Definition of Creativity

What is Creativity?

What is Creativity? Creativity is the process by which any novelty arises. And novelty in this context is simply a new difference. This difference could be incrementally different (a difference-in-degree) or it could be a qualitative difference (a difference-in-kind).

Because creativity is a process, it is not a thing, and thus it is not some unique internal human capacity. As a process, it is an emergent outcome of many distinct things coming together. In this way, creativity is ecosystemic.

As an ecosystemic process, we find creativity happening everywhere, all the time, at all scales. We can see it in the formation of stars, continents, volcanoes, new species, social revolutions, giving birth, and the making of tools by crows. 

Creativity is an unexceptional, ubiquitous quality of all reality. This is something astonishing and worth celebrating. As humans, we are not the origins of creativity (it is not emerging out of our heads or originating in our ideas); rather, we can skillfully join and modify ongoing creative processes. Creativity is something we “surf”. Human creative processes are thus always more than human—and especially more than and very different from ideas. Our creative processes are enactive; they arise from and are creatively enabled by the relational dynamics of tools, environments, embodied practices, histories, and a dense weave of human collaboration.

We can summarize some key aspects of creativity:

• Creativity is the process by which novelty emerges
• The emergent outcome of creative processes is novelty – a new difference
• Creativity as a process has no single locus, cause or developmental source
• Novel outcomes are co-created by the contexts in which they unfold
• Creative processes and novelty are a ubiquitous quality of all reality; – it is everywhere and ongoing
• Human creative processes involve skillful joining of ongoing creative processes
• Creative processes realize novel outcomes via a networked assemblage of things, environments, and practices
• As an emergent process, the impact of any given component process is contingent upon the state of the system as a whole
• The notion of exclusively psychological or mental creativity (ideation) is of no explanatory value

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The History of Creativity

Surprisingly, the concept of creativity in the west has a very short history: the concept was first developed and used only in the mid 1800s. Speaking very broadly, prior to this era, creativity—the ability to make something new—was understood to be only something god could do. And that all forms of human action were forms of copying god's plan. 

This model – what we like to call “the god model"—has led to a series of compounding problems in how creativity is both understood and practiced. By the mid 1950’s this approach had led to the development of an essentialist orientation to creativity, which shortly thereafter turned into an industry, especially in America. To engage successfully with creative processes, we need to critically confront, unlearn, and move beyond this history and it’s essentialist approach to creativity, which is no easy task. Here is a good overview of this issue.

Here is a helpful contrast between the historical western essentialist approach and an ecosystem + emergent approach to creativity:

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Read More About Creativity

• How Can We Become Creative?
• What is Innovation?
• The Limit is of Traditional Methods 
• A History on Where Did Your Big Idea Comes From?
• The Greeks Weren't Creative?
• The Greeks Did Not Have “Creativity

See: Difference, Change, Emergence, Feedforward, Exaptation, God Model, Creativity Paradox

For more, navigate to our complete list of articles on anti-creative practices in Innovation.