The Process of Creativity - Essay Example

Creativity can be defined as the process of being creative or a series of actions that bring to life new ideas, thoughts, or physical objects. Creative thinking, however, is a particular thought process that has to ability to improve creativity, put someone in an ideal frame of mind for generation of new ideas, think in patterns that improve the chances of new thoughts coming about, to enhance the brain’s ability to develop new ideas, the competence to think of ideas that are unique, diverse, and complex, mental actions that result in change and development of thought, and the progression of discovering a number of possibilities of actions or thoughts (Higgins, 1994). Plsek’s (1997) definition of creativity is “the connecting and rearranging of knowledge – in the minds of people who will allow themselves to think flexibly – to generate new, often surprising ideas that others judge to be useful.” Creativity has a long history. Plankenauer an, Premm make the claim that creativity was viewed as something mystifying simply because there was not one general definition or explanation for it. Creativity used to be considered as something magical because it was rare to find someone who was creative. One point of view is that creativity is so rare that it is only in use by a select few individuals. From this, we can see that creativity is related to genius or intelligence. Another belief is that people who came up with new ideas or thoughts were considered to be crazy. This is a myth that was believed for most of human history (in order to be creative a person must be mad). The problem with this myth, however, is that it makes the assumption that creativity is derived from psychological processes of neurosis or psychosis. In other words, that it is a function of a troubled or disturbed mind. It makes sense that creativity was thought of as a type of pathology or sickness to be avoided. As such, creativity is something that goes against what is normal. Behaviorists would claim that creativity is something that is made up by those who want to believe it. They would say that humans are trained to perform tasks that lack creativity and require repetition. Based on this theory, there are two schools of thought. The first is that every situation is based off an earlier one. This means that situations, and thus outcomes, are never any different from what has previously occured. The second belief is that if per chance a new situation is not similar to an earlier one, then luck has played a huge part in the circumstances. Creativity is something that can belong to anyone and not just the talented few who are believed to be intellectuals. The problem is that when many of us think of creative individuals, we refer to a special talent. This talent can be the ability to draw, paint, sculpt, write, sing, dance, play music, or many more. However, creativity is much more than to be able to perform an act that requires luck depending on one’s ability; creativity has the potential to exist in every one of us. Creativity is most commonly defined as the mental ability to imagine fresh, extraordinary or distinctive ideas, or to view a new connection between things that seem random or unrelated to each other. In the article The Relationship Between Creativity and Innovation (2012), we can see just how innovation is defined. Innovation is defined as “the process that transforms those forward-looking new ideas into the real world (commercial) products, services, or processes of enhanced value” (“The Relationship Between Creativity and Innovation,” 2012). The transformation that results can either have a small, large, or drastic effect on the current situation. To put it another way, innovation can represent a predictable step in the right direction for a new concept, a huge step to the next stage of that concept, or a brand new and different method of doing something. “Entrepreneurship and innovation complement business naturally” (UOPX Writer Network, 2010). One thing that each of these skills require is the desire to risk for the sake of success. Hindle (2008, p. 75) considers innovation as the “combination of an inventive process and an entrepreneurial process to create new economic value for defined stakeholders.” Some scholars highlight the fact that innovation is not simply just a thought or idea. Catherine Livingston commented that “innovation is only achieved when the idea has been transferred into an outcome which has value” (Hindle, 2008, p.76). Entrepreneurs are leaders with the ability to manage things. They generate ideas and challenge the status quo. Moreover, “they are philosophical by nature, often contemplating unique relationships, cause and effect scenarios and extended capabilities of their projects and endeavors” (UOPX Writer Network, 2010). Some of the general traits of entrepreneurs include an enthusiasm to learn, individuality, strong morals, and resourcefulness. Innovators help fuel growth by responding to the needs and desires of those around them. In their quest to solve community dilemmas, develop economically sound environments and create culturally responsible enterprises, innovators often cooperate with entrepreneurs to achieve prevailing community goals. In contrast to this, there has been some evidence that structure is the key to creativity and not randomness (Goldenberg et al. 1999). A structured view states that creativity can be achieved through the detailed application of defined operations. This has inevitably led to systematic approaches to idea generation (Toubia, 2005, p.19). There are four common beliefs on creative thinking: brainstorming, lateral thinking, inventive templates, and Inventive Problem Solving. Brainstorming is the best-known idea generation method. Brainstorming relies on the knowledge of a group to come up with many ideas that are designed to create solutions to help remedy problems. The four basic tenets of brainstorming is that there is a focus on quantity at the beginning instead of quality, criticism is frowned upon, strange ideas are encouraged, and combining ideas that result in improved ideas. The second common belief is lateral thinking. The fact that brainstorming is encouraged only highlights the fact that change is needed. Lateral thinking introduces new thoughts and ideas in order to change thinking to go in a different direction. The third belief around creativity is the use of inventive templates. On the theoretical level, templates are obtained by analyzing trends in the growth process of successful products at their mature stage and applying them in infancy situations. This process is parallel to stepping back in time. By understanding how a thought or concept evolves, the uncertainty to do with creative ideas is lessened. Template methodology represents a step toward modelling the dynamics of product idea generation. If limitations of such a model are based on product based trends, templates can have the capacity to facilitate the generation of new ideas using limited external information such as consumer needs. In addition, the template technique discourages thought barriers that may hold back idea generation when traditional methods are employed. The last belief surrounding creativity is TRIZ, or Inventive Problem Solving (Altshuller 2000). TRIZ is a Russian acronym that literally means “the theory of solving inventors problems” (the closest English translation is Inventive Problem Solving). TRIZ was first developed by Genrich Altshuller, who was a Soviet engineer and researcher. TRIZ was first thought of in 1946 and the concept has been evolving since that time. TRIZ generates innovative ideas and solutions specifically for problem solving. Also, TRIZ offers tools for use in system analysis, formulation of problems, failure analyses, and system evolution patterns. In contrast to random idea generation, TRIZ creates an algorithmic approach to the invention of new systems, and the refinement of old systems. Altshuller (2000) held the belief that inventive problems are derived from contradictions. To put it another way, wanting something desirable also results in something less desirable. An example of an inventive template for presentation on financial planning to small business owners comes from Domino’s Pizza’s promotion strategy. This strategy offered a discount for any delivery that exceeded the 30-minute time limit. However, this shows that Domino’s produced a dependency between two variables that were previously unrelated: price and delivery time (Goldenberg et al., 1999, p. 201). The dependency between these two unrelated variables was created due to a step function being introduced. The problem was that the price remained level within the first 30 minutes after an order, but any time over this and the price was discounted. This specific dependency could be applied in other contexts as well. For example, discounts very similar to this one could be offered in a supermarket or for a laundry delivery services when a predetermined delivery time limit is exceeded (Goldenberg et al., 1999, p. 201). From this, we can determine that a repeatable pattern has been identified. Read More