Can Creativity be Learned?
Scott Maybee
Training & Continuing Education | Professional Development | Project Management | Marketing & Entrepreneurship
At this year's Winterlude Festival, an annual event in Canada's capital region, a sculpture of Oscar Peterson, Canadian Jazz Pianist, stands on display.
It's getting a lot of press, and rightly so. Kudos to the artist.
To the onlooker, the feat may seem impossible. The intricate details are flawless. The precise crafting, done with unimaginable care, speaks to the endless bounds of human creativity.
Let's call it a wonder. A mystery.
Yet human creativity isn't all magic. After all, magic is in the eye of the beholder, not the magician.
Certainly at its highest levels, innate talent plays a role. But creativity most often requires a deep understanding of a domain. This is known as 'the box' and one needs to know it before one can think outside of it.
So, is creativity a universal skill that can be learned? Not really.
Creativity isn't exactly like math and reading. These are universal skills that can be applied within different subjects.
Creativity on the other hand is much more sticky. It tends to apply to specific subjects, and that's why creatives can't easily switch between disciplines and find the same success.
Micheal Jordan found this out the hard way when he moved from playing basketball, a sport he had mastered, to baseball, a sport he had not. We might also expect that Steven Spielberg, known as a visionary film director, wouldn't easily become an innovative jazz pianist using the same skills he acquired as a filmmaker.
What can be taught and learned is specific knowledge related to specific fields. The more knowledge we acquire, the more we can use it to test and experiment, the more creative we become in that subject.
Want to get better at music improvisation? Learn some music theory and practice scales first. Want to become an innovative investor? Brush up on economics and practice financial modelling. Want to create unique ice sculptures? You get the idea.
It's never too late to learn to be creative, and the earlier you start, the better. As Warren Buffet says, when it comes to learning 'You should do that as early as you possibly can, because then it will have time to compound over the longest period.'
Sound advice, Mr. Buffet.
On that (jazzy) note, you'll have to excuse me. I'm off to visit my local library to find the latest edition of 'The Beginners Guide to Ice Sculpting'.
Wish me luck.
Professor of Marketing at St. Lawrence College
2 周Agreed! I believe creativity is defined as ability to solve problems. To imagine a future that doesn't yet exist. We are born excellent problem-solvers, just watch a young child figuring out the world around them! And then, we need effective creativity tools. Models, frameworks, ideation processes, design thinking approach, tools to develop empathy, prompts to get our imagination going. Some people appear more creative than others because they have these in their back pocket, likely because they have learned or been shown these tools. The rest of us can benefit from developing our creativity in those ways, and others. Finally, a person needs encouragement in their creativity. That's what we do in our classrooms, isn't that right? We start with the assumption that our students are already good priblem-solvers. We encourage them to solve new unfamiliar problems. Along the way, we show them tools, approaches and frameworks for more effective problem solving. Applied education = creativity development!