Burlington, VT -
Creativity. It’s a seemingly elusive proposition
that’s been with us since the dawn of humankind. It’s fascinating to learn how
recent a formal field of study it is, however, and how little the word “creativity”
itself was used in published materials until the 1950s.
I participated in discussions about the meaning and
application of creativity with some wonderful – and highly creative –
colleagues at the University of Vermont recently. I had just been reintroduced
to the creativity discussion after happening upon Nick Skillicorn’s excellent “Idea
to Value” podcast, blog, and related work. Skillicorn introduced me to the work
of Dr. Mark Runco, a cognitive psychologist and creativity researcher at Southern
Oregon University who suggested in 2012 that creativity should
exhibit two primary criteria – originality and value.
Runco offered at the time that the original work needs to be different
than what came before it, at least in a given context, but that it does not
have to be different from all other, unrelated contexts. In other
words, some creative acts have transposed an existing application from one
setting onto a new one.
For
example, simple conveyor belt technology used in warehouses all over the world helped
create a new sushi-restaurant concept. Lessons drawn from nature have compelled
all manner of creativity and produced meaningful scientific and economic
outcomes. The bioluminescent
light in the crystal jellyfish, for example, inspired the development of
fluorescent protein technologies that enable biotech researchers to track proteins
and see when and where they are being made in the cells of living organisms.
Runco’s
second criteria for creativity is that it needs to provide value, as well,
though that value can take many forms from scientific and cultural to financial
and emotional. So, in this framework, is creativity just for creativity's sake really
creative? Maybe not, at least using Runco’s conceptual framework.
Runco
and Skillicorn indicate, as well, that it was common to believe throughout much
of history that ideas came from gods and external spirits and not from
individuals, or that people only revealed creativity that was already present.
These views shifted during the Renaissance, however, as artists,
inventors, and other creatives started to take credit for their work, and
rightly so. They were no longer seen as mere vehicles of the divine.
It's
extraordinary to learn from Skillicorn, as well, how recent a phenomenon the word “creativity”
is in the popular lexicon. He wrote in a May 25, 2021 “Idea to Value” blog post
that “by going through the Google Ngram Viewer,
which analyses the text of millions of books by their publication date, while 'idea' and 'create' have been written about since before the 15th century,
“creativity” has only been written about increasingly since the 20th century.”
It seems we as a species have been creative for a very long time but did not write and speak much about the
whole idea of creativity until fairly recently.
Was creating the field of creativity research a creative act? Yes, it arguably does fit Runco's definition of originality and value.
Image courtesy of Mind Help.