On Creativity

I am on a committee at the college that works to access and improve the growth of creativity during the academic career of students at my college. I think, it has been a great opportunity to spend time and thoughts on getting an objective hold of creativity, its measurement metrics and its nurturing characteristics.


In general, creativity is understood to be a mix of originality, flexible progressive thinking, aesthetics, and motivation. In addition to being a set of characteristics, creativity is also a potential of a person to make original, contributions as opined by experts.

Daniel Keating has defined creativity as a culmination of domain specific knowledge, divergent thinking, and effective communication. Having a domian-specific knowledge is essential part of being creative, similar to it being essential for being intelligent.  To understand, this, it can be agreed that a person cannot be creative if he/she does not have the background knowledge and skills to apply to an unfamiliar situation/scenario. Its similar to saying that an author cannot create an creative work without having the fundamental tools of effective communications. Creative is not something that passes through few gifted individuals, even though it may appear that creativity is something like having a magical power. It has to depend of having relevant background knowledge and skills.

Unix/terminal-type programmers, scientists, as shown in the Hollywood are not individuals who have bought of excellent thoughts, what the movies do not show is the background work that is needed for recognizing a creative thought. I can think of Good Will Hunting's opening where Matt Damon is shown to flip through books and seemingly gain all the knowledge before the titles end and the movie begins. In reality, creativity begins after the entire movie of learning is experienced by an individual.

An occasional wave of creativity cannot go further without a through understanding of skills and knowledge to ride on. Without the relevant knowledge, one cannot draw from memory and find specific patterns, ideas, synergistic concepts. Focusing of knowledge and skills will not render an individual less creative, as popularly thought.


Having Divergent Thinking
It refers to having many thoughts stemming from a common thought but going in different thought directions. The aim being, that several divergent thought might cover more ground and eventually lead to something creatively relevant.

Recipe of having valuable creative thoughts:
 Having a balance of four things: knowledge, divergent thinking, critical analysis, and communication.


Creative Thinking Habits
Creativity can be developed, parents can encourage children to cultivate essential skills for success in the ever evolving world.