the wild goose chase” in the neuroscience of creativity. Arne Dietrich (2019) recapitulates the above worries about validity of psychometric measures and their abbreviated and piecemeal application. He further worries about the now dominant emphasis on divergent thinking, and the default mode network (as well as the now mostly abandoned emphasis on notions such as madness, the right brain, and REM sleep). Dietrich’s concern in each case is that the research emphasis is unhelpfully myopic, and that while the imaging methods are sound and state of the art, the characterization of creativity is not. He decries the temptation to identify what may be a feature of creativity with the whole of the phenomenon. Divergent thinking, he suggests, is likely a cluster of various mental phenomena rather than a singular one, and

there is no effort underway to dissect divergent thinking and link it to the kinds of cognitive processes we use to operationalize all other psychological phenomena, such as working memory, cognitive control, semantic memory, perceptual processes, or executive attention. (2019: 37)

Notice, then, that the “wild goose” for Dietrich is to hastily conclude and then center studies around a singular, special creativity mechanism.

Dietrich also offers various prescriptions for remedy. To combat myopia, he suggests (as some have in other disciplines, e.g., Boden 2004) a plurality of types of creativity (and/or features of creativity). He cautions,

Since different types of creativity contain opposing brain mechanisms—focused versus defocused attention, for instance—any all-encompassing claim about creativity in the brain will almost certainly qualify as phrenology. (2019: 39)

He pairs this with a prescription for a more interdisciplinary approach to the topic. Others in the field have made the same prescription, advocating a “systems” approach sensitive both to the multi-faceted nature of creativity and the value of theorizing at multiple levels of explanation (Hennessy & Amabile 2010).

These directives for future research seem hard to resist. At the very least, it would seem advantageous to ensure that the full range of empirical method across the behavioral and brain sciences is communicated across the relevant sub-disciplines. This would ideally lead to better collaboration amongst such researchers. What’s interesting is that a cousin to this prescription is not well heeded by the same researchers advancing it here. However little crossover there is between, say, behavioral psychologists and neuroscientists in studies of creativity, there is comparatively even less crossover (almost none) between the psychological sciences and computational approaches to creativity. The next section thus begins by highlighting this “gap”, and identifying some of the potentially fruitful areas for interdisciplinary work on that front. It then continues with a discussion, generally, of research on creativity in the fields of computing science, artificial intelligence, and robotics.

Just as we find in psychology and neuroscience, there is a rich research literature on creativity in artificial intelligence and computer science, with devoted journals, special issues, and conferences ( The Journal of Artificial Creativity , The Journal of Creative Music Systems , Digital Creativity , Minds and Machines special issue on Computational Creativity [Gervás et al. 2010], The International Conference on Computational Creativity ). The question we focus on here is whether a computer could be creative . As background, it is worth considering how theorists approached the analogous question as to whether a computer could think .

Although theorists of various kinds have asked whether machines can think since at least the early modern period, the most important conceptual innovations on the topic came from Alan Turing, centering around his 1950 paper “Computing machinery and intelligence”. Here Turing provided a number of groundbreaking insights. Perhaps most familiar is Turing’s “imitation game”, now commonly known as “the Turing Test”. In brief, the test involved an unknowing interrogator who could ask an open-ended series of questions of both a human and a computer. If the interrogator could not distinguish computer from human, Turing postulated that this would suffice to illustrate genuine intelligence. There is no shortage of controversy regarding the aptness of the test for intelligence, and arguably no computer has yet passed it. (For more thorough discussion of Turing and the Turing test see entries on Alan Turing , Turing machines , and the Turing test ).

Successful performance in Turing’s game would require remarkable behavioral flexibility. And it is highly operational: specify a threshold for imitation, and then simply allow the interrogator to ask questions, then assess performance. If the behavior is sufficiently flexible to fool the interrogator, Turing claimed, the behavior was intelligent and, therefore, the computer intelligent.

With this background in mind, what are some of the cases in AI research lauded as success cases, and how do they align with some of Turing’s criteria?

Many of the familiar success cases are highly specialized. Deep Blue defeated chess master Garry Kasparov (Kasparov & Greengard 2017); some language processing systems managed to navigate social contexts such as ordering from a menu at a restaurant (Schank & Abelson 1977); AlphaGo more recently defeated the world champion Go player. This specialization is both a virtue and a limitation. On the one hand, achievement in such a specialized domain implies an exceptional amount of detailed memory and skill. On the other hand, this knowledge and skill does not generalize. Neither Deep Blue nor Alpha Go could successfully order from a menu, along with countless other basic human tasks. Put in terms of Turing’s imitation game, these systems would fail miserably to fool a human, or even remotely imitate one (except for their performance in a very narrow domain). What about systems such as IBM’s Watson , which famously won (against humans) on the television game show Jeopardy! This performance is more general, since topics on the show vary widely, and seemed to require both language comprehension and some minimal reasoning skills (see entry on artificial intelligence for extended discussion). Even so, Watson’s capabilities are still quite limited: it cannot make fluid conversation “in real time” and is largely insensitive to temporal and other factors that come with context.

There are many, many more examples of computational systems that display sophisticated behavior, from the highly specialized to the more general. On the language processing front, very recent AI systems such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s LaMDA significantly outperform the systems described above. To be clear, these are remarkable achievements that display substantial complexity and, it appears in some cases, significant flexibility—features Turing highlighted in characteristically human behaviors. But this also underscores a distinction, often invoked by critics of artificial intelligence research. There is a difference between a computer’s displaying or merely imitating an intelligent behavior, and a computer’s instantiating intelligence through such behavior. And the critic will say, even if a computer behaves as if it is intelligent, this is just modeling or simulating intelligence. The greater ambition, though, is “genuine artificial intelligence”, a system that actually thinks. John Searle refers to this as the distinction between “weak AI” and “strong AI”, respectively.

• Weak AI : Could a computer behave as if it thinks?
• Strong AI: Could a computer genuinely think?

The general worry here is that however sophisticated a system’s behavior may appear “from the outside”, for all we know it may just be a “hollow shell” (Haugeland 1981 [1997]; Clark 2001). The worry has then been fleshed out in various ways by specifying what is missing from the shell, as it were. Here are three standard such candidates. And, again, in each case however sophisticated the computer’s behavior may appear it still may be lacking in any or all of the following. First, the computer may lack consciousness . Second, the computer may lack any understanding of the symbols over which it computes (Searle 1980). Finally, the computer may operate without caring about its own behavior or, as John Haugeland colorfully puts it, without “giving a damn”. In each case, any kind of response from the ambitious AI researcher encounters the substantial challenges that come with theorizing mental phenomena such as consciousness, understanding, linguistic competence, and emotion. (Turing 1950, for instance, recognized but largely eschewed these kinds of topics).

It’s one thing to ask whether computers could think, and another to ask whether they could be creative. And just as the prospect of artificial intelligence or thinking divides into two questions—of weak AI and strong AI—we may distinguish two analogous questions about artificial creativity, which we’ll refer to as the questions of “weak AC” and “strong AC”, respectively. To begin with the former:

• Weak AC : Could a computer behave as if it’s creative?

Something behaves as if it’s creative if it produces things which are psychologically new (new to that thing) and valuable . Arguably, a number of computers have already done that.

In the 1970s, Harold Cohen began using computational technologies to produce new drawings and paintings. The work of his computer painter, Aaron, has exhibited at galleries such as the Tate and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. David Cope’s “EMI” (Experiments in Musical Intelligence) has composed musical works in the style of various known composers and styles, even a full-length opera. Some of these works have been recorded and produced by bona fide record labels. Just search “Emily Howell” on Spotify or Apple Music and give it a listen (Cope 1996, 2006). Simon Colton’s The Painting Fool is an ongoing project, involving a software that abstracts phrases, images, and other items from newspaper articles and creates collage-style pieces. It has also produced portraits, based on images of film characters, of the same individual in different emotional states (see Painting Fool in Other Internet Resources ; see Colton 2012 for theoretical discussion). Even more recently, there have been explosive developments in generative art systems like DALL•E, Midjourney, Stable Diffusion, VQGAN+CLIP. (For discussion see Paul & Stokes 2021). In all of these cases, the relevant outputs of the computer program are new relative to its past productions—so they are psychologically (or behaviorally) novel, which again is all the novelty that creativity requires. And although historical novelty isn’t required for creativity, it’s worth noting that these products appear to be to be new in all of history as well.

What about value? As noted above in §2.1 , some theorists reject the value condition, but even if value is required for creativity, that too is a condition these computer artworks seem to meet. Assessments of value can be controversial, but that is no less true for the outputs of human creativity. The fact that these works are critically acclaimed, showcased in prestigious galleries, and commissioned by selective record labels testifies to their artistic merit, and viewers find them pleasing, interesting, and appealing, even before being apprised of their unusual origin. So it is reasonable to conclude computer programs like the ones just described exhibit at least weak AC insofar as they produce works of valuable novelty, and one could cite many more examples in the same vein.

Some theorists have noted that, whether or not the original Turing test is a good test for intelligence or thinking, we might adopt an analogous test for creativity: If a computer can fool human observers into thinking that it is a human creator, then it is in fact creative (Pease & Colton 2011; see also Chen 2020 for useful discussion of artificial creativity, including many additional examples of particular cases, and so-called Dartmouth-based Turing tests). If we employ this test, we might find ourselves with an unexpected conclusion: computers can be creative; in fact, some of them already are. But one might reasonably worry that the test is inadequate and the conclusion is too quick (Berrar & Schuster 2014; Bringsjord et al. 2001). From the fact that a computer operates as if it’s creative, one might argue, it doesn’t follow that it really is. Which brings us to our next question:

• Strong AC : Could a computer genuinely be creative?

This obviously returns us to the question of what conditions something must meet in order to count as being genuinely creative. And here we need go beyond the outwardly observable product-features of novelty and value to consider the underlying processes of genuine creativity. As we saw in §2.2 , theorists have variously proposed that in order for a process to count as creative, it must be surprising, original, spontaneous, and/or agential. There is no consensus to appeal to here, but if any one of these conditions is indeed required for genuine creativity, then a computer could be genuinely creative only to the extent that it executes processes which satisfy that condition.

The classic statement of skepticism regarding the possibility of computer creativity is due to Lady Ada Lovelace who had this to say while remarking on “the Analytical Engine” designed by her friend Charles Babbage:

It is desirable to guard against the possibility of exaggerated ideas that might arise as to the powers of the Analytical Engine. The Analytical Engine has no pretensions whatever to originate anything. (Lovelace 1843, italics added)

Though Lovelace does not frame her comments in terms of “creativity” as such, she explicitly denied that a computer could satisfy at least one condition that is plausibly required for creativity, namely originality . A computer cannot be the originator, the author, or the creator of anything new, she contends; it can only do what it is programmed to do. We cannot get anything out of a computer that has not already been programmed into it. Further, Lovelace may also be interpreted as expressing or implying doubt about whether a computer could satisfy the three other proposed requirements for genuine creativity. Insofar as a computer’s outputs cannot be original, one might also suspect that they cannot be surprising . The image of a machine strictly following rules invokes precisely the kind of mechanical procedure that is the antithesis of spontaneity . And it may seem that such a machine could not be a genuine agent either. The problem isn’t just that a computer can’t produce anything original; it’s that it deserves no credit for whatever it does produce. Any praise or blame for the outputs of a computer rightly go to the engineers and programmers who made the machine, not to the machine itself. While these points may be intuitive, at least some of them are being challenged by modern technologies, which have come a long way since Babbage’s invention.

Consider AlphaGo again. This is a “deep learning” system, which involves two neural networks: a Policy network and a Value network. Very briefly: The system is trained using a vast number of legitimate moves made in actual games of Go played by professional human players (28.4 million moves from 160,000 games, to be precise; see Silver et al. 2016 and Halina 2021). The network is further trained, again using learning algorithms, by playing many games (some 100 million) against previous versions of itself (in the sense of a differently weighted neural network). The weights of nodes in the network are then adjusted by a learning algorithm that favors moves made in winning games. The value network is trained over a subset of these many games, with node weighting adjustments resulting in reliable probability assignments to moves vis-à-vis their potential to contribute to a win. Finally, the system employs a Monte Carlo search tree (MCT). Generally, this kind of algorithm is designed to simulate a decision process to optimize success given chosen parameters. In this case, the search algorithm selects a given path of moves, then adds some valid moves to this path, and then if this process does not terminate (end in win/loss), the system performs a “rollout”. A rollout essentially plays the game out for both players (using samples of possible moves) to its conclusion. The information that results from the MCT and processing by the value network are then fed back (back propagated) into the system. This entire process (once the system is trained) is rapid and determines how AlphaGo “decides” to move in any given game.

Here are some things to note. AlphaGo’s style of play is surprising . As commentators have noted, it is starkly unconventional relative to standards of human play (Halina cites Baker and Hui 2017 [ Other Internet Resources ]). Indeed, Lee Sodol, the world champion Go player defeated by AlphaGo in 2016, remarked that AlphaGo’s play revealed that much of human play is, contrary to prior common opinion, not creative after all—intimating that at least some of the play of AlphaGo is . Note further that this system is flexible. While there are learning algorithms and rules that adjust network weights, the system is not mechanical or predictable in the same fashion as earlier, classical systems (including Deep Blue , for example). In a recent paper, Marta Halina has made this argument (Halina 2021). She explicitly invokes Boden’s characterization, which requires novelty, value, and surprise of creativity. Again, the novelty and value should be plausibly attributed in this case. Regarding surprise, Halina suggests that it is AlphaGo’s employment of MCT that enables a kind of “insight”, flexibility, and unpredictable results. She writes,

It is the exploration parameter that allows AlphaGo to go beyond its training, encouraging it to simulate moves outside of those recommended by the policy network. As the search tree is constructed, the system starts choosing moves with the highest “action value” to simulate, where the action value indicates how good a move is based on the outcome of rollouts and value-network evaluations. (Halina 2021: 324)

Halina grants that given its domain-specificity, as we have already noted, this system’s particular abilities do not generalize in a way that may be required to properly attribute genuine intelligence. But she suggests that the complex use of the MCT search may amount to “mental scenario building” or, we might say, a kind of imagination. And insofar as this search algorithm technology can be applied to other systems in other domains, and imagination is a general component of intelligence, perhaps here lies space for generalizability. AlphaGo also affords at least some reply to the traditional Lovelace worry.

Artificial systems do not act only according to preprogrammed rules hand-coded by engineers. Moreover, current deep-learning methods are capable of producing systems that are superhuman in their abilities to discover novel and valuable solutions to problems within specific domains. (Halina 2021: 327)

If this is right, then AlphaGo exhibits originality . Finally, the flexibility with which this system operates may also satisfy Kronfeldner’s spontaneity requirement.

Some of these same features are found in a related approach in AI, namely research in evolutionary robotics. These systems also involve various forms of machine learning but in this case the learning is distributed, as it were, across a population of individuals rather than one individual. This approach can be understood, albeit imperfectly, as analogous to natural evolution. One begins, typically in computer simulation, with a population of agents. These agents are typically identified with individual neural networks, the connections and weightings of which are random to start. Relative to some task—for instance, avoiding obstacles, collecting objects, performing photo or phonotaxis—a genetic algorithm assigns a fitness value to each individual agent after a certain period of time or number of trials. Fitter agents are typically favored and used to generate the next population of agents. Also included in this generation are random mutation and genetic crossover (digital breeding!). Although it can take hundreds of generations, this is a discovery approach to engineering or constructing a system that successfully performs a task; it is “gradient descent learning” (Clark 1996). In this bottom-up approach, no single individual, nor even an entire population, are in any strict sense programmed. Rather, successful agents have “learned” as a result of generations of randomness, crossover, and small fitness improvements (and lots and lots of failures). Early success cases evolved robots that can follow trails (Koza 1992), locomote in insect-fashion (Beer & Gallagher 1992), guide themselves visually (Cliff, Husbands, & Harvey 1993), and collect garbage (Nolfi & Floreana 2000). See Bird and Stokes (2006, 2007) and Stokes and Bird (2008) for analysis and study of creativity in the context of evolutionary robotics.

These systems most certainly produce novelty. Later, fit individuals achieve novelty at their aimed task relative to whole generations and populations of previous agents. And this novelty is often surprising to the engineers and programmers that build them, indeed sometimes even unpredictably independent of any relevant task for individuals in the population. There are many examples in the literature. Indeed Lehman and others (2020) catalog a large range of cases where digital evolution surprises its creators, categorizing them in four representative groups: “mis-specified fitness functions”, “unintended debugging”, “exceeded experimenter expectations”, and “convergence with biology”. Here is one now relatively famous example of the first type of case. In early research in artificial life (A-Life), Karl Sims (1994) designed virtual creatures that were supposed to learn to walk (as well as swim and jump) in a simulated environment. The fitness function assessed individual agents on their average ground velocity across 10 seconds. Some of the fittest individuals to evolve were surprising: they grew tall and rigid and when they would fall over they would achieve high ground velocity, thus maximizing fitness given the (mis)specified parameters in unpredicted ways.

This is but one example of how systems like these can evolve in unpredictable or surprising ways. This unpredictability has occurred not just in simulated robotics, but in embodied robotics as well. In using a genetic algorithm to attempt to evolve oscillating sensors, researchers unintentionally evolved a radio antenna (Bird & Layzell 2002). This unexpected result arose from a combination of the particular algorithm used (which was intended) and various physical features of the space such as proximity to a PC monitor (which the researchers had presumably deemed irrelevant but which the evolved system, in a sense, did not). And one might be further inclined to describe some of these achievements as creative (and not just in the trivial sense that they are original instances of robotic success), since they also produce value, at least insofar as they are useful at performing a task, whether it is locomoting or locating a source of light or sensing radio waves.

Some theorists in this domain might argue that these systems achieve spontaneity as well. Given the substantial inclusion of randomness in the system’s development—both at the outset when the individual’s neural networks are randomized and more importantly with random mutation across populations—it is intuitive to describe the system’s as not following a mechanical procedure. Indeed, the way in which systems exploit fitness functions and data patterns further underscores this point. (Again, see the rich catalog of cases offered by Lehman et al. 2020).

On the face of it, then, recent technologies in AI, evolutionary robotics, and artificial life, seem to fulfill many of the conditions proposed for genuine creativity. These systems produce things that are novel and valuable, and do so through computational processes that are plausibly surprising, original, and spontaneous. The one requirement we have yet to address, however, is agency . Recall the suggestion, implicit in Lovelace’s remarks, that whatever a computer produces is to the credit of the programmer, not the computer. Notice that as sophisticated as current technologies in artificial creativity may be, presumably they are still not subject to praise or blame for what they do. If any beings are responsible for the work of these programs, it still seems to be the programmers and engineers who make them, not the programs themselves. The programs themselves do not seem to “give a damn”. So, if the creative process requires agency, arguably we have not yet created, programmed, or evolved a computational system that is really creative, however much they might appear to be. In the pursuit of strong AC, agency might be the final frontier (Paul & Stokes 2021).

It should be clear from the above discussions that there are rich and lively research programs, across a range of scientific disciplines, studying human creativity. These approaches substantiate the view that, contrary to the romantic tradition, creativity can be explained. Psychological functions and neural correlates have been identified, and remarkable advances are being made with computational and robotics technologies. What may be less clear is that, despite these advances, the distinct research programs in question are largely disjoint or siloed.

In a recent paper, Geraint Wiggins and Joydeep Bhattacharya (2014) highlight this “gap” between scientific studies of creativity. Their particular emphasis is on the gaps between research in neuroscience and research in computer science, and they advocate a bridge in the form of a neurocomputational approach. This kind of bridging may be called for even beyond what these authors prescribe, since there are gaps not just between these disciplines, but also between these and behavioral psychology, AI and A-Life research, and philosophical analysis. Creativity is a deeply complex and deeply important phenomenon. Fully understanding it will require us to integrate a variety of theoretical perspectives, and, as this survey reveals, philosophy has a vital role to play in that endeavor.

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• Verstijnen, Ilse Marieke, 1997, “Sketches of Creative Discovery: A Psycological Inquiry into the Role of Imagery and Sketching in Creative Discovery”, Doctoral thesis, Technische Universiteit, Delft, The Netherlands. [ Verstijnen 1997 available online ]
• Wallas, Graham, 1926, The Art of Thought , London: J. Cape.
• Ward, Thomas B., 1994, “Structured Imagination: The Role of Category Structure in Exemplar Generation”, Cognitive Psychology , 27(1): 1–40. doi:10.1006/cogp.1994.1010
• –––, 1995, “What’s Old about New Ideas?” in Smith, Ward, and Finke 1995: 157–178.
• Watson, James D., 1968 [1999], The Double Helix: A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA , New York: Atheneum. First Touchstone edition, London: Penguin, 1999.
• Weisberg, Robert W., 1986, Creativity: Genius and Other Myths , New York: W.H. Freeman.
• –––, 2006, Creativity: Understanding Innovation in Problem Solving, Science, Invention, and the Arts , Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.
• Wiggins, Geraint A. and Joydeep Bhattacharya, 2014, “Mind the Gap: An Attempt to Bridge Computational and Neuroscientific Approaches to Study Creativity”, Frontiers in Human Neuroscience , 8(July). doi:10.3389/fnhum.2014.00540
• Williams, Rich, Mark A. Runco, and Eric Berlow, 2016, “Mapping the Themes, Impact, and Cohesion of Creativity Research over the Last 25 Years”, Creativity Research Journal , 28(4): 385–394. doi:10.1080/10400419.2016.1230358
• Young, Edward, 1759 [1966], Conjectures on Original Composition: In a Letter to the Author of Sir Charles Grandison , London: A. Millar. Reprinted Leeds: Scolar Press, 1966.
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How to cite this entry . Preview the PDF version of this entry at the Friends of the SEP Society . Look up topics and thinkers related to this entry at the Internet Philosophy Ontology Project (InPhO). Enhanced bibliography for this entry at PhilPapers , with links to its database.

• Baker, Lucas and Fan Hui, 2017, “ Innovations of AlphaGo ”, on the DeepMind blog, 10 April 2017. Accessed 9 July 2021.
• Whitney Museum, 2002, The Migration Series: His Painting Method .

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Knowledge Is Power Essay for Students and Children

500+ words essay on knowledge is power.

Knowledge Is Power Essay- Knowledge is something that will serve you your whole life. The most powerful thing in the world is knowledge because it can create and destroy life on earth . Moreover, knowledge helps us distinguish between humans and animals . Knowledge is the ability to use your knowledge to help others.

Importance of Knowledge

There are very few people out there who truly understand the importance of knowledge. Every educated person is not knowledgeable, but every knowledgeable person is educated. This statement may sound weird but it’s true. In today’s world, almost everyone is educated still they do not have knowledge of the subject that they have studied.

Besides, Knowledge is something that helps you drive a car, ride a bike, solve a puzzle, etc. Knowledge is something that prevents us from making the same mistake twice. It is not something that you can buy from you have to earn it.

Benefits of Knowledge

The knowledge is something that increases the more you share it. It protects your intellectual capital that is your knowledge. Likewise, humans have used their knowledge to create things that we can’t imagine a few centuries back. It helps us to convert our ideas into reality and also it helps us to reach the success that we desire in our life.

Moreover, knowledge assists us to differentiate between what is right and what is wrong. It helps us to overcome our faults, weaknesses, and dangerous situation in life. Also, a person with knowledge is more mentally and morally sound than people with money and less knowledge.

Besides, Knowledge is a very important tool to get positive changes in society or country. Knowledge gives us a vision of our future and what we can do in it. All the countries in the world that use technologically developed tools and machinery and many other things is the result of the knowledge. Weapons and bomb do not make a country powerful but knowledge does.

The growth and development of a nation do not depend on the arms and weaponry the country has. But with the amount of knowledgeable person it has and it is possible only because of the power of knowledge.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

Prospective of Knowledge

Knowledge is something that is so powerful that it can destroy the whole earth and on the other hand is a tool that can restore balance on the earth. The knowledgeable person is the richest person on earth because no one can steal his/her knowledge. But anyone can easily steal your money and power from you any time.

Moreover, it never decreases on use and only increases with time. Accordingly, a knowledgeable person is more important than a rich person because a rich person can give money to the nation but a knowledgeable person can give knowledge to the nation and this knowledge can also increase the wealth of the nation .

In conclusion, we can say that true knowledge help person to bloom. Also, it keeps people away from fights and corruption. Besides, knowledge brings happiness and prosperity to the nation. Above all, knowledge opens the door of success for everyone.

FAQs about Knowledge Is Power

Q.1 Why knowledge is power? A.1 It is the power because it can solve any issue, also it can influence anyone to do any work. Besides this, knowledge s power because it can create and destroy anything that is present on the earth.

Q.2 Why little knowledge is dangerous? A.2 It is dangerous because persons with less knowledge do not know things completely but still gives his/her opinion on everything. Moreover, little knowledge is a ticking bomb which an explosion causes damages to people around it.

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Your chance of acceptance, your chancing factors, extracurriculars, how important is creativity in college application essays.

I've heard a lot about what colleges want to see in essays, but I'm kind of stressing over how much creativity I need to show. Is it more important to have a super unique topic, or should I just focus on making my real-life experiences sound interesting? How much do admissions officers actually value creativity versus clarity and authenticity?

It's natural to feel some stress about your college essays, as they are a significant part of your application. However, it's important to strike a balance between creativity and authenticity. Admission officers indeed appreciate creativity because it can make an essay memorable, but clarity and authenticity are the foundation of a strong essay. It's less about having a 'super unique topic' and more about presenting whatever topic you choose in a way that is true to you and reflects your voice.

Think about it this way: creativity should serve to enhance your story, not overshadow the content. Instead of stressing about originality, concentrate on providing insights into who you are, your values, and how you engage with the world. An essay about a common experience that's told with genuine reflection and a personal perspective can be just as impactful as one about a one-of-a-kind adventure. Remember, the ultimate goal is to give the admissions committee a better understanding of you as an individual.

For example, instead of writing about a routine school project in a straightforward manner, you could describe the unexpected lessons you learned from the experience and how it changed your approach to teamwork and problem-solving. This approach shows creativity while highlighting your personal growth, which is highly valuable to admissions officers.

About CollegeVine’s Expert FAQ

CollegeVine’s Q&A seeks to offer informed perspectives on commonly asked admissions questions. Every answer is refined and validated by our team of admissions experts to ensure it resonates with trusted knowledge in the field.

The science behind creativity

Psychologists and neuroscientists are exploring where creativity comes from and how to increase your own

Vol. 53 No. 3 Print version: page 40

• Neuropsychology
• Creativity and Innovation

Paul Seli, PhD, is falling asleep. As he nods off, a sleep-tracking glove called Dormio, developed by scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, detects his nascent sleep state and jars him awake. Pulled back from the brink, he jots down the artistic ideas that came to him during those semilucid moments.

Seli is an assistant professor of psychology and neuroscience at the Duke Institute for Brain Sciences and also an artist. He uses Dormio to tap into the world of hypnagogia, the transitional state that exists at the boundary between wakefulness and sleep. In a mini-experiment, he created a series of paintings inspired by ideas plucked from his hypnagogic state and another series from ideas that came to him during waking hours. Then he asked friends to rate how creative the paintings were, without telling them which were which. They judged the hypnagogic paintings as significantly more creative. “In dream states, we seem to be able to link things together that we normally wouldn’t connect,” Seli said. “It’s like there’s an artist in my brain that I get to know through hypnagogia.”

The experiment is one of many novel—and, yes, creative—ways that psychologists are studying the science of creativity. At an individual level, creativity can lead to personal fulfillment and positive academic and professional outcomes, and even be therapeutic. People take pleasure in creative thoughts, research suggests—even if they don’t think of themselves as especially creative. Beyond those individual benefits, creativity is an endeavor with implications for society, said Jonathan Schooler, PhD, a professor of psychological and brain sciences at the University of California, Santa Barbara. “Creativity is at the core of innovation. We rely on innovation for advancing humanity, as well as for pleasure and entertainment,” he said. “Creativity underlies so much of what humans value.”

In 1950, J. P. Guilford, PhD, then president of APA, laid out his vision for the psychological study of creativity ( American Psychologist , Vol. 5, No. 9, 1950). For half a century, researchers added to the scientific understanding of creativity incrementally, said John Kounios, PhD, an experimental psychologist who studies creativity and insight at Drexel University in Philadelphia. Much of that research focused on the personality traits linked to creativity and the cognitive aspects of the creative process.

But in the 21st century, the field has blossomed thanks to new advances in neuroimaging. “It’s become a tsunami of people studying creativity,” Kounios said. Psychologists and neuroscientists are uncovering new details about what it means to be creative and how to nurture that skill. “Creativity is of incredible real-world value,” Kounios said. “The ultimate goal is to figure out how to enhance it in a systematic way.”

Streaming Audio

Creativity in the brain.

What, exactly, is creativity? The standard definition used by researchers characterizes creative ideas as those that are original and effective, as described by psychologist Mark A. Runco, PhD, director of creativity research and programming at Southern Oregon University ( Creativity Research Journal , Vol. 24, No. 1, 2012). But effectiveness, also called utility, is a slippery concept. Is a poem useful? What makes a sculpture effective? “Most researchers use some form of this definition, but most of us are also dissatisfied with it,” Kounios said.

Runco is working on an updated definition and has considered at least a dozen suggestions from colleagues for new components to consider. One frequently suggested feature is authenticity. “Creativity involves an honest expression,” he said.

Meanwhile, scientists are also struggling with the best way to measure the concept. As a marker of creativity, researchers often measure divergent thinking—the ability to generate a lot of possible solutions to a problem or question. The standard test of divergent thinking came from Guilford himself. Known as the alternate-uses test, the task asks participants to come up with novel uses for a common object such as a brick. But measures of divergent thinking haven’t been found to correlate well with real-world creativity. Does coming up with new uses for a brick imply a person will be good at abstract art or composing music or devising new methods for studying the brain? “It strikes me as using way too broad a brush,” Seli said. “I don’t think we measure creativity in the standard way that people think about creativity. As researchers, we need to be very clear about what we mean.”

One way to do that may be to move away from defining creativity based on a person’s creative output and focus instead on what’s going on in the brain, said Adam Green, PhD, a cognitive neuroscientist at Georgetown University and founder of the Society for the Neuroscience of Creativity . “The standard definition, that creativity is novel and useful, is a description of a product,” he noted. “By looking inward, we can see the process in action and start to identify the characteristics of creative thought. Neuroimaging is helping to shift the focus from creative product to creative process.”

That process seems to involve the coupling of disparate brain regions. Specifically, creativity often involves coordination between the cognitive control network, which is involved in executive functions such as planning and problem-solving, and the default mode network, which is most active during mind-wandering or daydreaming (Beaty, R. E., et al., Cerebral Cortex , Vol. 31, No. 10, 2021). The cooperation of those networks may be a unique feature of creativity, Green said. “These two systems are usually antagonistic. They rarely work together, but creativity seems to be one instance where they do.”

Green has also found evidence that an area called the frontopolar cortex, in the brain’s frontal lobes, is associated with creative thinking. And stimulating the area seems to boost creative abilities. He and his colleagues used transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) to stimulate the frontopolar cortex of participants as they tried to come up with novel analogies. Stimulating the area led participants to make analogies that were more semantically distant from one another—in other words, more creative ( Cerebral Cortex , Vol. 27, No. 4, 2017).

Green’s work suggests that targeting specific areas in the brain, either with neuromodulation or cognitive interventions, could enhance creativity. Yet no one is suggesting that a single brain region, or even a single neural network, is responsible for creative thought. “Creativity is not one system but many different mechanisms that, under ideal circumstances, work together in a seamless way,” Kounios said.

In search of the eureka moment

Creativity looks different from person to person. And even within one brain, there are different routes to a creative spark, Kounios explained. One involves what cognitive scientists call “System 1” (also called “Type 1”) processes: quick, unconscious thoughts—aha moments—that burst into consciousness. A second route involves “System 2” processes: thinking that is slow, deliberate, and conscious. “Creativity can use one or the other or a combination of the two,” he said. “You might use Type 1 thinking to generate ideas and Type 2 to critique and refine them.”

Which pathway a person uses might depend, in part, on their expertise. Kounios and his colleagues used electroencephalography (EEG) to examine what was happening in jazz musicians’ brains as they improvised on the piano. Then skilled jazz instructors rated those improvisations for creativity, and the researchers compared each musician’s most creative compositions. They found that for highly experienced musicians, the mechanisms used to generate creative ideas were largely automatic and unconscious, and they came from the left posterior part of the brain. Less-experienced pianists drew on more analytical, deliberative brain processes in the right frontal region to devise creative melodies, as Kounios and colleagues described in a special issue of NeuroImage on the neuroscience of creativity (Vol. 213, 2020). “It seems there are at least two pathways to get from where you are to a creative idea,” he said.

Coming up with an idea is only one part of the creative process. A painter needs to translate their vision to canvas. An inventor has to tinker with their concept to make a prototype that actually works. Still, the aha moment is an undeniably important component of the creative process. And science is beginning to illuminate those “lightbulb moments.”

Kounios examined the relationship between creative insight and the brain’s reward system by asking participants to solve anagrams in the lab. In people who were highly sensitive to rewards, a creative insight led to a burst of brain activity in the orbitofrontal cortex, the area of the brain that responds to basic pleasures like delicious food or addictive drugs ( NeuroImage , Vol. 214, 2020). That neural reward may explain, from an evolutionary standpoint, why humans seem driven to create, he said. “We seem wired to take pleasure in creative thoughts. There are neural rewards for thinking in a creative fashion, and that may be adaptive for our species.”

The rush you get from an aha moment might also signal that you’re onto something good, Schooler said. He and his colleagues studied these flashes of insight among creative writers and physicists. They surveyed the participants daily for two weeks, asking them to note their creative ideas and when they occurred. Participants reported that about a fifth of the most important ideas of the day happened when they were mind-wandering and not working on a task at hand ( Psychological Science , Vol. 30, No. 3, 2019). “These solutions were more likely to be associated with an aha moment and often overcoming an impasse of some sort,” Schooler said.

Six months later, the participants revisited those ideas and rated them for creative importance. This time, they rated their previous ideas as creative, but less important than they’d initially thought. That suggests that the spark of a eureka moment may not be a reliable clue that an idea has legs. “It seems like the aha experience may be a visceral marker of an important idea. But the aha experience can also inflate the meaningfulness of an idea that doesn’t have merit,” Schooler said. “We have to be careful of false ahas.”

Boosting your creativity

Much of the research in this realm has focused on creativity as a trait. Indeed, some people are naturally more creative than others. Creative individuals are more likely than others to possess the personality trait of openness. “Across different age groups, the best predictor of creativity is openness to new experiences,” said Anna Abraham, PhD, the E. Paul Torrance Professor and director of the Torrance Center for Creativity and Talent Development at the University of Georgia. “Creative people have the kind of curiosity that draws them toward learning new things and experiencing the world in new ways,” she said.

We can’t all be Thomas Edison or Maya Angelou. But creativity is also a state, and anyone can push themselves to be more creative. “Creativity is human capacity, and there’s always room for growth,” Runco said. A tolerant environment is often a necessary ingredient, he added. “Tolerant societies allow individuals to express themselves and explore new things. And as a parent or a teacher, you can model that creativity is valued and be open-minded when your child gives an answer you didn’t expect.”

One way to let your own creativity flow may be by tapping into your untethered mind. Seli is attempting to do so through his studies on hypnagogia. After pilot testing the idea on himself, he’s now working on a study that uses the sleep-tracking glove to explore creativity in a group of Duke undergrads. “In dream states, there seems to be connectivity between disparate ideas. You tend to link things together you normally wouldn’t, and this should lead to novel outcomes,” he said. “Neurally speaking, the idea is to increase connectivity between different areas of the brain.”

You don’t have to be asleep to forge those creative connections. Mind-wandering can also let the ideas flow. “Letting yourself daydream with a purpose, on a regular basis, might allow brain networks that don’t usually cooperate to literally form stronger connections,” Green said.

However, not all types of daydreams will get you there. Schooler found that people who engage in more personally meaningful daydreams (such as fantasizing about a future vacation or career change) report greater artistic achievement and more daily inspiration. People who are prone to fantastical daydreaming (such as inventing alternate realities or imaginary worlds) produced higher-quality creative writing in the lab and reported more daily creative behavior. But daydreams devoted to planning or problem-solving were not associated with creative behaviors ( Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts , Vol. 15, No. 4, 2021).

It’s not just what you think about when you daydream, but where you are when you do it. Some research suggests spending time in nature can enhance creativity. That may be because of the natural world’s ability to restore attention, or perhaps it’s due to the tendency to let your mind wander when you’re in the great outdoors (Williams, K. J. H., et al., Journal of Environmental Psychology , Vol. 59, 2018). “A lot of creative figures go on walks in big, expansive environments. In a large space, your perceptual attention expands and your scope of thought also expands,” Kounios said. “That’s why working in a cubicle is bad for creativity. But working near a window can help.”

Wherever you choose to do it, fostering creativity requires time and effort. “People want the booster shot for creativity. But creativity isn’t something that comes magically. It’s a skill, and as with any new skill, the more you practice, the better you get,” Abraham said. In a not-yet-published study, she found three factors predicted peak originality in teenagers: openness to experience, intelligence, and, importantly, time spent engaged in creative hobbies. That is, taking the time to work on creative pursuits makes a difference. And the same is true for adults, she said. “Carve out time for yourself, figure out the conditions that are conducive to your creativity, and recognize that you need to keep pushing yourself. You won’t get to where you want to go if you don’t try.”

Those efforts can benefit your own sense of creative fulfillment and perhaps lead to rewards on an even grander scale. “I think everyday creativity is the most important kind,” Runco said. “If we can support the creativity of each and every individual, we’ll change the world.”

How to become more creative

1. Put in the work: People often think of creativity as a bolt of inspiration, like a lightbulb clicking on. But being creative in a particular domain—whether in the arts, in your work, or in your day-to-day life—is a skill. Carve out time to learn and practice.

2. Let your mind wander: Experts recommend “daydreaming with purpose.” Make opportunities to let your daydreams flow, while gently nudging them toward the creative challenge at hand. Some research suggests meditation may help people develop the habit of purposeful daydreaming.

3. Practice remote associations: Brainstorm ideas, jotting down whatever thoughts or notions come to you, no matter how wild. You can always edit later.

4. Go outside: Spending time in nature and wide-open spaces can expand your attention, enhance beneficial mind-wandering, and boost creativity.

5. Revisit your creative ideas: Aha moments can give you a high—but that rush might make you overestimate the merit of a creative idea. Don’t be afraid to revisit ideas to critique and tweak them later.

Further reading

Creativity: An introduction Kaufman, J. C., and Sternberg, R. J. (Eds.), Cambridge University Press, 2021

The eureka factor: Aha moments, creative insight, and the brain Kounios, J., & Beeman, M., Random House, 2015

Creativity anxiety: Evidence for anxiety that is specific to creative thinking, from STEM to the arts Daker, R. J., et al., Journal of Experimental Psychology: General , 2020

Predictors of creativity in young people: Using frequentist and Bayesian approaches in estimating the importance of individual and contextual factors Asquith, S. L., et al., Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts , 2020

Recommended Reading

Contact apa, you may also like.

Understanding Creativity

• Posted June 25, 2020
• By Emily Boudreau

Understanding the learning that happens with creative work can often be elusive in any K–12 subject. A new study from Harvard Graduate School of Education Associate Professor Karen Brennan , and researchers Paulina Haduong and Emily Veno, compiles case studies, interviews, and assessment artifacts from 80 computer science teachers across the K–12 space. These data shed new light on how teachers tackle this challenge in an emerging subject area.

“A common refrain we were hearing from teachers was, ‘We’re really excited about doing creative work in the classroom but we’re uncertain about how to assess what kids are learning, and that makes it hard for us to do what we want to do,’” Brennan says. “We wanted to learn from teachers who are supporting and assessing creativity in the classroom, and amplify their work, and celebrate it and show what’s possible as a way of helping other teachers.”

Create a culture that values meaningful assessment for learning — not just grades

As many schools and districts decided to suspend letter grades during the pandemic, teachers need to help students find intrinsic motivation. “It’s a great moment to ask, ‘What would assessment look like without a focus on grades and competition?’” says Veno.

Indeed, the practice of fostering a classroom culture that celebrates student voice, creativity, and exploration isn’t limited to computer science. The practice of being a creative agent in the world extends through all subject areas.

The research team suggests the following principles from computer science classrooms may help shape assessment culture across grade levels and subject areas.

Solicit different kinds of feedback

Give students the time and space to receive and incorporate feedback. “One thing that’s been highlighted in assessment work is that it is not about the teacher talking to a student in a vacuum,” says Haduong, noting that hearing from peers and outside audience members can help students find meaning and direction as they move forward with their projects.

• Feedback rubrics help students receive targeted feedback from audience members. Additionally, looking at the rubrics can help the teacher gather data on student work.

Emphasize the process for teachers and students

Finding the appropriate rubric or creating effective project scaffolding is a journey. Indeed, according to Haduong, “we found that many educators had a deep commitment to iteration in their own work.” Successful assessment practices conveyed that spirit to students.

• Keeping design journals can help students see their work as it progresses and provides documentation for teachers on the student’s process.
• Consider the message sent by the form and aesthetics of rubrics. One educator decided to use a handwritten assessment to convey that teachers, too, are working on refining their practice.

Scaffold independence

Students need to be able to take ownership of their learning as virtual learning lessens teacher oversight. Students need to look at their own work critically and know when they’ve done their best. Teachers need to guide students in this process and provide scaffolded opportunities for reflection.

• Have students design their own assessment rubric. Students then develop their own continuum to help independently set expectations for themselves and their work.

Key Takeaways

• Assessment shouldn’t be limited to the grade a student receives at the end of the semester or a final exam. Rather, it should be part of the classroom culture and it should be continuous, with an emphasis on using assessment not for accountability or extrinsic motivation, but to support student learning.
• Teachers can help learners see that learning and teaching are iterative processes by being more transparent about their own efforts to reflect and iterate on their practices.
• Teachers should scaffold opportunities for students to evaluate their own work and develop independence.

Additional Resources

• Creative Computing curriculum and projects
• Karen Brennan on helping kids get “unstuck”
• Usable Knowledge on how assessment can help continue the learning process

Usable Knowledge

Connecting education research to practice — with timely insights for educators, families, and communities

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Why creativity is more important than ever.

One of our most valuable tools for innovation and problem solving is creativity. But from the time we’re children, we’re taught that creativity is only for some people or that it’s something you lose as you grow older — it’s considered fanciful rather than intrinsic to good design and even good business. Creativity is essential to open our minds and discover new solutions to complex problems. Back in 2018 we asked creative leaders inside and outside of IDEO for their perspective on why creativity matters — in their work and the world, and what they had to say feels even more relevant today.

“Creativity has this amazing power to give you renewed enthusiasm and energy—even in the most difficult circumstances.” Warren Berger

Creativity is at the core of being human

  Jane Fulton Suri

  IDEO Partner Emeritus and Executive Design Director  

I’ve always believed that creativity is at the core of being human. I don’t think there’s ever been a time when it hasn’t been important, but it may be more acceptable now. Because one of the problems with creative people is they upset the status quo. Creativity is about making change. By its nature, even when it’s directed to improving things, creativity tends to be disruptive or subversive, unless it’s accepted in a space as the norm. Maybe society is moving toward creativity being recognized as a more significant advantage of being human. There seems to be a lot more excitement around it. We’ve had some serious times in history where creativity has been frowned upon. Certain groups of people have been allowed to be creative, but it’s been stomped out quite a lot through human history. We’re reclaiming our heritage. It’s an exciting time.

Creativity is a competitive tool

  Warren Berger

  Author of A More Beautiful Question  

From a competitive standpoint and a business success or career success standpoint, it's one of the most important tools you can have. It's the way you can distinguish yourself and the way you can innovate. Now, more than ever, creativity is the competitive tool that’s going to make a difference. Whether you're an entrepreneur, a large company, or a solo creative person, it's what makes you stand out.

In today's world, we're all under a lot of pressure. We're all dealing with a lot of demands, and the thing that energizes us and keeps us going strong is creativity. Creativity has this amazing power to give you renewed enthusiasm and energy—even in the most difficult circumstances. It works on two different levels. One is purely the fact that it’s a competitive tool that can help you succeed; the other is that it's going to energize you. It's going to make you feel better. It's going to make you feel like you want to push forward even when times are tough.

Creativity links the head and heart

  Jenn Maer

 IDEO Design Director  

Creativity makes the world a better, more beautiful, more friendly place. When you think creatively, you’re opening your heart and mind and you're relating to people as humans. Creativity is an incredibly human thing. When we get too stuck in our heads we wind up acting in ways that can be harmful. You need to balance that head and heart, and creativity is the link between the two.

“With creativity, we stop relying on what’s always been and open our eyes to what might be.” Matt Adams

Emerging technology and creativity are interconnected

  Matt Weiss

  IDEO CoLab Managing Director

A wave of emerging technologies that could change society is heading our way. We've been selective about our portfolio technologies, choosing technologies that will change the way markets work. They’re going to change the way the industries we're looking at—and those beyond—are going to function.

Applying creative muscle to new technologies while they’re still being shaped is an amazing opportunity. I believe it will help those technologies understand human needs faster. It will help orient this massive wave of technology that's coming. There's a challenge for the creative world to be technically centered—to be paying attention to emerging technology.

Venture design requires a creative approach

  Katherine Londergan

  IDEO Portfolio Director and Business Designer

Our most exciting work, in my opinion, is when we're creating the new “new.” You can't hold onto a core business and strangle it. You can only optimize what’s known and hold onto what’s expected for so long; to truly depart from what's known and comfortable takes creativity. When you’re trying to spin up entirely new value propositions, entirely new businesses, you need a more generative approach. You need different inputs and methods to inspire that process. You need to start from what could be, or else you're just doing incremental innovation on existing products and with existing customers—which isn't venture design.

Democratized learning opened the door to creation

    Tyler Florence

    Chef and Food Network Television Host

It's a phenomenal time to be able to express yourself. It's a world open to every person who didn't get a pilot picked up, or wouldn't necessarily know how to contact the Food Network, or wouldn't know how to put together a cookbook deal, or was turned down because they didn't have that “it” factor, or they're not pretty enough, whatever it is. Now, all content plays.

If you are creative, or if you're slightly creative, or if you see something really wonderful and beautiful, just shoot it. Just shoot it and put it up. The more you shoot it, the more you play around with editing software, the more you can create great stuff—the more fulfilling it will be.

Technology has become so readily available and easy to get your hands on, and it’s so easy to sculpt and shoot great stuff and post and produce it. It's opening up the floodgates to a world that you've never seen before. It's super exciting.

Everything there is to learn in the world is available on YouTube. You can look up how to change a spark plug in a 1957 Cutlass Ciera—there's a video for that. This is the new world of online institutional education, democratizing people’s skills and sharing them with people who want to learn something as fast as possible.

To answer your question about creativity, I think it's a whole, brand new, open world of sharing. 

“When you think creatively, you’re opening your heart and mind and you're relating to people as humans.” Jenn Maer

Our relevancy depends on creative capability

    Neil Stevenson

    IDEO Executive Portfolio Director

There’s a huge gap around creativity. Everybody’s talking about it and saying they want it, and yet it seems to be poorly understood. When people try to define it, they really struggle; it actually turns out to be a whole bundle of different processes under one banner. It’s one of those things where there’s a gap between the desire for creativity and the understanding of it, which is an interesting opportunity.

Within society and organizations there’s this rising tide of people saying, “I need to be creative, because the robots and AIs are coming and all the boring jobs will be done by computers.” It’s like the flood is coming and the high ground is going to be creative work, because it’s harder to automate. Creativity is a way we can add value and do well as people, while staying relevant and not being replaced by computers.

Innovative solutions rise from creative thought

    Claudia Kotchka

    Innovation and Strategy Advisor and IDEO Fellow

I believe David Kelley’s premise that everyone is creative—that they start that way, and school beats it out of them. By the time you get into the corporate environment, you’ve lost a lot of belief in your own creativity. But you can’t solve the world’s problems if you’re not willing to be creative and look at things differently.

One of the key limitations of creativity is asking the wrong question. There’s this quote from a designer, “Don’t ask me to build a bridge; show me the canyon,” that reflects this limitation. Maybe a bridge isn’t the answer. If you want to get from side A to side B and you ask me to build a bridge, you’ve already given me the answer. When in fact, the best answer may not be to build a bridge, it might be to take a boat or a zip line from A to B.

When you start a creative project, you start by broadening the questions to leave more solutions open. So one of the first steps in creative problem solving is, don’t put the solution in the question. The next one is to be open to different ideas and ways of doing things. Test things you know you’re never going to do.

When Frank Gehry designs buildings, he'll show a prototype to the client and get comments. But when he returns he’ll show something completely different, something that wasn’t even close to the first prototype. He does this because he is testing boundaries.  

Today’s challenges require a creative approach

    Matt Adams

    IDEO Portfolio Director

The world needs creativity because problems aren’t getting simpler. With creativity, we stop relying on what’s always been and open our eyes to what might be. As problems get more complex, there are fewer examples of how to solve them. Instead of looking at what is or what has been, we need to start looking to what can be.

I mean, it’s crazy to think about the L.A. County Clerk and Registrar Recorder. These guys do elections, marriage certificates, new businesses, and they’re doing deeply human human-centered work for voting systems. If they can do it, what’s everybody else’s excuse?

Learn how to exercise your creative muscle with activities and lessons focused on overcoming common barriers in our on-demand online class Unlocking Creativity .

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