CREATIVITY
CREATIVE = cre-at-ive: cre – from criteria, evaluation, qualifying value; at – from –ate, create; ive – “that which causes”. Meaning, that which causes creation of (ability to) value in/for the recipient.
Ref - Discussions with Prof Margaret Boden – 1997, STRIDE; Creativity –Book by Mikhail…
What is ‘Creativity’? How do you understand it? How do you know something is the result of a creative activity? These are questions to which mostly the answers are – anything that I create is creative, anything that is new and has never been created before is creative, I am being creative when I am creating something that is new, etc…. ‘Art’ is understood to be closely linked with creativity.
The first exposure I had to structured research on ‘creativity’ was when we had the opportunity of a discussion with Prof.Margaret Boden, who was visiting Stride, and we requested her to spend some time with LTB (what KSB used to be called at that time J) management. She was doing research on creativity in an American university, and was happy to share her findings with us.
Through the more than an hour long discussion we had, we realized that for anything to be called creative, it had to be a) new, b) surprising, and c) valuable (for the recipient, of course). The third attribute – valuable – was the most significant takeaway for me, because I realized it was the providing of learning/knowledge valuability that our business depended upon, and why we had issues with ‘creative’ people who weren’t able to understand or appreciate that we needed to be creative so that a problem/opportunity in our customers’ domain would be addressed ‘valuably’. This is what they would get more than they gave, and this (creativity) is also what we would give more than we got from them.
To be creative, therefore, we need to ensure what we produce is new, surprising and valuable for the recipient. This also makes it clear that we do not always have to keep producing different things for different people. Even the same thing we have created before becomes ‘new’ for someone who hasn’t got it before. We need to ensure the value is real and satisfying. Even after ‘opening’ up, if the recipient realizes there is no value they will get, it becomes all the more difficult to make them ‘open’ the next time, or for the next input.
You might wonder - why is it important to have ‘new’ and
‘surprising’ as attributes? The reason
is that for the value to be gathered, understood, and assimilated, it is
necessary first for the recipient to be open
to receiving the value being attempted to transfer. The ‘new’-ness is what makes the recipient
open to the possibility of something they did not know/have.
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From Webster:
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Main Entry: 1cre·ate |
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Main Entry: 1cre·a·tive 
Pronunciation: krE-'A-tiv, 'krE-"
Function: adjective
1 : marked by the ability or power to create
: given to creating <the creative impulse>
2 : having the quality of something created
rather than imitated : IMAGINATIVE <the creative
arts>
3 : managed so as to get around legal or conventional limits <creative
financing>; also : deceptively arranged so as to conceal or
defraud <creative accounting>
- cre·a·tive·ly adverb
- cre·a·tive·ness noun
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Main Entry: cre·a·tiv·i·ty |
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Creativity is the result of decisions taken. To know whether a creation is sufficiently creative or not, review the newness, the surprising-ness, and whether the creation is valuable or not. Review the things that were decided about, and what principles were used in making the decisions. The ‘things’ that are decided about are the aspects of quality important for the recipient of the creation, where they need value.
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April 20, 2004: We have been managing creative people for over 10 years, but we have had a conventional managerial approach. Creative people follow instructions less and they follow other people’s behavior more, induce it, through inductive processes. Creative people don’t value or follow instructions, they need to feel together. It is the feeling that drives creativity, not the instruction.
April 21, 2004: Once people have created within themselves, they need to express this creativity. For this they need a medium to express through, and a person to express to.
April 22, 2004: Life is about solving problems, i.e. about creativity, and because creativity is caused by the feeling that other people generate in one to help them, this is about love. Life is love for people. Some people of course, decide they only need to love themselves.
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