Creativity & Innovation Toolkit

Definitions

Creativity is not confined to the visual and performing arts – it is an essential ingredient of all disciplines and professions.

Creativity is the ability to make something new, whether a thought or idea, an object, a product or a process, a work of art or performance, or an interpretation. Usually, this involves making connections with an existing knowledge base, using imagination, experimenting, taking risks, having fun and making the jump from what is already known or experienced to what is, or might be. Creativity is a difficult concept to pin down, but here are some definitions that reflect its complexity:

“Personal creativity is: a process of becoming sensitive to or aware of problems, deficiencies, and gaps in knowledge for which there is no learned solution; bringing together existing information from the memory storage or external; defining the difficulty or identifying the missing elements; searching for solutions, making guesses, producing alternatives to solve the problem; testing and re-testing these alternatives; and perfecting them and finally communicating the results.”

Morrison, A., & Johnston, B. (2003). Personal creativity for entrepreneurship: Teaching and learning strategies. Active Learning in Higher Education, 4(2), pp. 145-158.
Retrieved from the World Wide Web on 23 October, 2006.
http://alh.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/4/2/145

“The creative individual is a person who regularly solves problems, fashions products, or defines new questions in a domain in a way that is initially considered novel but that ultimately becomes accepted in a particular cultural setting.”

Gardner, H. (1993). Creating Minds. An Anatomy of Creativity Seen Through the Lives of Freud, Picasso, Stravinsky, Eliot, Graham and Gandhi. New York: Basic Books, p. 35.

“Creativity…involves departing from the facts, finding new ways, making unusual associations, or seeing unexpected solutions.”

Cropley, A.J. (2001). Creativity in Education and Learning: A Guide for Teachers and Educators. London: Kogan Page, p. 23.

Cropley (2001) identified three main vehicles for creativity:

• products;
• people; and
• the environment.

He argues that creativity can manifest itself in:

• products that take the form of works of art, musical compositions, written documents, machines, buildings, or other physical structures such as bridges; in plans and strategies for solving problems in business, manufacturing, government, etc.; in thoughts or ideas - systems for conceptualising the world (e.g., philosophy, mathematics, or indeed all reflective disciplines);
• people, through clusters of psychological factors involving abilities, knowledge, skills, motives, attitudes and values, as well as personal properties such as openness, flexibility or courage – some of which are inherited, but some of which can be learned; and
• environment by factors such as tolerance for novelty, encouragement and recognition, contact with models of creative behaviour and exposure to works of art, literature, and people who foster creativity.

Adapted from: Cropley, A.J. (2001). Creativity in Education and Learning: A Guide for Teachers and Educators. London: Kogan Page, p.p. 6-7.

“Being innovative is closely related to being creative. Seeing possibilities, seizing opportunities, creating new ventures, markets or products are all part and parcel of innovation. An innovator is someone who has an idea, sees its potential, and sets about promoting, or advocating it to a wider audience, often with profit in mind. In this sense, entrepreneurship is closely related to the term ‘innovation.’ In 2003, the National Commission on Entrepreneurship (UK) defined entrepreneurship as ‘the process of uncovering and developing an opportunity to create value through innovation.’”

National Commission on Entrepreneurship. (2003). Creating Good Jobs in Your Community. Cited in Moreland, N. (2004). Entrepreneurship and Higher Education: An Employability Perspective.
Retrieved from the World Wide Web on 23 October, 2006.
http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/resources.asp?process=full_record§ion=generic&id=341