Define:

Creativity comes from the Latin term creō "to create, make". The ways in which societies
have perceived the concept of creativity have changed throughout history, as has the term
itself. Originally in the Christian period: "creatio" came to designate God's act of Ex
nihilo, "creation from nothing." "Creatio" thus had a different meaning than "facere" ("to
make") and did not apply to human functions .Creativity refers to the phenomenon
whereby something new is created which has some kind of value. What counts as "new"
may be in reference to the individual creator, or to the society or domain within which the
novelty occurs. Creativity can be defined as the main tool to develop innovation.
Although for many people, the word most immediately conjours associations with artistic
endeavours and writing, it has also been linked to science as far back as the muses of
Ancient Greece. Today, creativity forms the core activity of a growing section of the
global economy—the creative industries—generating wealth through the creation and
exploitation of intellectual property or the provision of creative services.

Words that are similar to creative or creativity:

• Innovative
• New
• Novel
• Original
• Forward-thinking
• Pushing the envelope

Creativity can also be looked at by where it arises. There are four key ways that
something creative can happen:

1. Generating something wholly new

2. Combining ideas in a new way
3. Finding new uses for existing ideas
4. Taking existing ideas to new people.

Creative thought:

Creative thought is a mental process involving creative problem solving and the
discovery of new ideas or concepts, or new associations of the existing ideas or concepts,
fueled by the process of either conscious or unconscious insight.

From a scientific point of view, the products of creative thought (sometimes referred to as
divergent thought) are usually considered to have both originality and appropriateness.
Creativity has been attributed variously to divine intervention, cognitive processes, the
social environment, personality traits, and chance ("accident", "serendipity"). It has been
associated with genius, mental illness, humor and REM sleep.[7] Some say it is a trait we
are born with; others say it can be taught with the application of simple techniques.
Creativity has also been viewed as a beneficence of a muse or muses.Creativity has been
associated with right or forehead brain activity or even specifically with lateral thinking.
Distinguishing between creativity and innovation:
It is often useful to explicitly distinguish between creativity and innovation.Creativity is
typically used to refer to the act of producing new ideas, approaches or actions, while
innovation is the process of both generating and applying such creative ideas in some
specific context.In the context of an organization, therefore, the term innovation is often
used to refer to the entire process by which an organization generates creative new ideas
and converts them into novel, useful and viable commercial products, services, and
business practices, while the term creativity is reserved to apply specifically to the
generation of novel ideas by individuals or groups, as a necessary step within the
innovation process.

Creativity and affect

creativity and positive affect relations

According to Isen, positive affect has three primary effects on cognitive activity:

1. Positive affect makes additional cognitive material available for processing,

increasing the number of cognitive elements available for association;
2. Positive affect leads to defocused attention and a more complex cognitive context,
increasing the breadth of those elements that are treated as relevant to the
problem;
3. Positive affect increases cognitive flexibility, increasing the probability that
diverse cognitive elements will in fact become associated. Together, these
processes lead positive affect to have a positive influence on creativity.

Creativity and negative affect relations

On the other hand, some theorists have suggested that negative affect leads to greater
creativity. A cornerstone of this perspective is empirical evidence of a relationship
between affective illness and creativity. In a study of 1,005 prominent 20th century
individuals from over 45 different professions, the University of Kentucky's Arnold
Ludwig found a slight but significant correlation between depression and level of creative
achievement. In addition, several systematic studies of highly creative individuals and
their relatives have uncovered a higher incidence of affective disorders (primarily bipolar
disorder and depression) than that found in the general population.

Creativity and affect at work

Three patterns may exist between affect and creativity at work: positive (or negative)
mood, or change in mood, predictably precedes creativity; creativity predictably precedes
mood; and whether affect and creativity occur simultaneously.It was found that not only
might affect precede creativity, but creative outcomes might provoke affect as well. At its
simplest level, the experience of creativity is itself a work event, and like other events in
the organizational context, it could evoke emotion. Qualitative research and anecdotal
accounts of creative achievement in the arts and sciences suggest that creative insight is
often followed by feelings of elation. For example, Albert Einstein called his 1907
general theory of relativity "the happiest thought of my life." Empirical evidence on this
matter is still very tentative.

Aspects of creativity:

There are four aspects of creativity that are studied:

1. The creative thing or product; that which is creative. The definition above is about
the creative product.
2. The creative person; the person who creates the product.
3. The creative process; the steps that the creative person followed to create the
product.
4. The creative environment; the group of people with whom the creative person was
involved during the creative process, and perhaps prior to it. In some cases, the
environment can also refer to different aspects of the physical environment, such
as the colors, the type of architecture and furniture and countryside Vs urban.

Creativity in various contexts:

Creativity has been studied from a variety of perspectives and is important in numerous contexts.
Most of these approaches are undisciplinary, and it is therefore difficult to form a coherent
overall view.[5] The following sections examine some of the areas in which creativity is
seen as being important.

Creativity Profiles

Creativity comes in different forms. A number of different theorists have suggested

models of the creative person. One model suggests that there are kinds to produce
growth, innovation, speed, etc. These are referred to as the four "Creativity Profiles" that
can help achieve such goals.[59]

(i) Incubate (Long-term Development)

(ii) Imagine (Breakthrough Ideas)
(iii) Improve (Incremental Adjustments)
(iv) Invest (Short-term Goals)
An important aspect of the creativity profiling approach is to account for the tension
between predicting the creative profile of an individual, as characterised by the
psychometric approach, and the evidence that team creativity is founded on diversity and
difference.
Creativity in art and literature

Most people associate creativity with the fields of art and literature. In these fields,
originality is considered to be a sufficient condition for creativity, unlike other fields
where both originality and appropriateness are necessary.Within the different modes of
artistic expression, one can postulate a continuum extending from "interpretation" to
"innovation". Established artistic movements and genres pull practitioners to the
"interpretation" end of the scale, whereas original thinkers strive towards the
"innovation" pole. Note that we conventionally expect some "creative" people (dancers,
actors, orchestral members, etc.) to perform (interpret) while allowing others (writers,
painters, composers, etc.) more freedom to express the new and the different. In the art
practice and theory of Davor Dzalto, human creativity is taken as a basic feature of both
the personal existence of human being and art production. For this thinker, creativity is a
basic cultural and anthropological category, since it enables human manifestation in the
world as a "real presence" in contrast to the progressive "virtualization" of the world.

Creativity in industries and services

oday, creativity forms the core activity of a growing section of the global economy—the
so-called "creative industries"—capitalistically generating (generally non-tangible)
wealth through the creation and exploitation of intellectual property or through the
provision of creative services. The Creative Industries Mapping Document 2001 provides
an overview of the creative industries in the UK. The creative professional workforce is
becoming a more integral part of industrialized nations' economies.Creative professions
include writing, art, design, theater, television, radio, motion pictures, related crafts, as
well as marketing, strategy, some aspects of scientific research and development, product
development, some types of teaching and curriculum design, and more. Since many
creative professionals (actors and writers, for example) are also employed in secondary
professions, estimates of creative professionals are often inaccurate. By some estimates,
approximately 10 million US workers are creative professionals; depending upon the
depth and breadth of the definition, this estimate may be double.

Creativity in other professions

Creativity is also seen as being increasingly important in a variety of other professions.

Architecture and industrial design are the fields most often associated with creativity, and
more generally the fields of design and design research. These fields explicitly value
creativity, and journals such as Design Studies have published many studies on creativity
and creative problem solving.Fields such as science and engineering have, by contrast,
experienced a less explicit (but arguably no less important) relation to creativity.
Simonton[12] shows how some of the major scientific advances of the 20th century can be
attributed to the creativity of individuals. This ability will also be seen as increasingly
important for engineers in years to come.Accounting has also been associated with
creativity with the popular euphemism creative accounting. Although this term often
implies unethical practices, Amabile[63] has suggested that even this profession can
benefit from the (ethical) application of creative thinking.In a recent global survey of
approximately 1600 CEO's, the leadership trait that was considered to be most crucial for
success was creativity.This suggests that the world of business is beginning to accept that
creativity is essential for all employees in all industries, rather than being simply the
preserve of the creative industries.

Types Of Creativity:
Two questions underlie engagement in the creative process: 1) why do people engage in
creative activity? 2) What is the initial state of the trigger? The first question involves the
drivers for idea generation. These drivers could be internal or self-determined, or
external or market-determined (e.g., job, R&D, customer need). The second question
involves the degree of problem finding needed at the starting point of the creative
process. Some problems could be totally open, unformulated, and unresolved whose
solution needs to be invented or discovered, or the problems could be closed whose
solutions or method to solutions are known.

Response Creativity: externally driven and closely specified problem creativity. The
individual has least control over problem-solving choices. Individual autonomy is
limited. The more external the drive, the more external are constraints. In general,
higher the constraints the lesser is creativity. Creativity is focused on a closed problem
and external constraint. Focus group creativity in organizational setting is responsive
creativity. Routine occupational creativity whereby researchers, engineers, architects,
scientists and other professions solve day-to-day customer or client problems using given
methods and procedures is also responsive creativity.

Expected Creativity: externally driven but open self-discovered problem creativity. The
individual has some control over problem-solving choices. Individual autonomy is less
limited. Creating artwork such as paintings, sculptures, poems, melodies, harmony,
aesthetics, collages and the like belong to this realm of expected creativity. The artist is
externally (e.g. demand, money, project) driven but has many avenues to seek solution.

Contributory Creativity: internally (self-determined) driven activity along clearly

formulated problems. Is contributory, since most responses involve helping behaviors.
Examples: an employee volunteering to solve another employee’s problem; corporations
volunteering to solve community problems; cause-related marketing; all volunteering.
This is the zone of incremental innovation.

Proactive Creativity: internally (self-determined) driven activity along new, open and
freshly discovered problems. It is proactive in the sense problems are foreseen rather
than reacted to. This is the most productive zone of creativity. Market and technological
breakthroughs occur here, as do radical innovations. Taking personal initiatives are
instances of proactive creativity. “Taking charge” is more innovative activity geared
toward implementation. If the problem is only discovered, but not studied, then much
problem (market and environment) scanning needs to be done in proactive creativity.