THE EVOLUTION OF THE CREATIVITY CONCEPT - conclusions

In our last post about the systemic perspective of creativity, we concluded that the creative thinking of an individual is no longer sufficient to create novelty. The recognition of a piece of work and its inclusion in the knowledge domain is also needed. Concluding this thought, a creative person is therefore a person whose thinking and actions change a domain.

In the following closing part of our series, I will share the final conclusions about the evolution of the concept of creativity, highlighting the systemic perspective.

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THE EVOLUTION OF THE CREATIVITY CONCEPT

Part 5: Conclusions for the Concept of Creativity 

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.33-35.

From the systemic point of view, there are some consequences for the concept of creativity: 

1. It is no longer just the personality that determines whether a person will be creative or not. What matters is the recognition of a work as a creative achievement and inclusion in the domain. Because creativity arises from the interaction of domain, field, individual, and other factors not previously identified, an individual's creative thinking can contribute to the creation of a recognised novelty, but personal creativity alone is not sufficient. 

2. The systemic model explains the frequent variations in the evaluation of creative performance that occur over time. Think of certain painters such as Raphael, Van Gogh or Warhol, who were sometimes considered marginal artists, sometimes as important painters. They were first described as very creative people when a sufficiently large number of experts came to believe that their work represented an important contribution to the art domain. And similar things can be observed in music, literature, design or culinary. 

The systemic approach clearly indicates that creativity and social recognition are inextricably linked. 

3. The systemic model also takes account of the fact that creativity can only be expressed in existing, generally accepted domains. And in some areas it is clearly easier to judge creative achievements than in others. For example, it is easy to agree on whether a new game, a new piece of furniture, new music or a new film is innovative, but it is almost impossible to agree on whether an act of compassion or a new insight into human existence is something new. Caring or indulgence may be of immense importance to human survival, but neither quality has structured domains with rules and a field of experts. And so Csikszentmihalyi points out that "in domains that are relatively banal but easy to measure, more conspicuous new developments emerge than in others that are of essential importance but more difficult to determine" (2003: 49). 

4. Another implication of the systemic and socio-cultural creativity approach is that the degree of creativity at a particular location and time in history is not just dependent on the extent of individual thinking. According to Csikszentmihalyi, it also depends on how well the respective specialist domains and expert fields are adapted to accept new ideas, to recognise them as valuable and to disseminate them. 

Each domain consists of its own symbolic elements, its own rules and its own naming system, that the experts have to master in order to judge new creations in a certain knowledge domain. Thus, it is the experts who choose which novelties are worth being included in the existing canon. And those who want to create novelty and originality and want to be recognised as creatives in their domain must transcend the level of knowledge of the evaluating experts or offer the observers new experiences that they are unlikely to be expecting. The judgment of the experts does not have an external, objective standard by which to evaluate new solutions and proposals. The judgment of experts replies on past experience and learnings, cultural biases, current trends, personal values and preferences.

Bibliographical references of this text are:

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].

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In our next post about creativity, we will share the story (written by Juan Rodrigo) about the invention of penicillin, an example of the systemic perspective of creativity. 

The story begins in 1921, with Fleming studying the life of bacteria, and ends 21 years later, with the start of mass production of antibiotics. In between, 2 wars, and 3 people to invent penicillin.