THE CONCEPT OF CREATIVITY

The World Economic Forum published the top 10 job skills of tomorrow, justifying 

the need to reskill and upskill people in the next five years. Of course, creativity is part of this list, and looking closely, we can affirm that creative thinking is inherent in all of these 10 skills. Whether to update technological knowledge, or to develop skills of problem-solving, leadership or self-management, people need to think creatively.

This is the reason that at Mindshake, we decided to share our thoughts and articles about creativity, creative processes and creative thinking with our social network community (as it is not possible to write an article from our Mindshake profile, I do it from my personal one).

Today I start with an introduction to the Concept of Creativity.

The following text is taken from the the book The Creativity Virus (2019), coordinated by Katja Tschimmel, and composed of articles and images created by 60 authors, designers and artists from different creative domains.

THE EVOLUTION OF THE CREATIVITY CONCEPT

Part 1: the psychological approach 

Although the phenomenon of creativity is as old as humanity itself, it has only been scientifically researched since the mid 20th century. Before this, creativity was seen as an expression of divine grace or as the innate capacity of a genius. An eternal secret. 

Real, science-based creativity research began in the 1950s in the USA, triggered by technological and political events. In the middle of the Cold War, on October 4, 1957, it was the Russians and not the Americans who sent Sputnik, the first artificial Earth satellite, into orbit. After the initial shock wore off, the Americans, whose supremacy was being threatened, embarked on a huge technological upgrade programme that eventually led to the moon landing in 1969. For purely pragmatic reasons, they also invested a lot of money in creativity research because they wanted to have a psychological creativity test that would permit the recognition and promotion of creative individuals. Thus, the question of the nature of creativity in the field of intelligence research arose, and those who had participated in the development of intelligence tests, from now on sought detailed knowledge of the personality traits of creative people. 

Crucial to the research was a lecture “Creativity”, which Joy Paul Guilford delivered in 1950 before the American Psychological Association. His research, and that of others who followed him, contributed to the ultimate dissolution of the mythical concept of creativity. Guilford developed a creativity theory in which he described skills and attitudes that play an important role in creative thinking. 

Creativity was, from that historical moment on, recognised as a thinking ability everybody has, and that can, to a certain degree, be improved. 

In the early 1960s, Rhodes suggested exploring the creative phenomenon in four dimensions: 

1. the creative person,

2. the creative process,

3. the resulting product, and 

4. the environment in which someone works creatively. 

This division into the 4 P’s (Person, Process, Product, Press) was then completed in the late 1960s by Morris Stein and is still widely recognised and applied in creativity research today. 

Leading the way for creativity research, especially in the 1970s, was Applied Imagination, a book written by Alex F. Osborn in 1953, who described creative thinking as problem- solving thinking, and who introduced techniques and principles that can be used to improve the creative problem-solving process. From there on, various researchers developed methods and techniques known today as “creativity techniques”, such as the omnipresent Brainstorming and its variants. 

At this point, we can say, that since the 1950s, creativity has been seen as a competence that all human beings possess, and that can be applied to solving problems in all subject areas. 

In the last century, the perception of the creativity concept gradually moved from the paradigm of the “supernaturally gifted genius” to the paradigm of the “creative person”, who has the innate potential to think creatively, and who can improve creative thoughts by applying certain techniques and methods. Creativity is now a democratic variant of genius. 

In our next post, on Monday next week, I will introduce the systemic approach to creativity. See you then?