THE CREATIVITY CONCEPT

Last week we started a new Mindshake project: sharing with our social network community a series of articles about creativity, creative processes and creative thinking, some from our books, others based on new thoughts and ideas. The first 5 posts are dedicated to the Concept of Creativity.

In our first post, I introduced the point at which creativity was recognised as a thinking ability that everybody has, and which can be improved. Today, we will dedicate ourselves to the change of paradigm: from the psychological to the systemic approach of creativity.

THE EVOLUTION OF THE CREATIVITY CONCEPT

Part 2: the systemic approach 

After centuries of humanistic contemplation, from the end of the 1980s, the phenomenon of creativity has increasingly been researched at a natural scientific level, such as in physics or biology. The system theory approach has permeated practically all scientific disciplines in its various forms and models. According to Briggs and Peat (2001), several researchers have even announced that the systemic approach will dominate the future. Due to the high dynamic complexity of creativity, the incorporation of system-theoretical knowledge of creativity research allows us to take a new look at the organisation of the cognitive system under the influence of other factors. 

Among the creativity researchers who are increasingly examining creativity with a systemic approach, are Teresa M. Amabile (1983, 1996), Gottlieb Guntern (1991, 1994, 1995), Howard Gardner (1998) and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (1988, 2003, 2004). 

One of the first researchers to explore aspects of social interaction in the creative process was Teresa M. Amabile. In the 1980s, she developed a model, in which three components carry the main responsibility for a creative achievement: 1. subject- related knowledge, 2. the creative thinking process and 3. the intrinsic motivation to solve a task (Amabile, 1983). Among the creativity-relevant processes, Amabile counts the cognitive abilities of an individual and her/his working style in creating something new. In stimulating creativity, Amabile and Collins (2004) consider it particularly important not only to take into account each of these three creativity components, but to pay particular attention to their intersection. The creativity component model of Amabile and Collins suggests that creative performance is highest when all three components overlap, which means, when a person's specialised abilities meet their creative thinking skills and their strongest intrinsic interests. 

Another creativity researcher, Gottfried Guntern (1991), sees the creative individual as an integral part of a transactional field. Through the constant reciprocal exchange of matter, energy and information between humans and the physical and biosocial environment, this field of transactions will be further developed, preserved and dissolved again. According to Guntern, the mystery of creative thinking can only be approximated, if one tries to grasp the complex web of relationships between man and the environment, a task that has been the subject of devoted attention by a group of psychologists, creativity researchers and systems researchers since the late 1980s. In their interactionist approach, Isaaksen, Puccio and Treffinger (1993), describe creative accomplishments as the result of interactions among several important components or dimensions of creativity. In addition to the personality factors of an individual, they include among these components the social climate and the culture in which the creative person moves, the elements of the task it seeks to master, process inherent elements and the qualities of the result. In doing so, they not only add the environment and the task field to explain the production of creative achievements, but also the dimensions of the process and the product. But these creativity researchers have not yet discovered in which constellations these elements are most likely to produce great creative achievements. 

Gardner (1998) and Csikszentmihalyi (2003) are a little further advanced in their systems theory research study. Both developed an interactive perspective on the phenomenon of creativity, in which it is also assumed that a creative achievement is always reached through an interaction between individual thinking and a socio-cultural context. In addition to the working environment, the latter also includes the subject domain, which recognises creative achievement as such. "Because of this inseparable connection, creativity must ultimately be regarded as a phenomenon that does not express itself within the individual, but in the interactions of a system” (Csikszentmihalyi 2003: 59). 

The latest creativity theory and research highlights the importance of the socio-cultural perspective and multidimensionality of creativity, arguing that “we create not as isolated minds, but as embodied beings who participate in a socio-material world” (Glaveanu et al., 2019: 2). In this approach, creativity and culture are intertwined, the creative person or group use the symbolic language and tools made available by a cultural domain, where language, as a cultural artefact, plays a particularly important role. The systemic and socio-cultural perspective of creativity also shows that creative processes not only lead to a material and immaterial progress of a society, but also change peoples’ relationship to the world, to others and to themselves, contributing to more open and flexible minds. As a conclusion of this latest creativity perspective we can affirm that a creative action is always relational, situated and contextual. And contagious!!! It was this latest creativity approach that led us to the title The Creativity Virus, and to the publication of the book from which this text is taken. 

Source: Tschimmel, K. (2019). The evolution of the Creativity Concept: from a psychological to a systemic approach. In The Creativity Virus. Porto: Ed. Mindshake. pp. 29-30. 

Bibliographical references of this text are:

Amabile, T. M. (1983). The Social Psychology of Creativity. New York: Springer. Amabile, T. M. (1996). Creativity in Context: update to the social psychology of creativity. Westview: Boulder. Arieti, S. (1993). La Creatividad. La Síntese Mágica. México: Fondo de Cultura Económica [orig. Creativity. The Magic Synthesis, 1976]. Briggs, J., Peat, F. D. (2001). Die Entdeckung des Chaos. Eine Reise durch die Chaos-Theorie. 7a Ed. Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag [orig. Turbulent Mirrow. An Illustrated Guide to Chaos Theory and the Science of Wholeness, 1989]. Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1988). “Society, culture, person: A systems view of creativity”. In Sternberg, R. J. (Ed.), The nature of creativity. New York: Cambridge University Press. pp. 325-339. Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2003). Kreativit?t. Wie Sie das Unm?gliche schaffen und Ihre Grenzen überwinden. 6th Ed. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta [orig. Creativity. Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention, 1996]. Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2004). “Implications of a Systems Perspective for the Study of Creativity”. In Sternberg, R. J. (Ed.). Handbook of Creativity. Cambridge University Press. pp. 313-335. [1st Ed. 1999]. Gardner, H. (1998). Mentes Creativas, una Anatomía de la Creatividad. Barcelona, Buenos Aires, México: Ed. Paidós. Glaveanu, V. P., et al. (2019). “Advancing Creativity Theory and Research: A Socio- cultural Manifesto”. In Beghetto, r. (Ed.). The Journal of Creative Behaviour, Vol. 0. (pp.1-5). Creative Education Foundation. Guntern, G. (Ed.) (1991). Der kreative Weg. Kreativit?t in Wirtschaft, Kunst und Wissenschaft. Zürich: Verlag Moderne Industrie. Guntern, G. (1994). Im Zeichen des Schmetterlings. 8th Ed. Bern, München, Wien: Scherz Verlag. Guntern, G. (Ed.) (1995). Chaos und Kreativit?t. Rigorous Chaos. Col. “Kreativit?t in Wirtschaft, Kunst und Wissenschaft”. Internationales Zermatter Symposium. Zurich: International Foundation for Creativity and Leadership and Ed. Scalo Verlag. O’Connor, J., McDermott, I. (1998). Introducción al Pensamiento Sistémico, Recursos esenciales para la creatividad y la resolución de problemas. Barcelona: Ediciones Urano [orig. The Art of Systems Thinking].