A Pragmatist’s Views about Creativity

A concept that defies definition

69,000,000 results in 0.40 seconds. These returns from simple keyword search on Google revealed our keen desire to tame the creativity beast, to define what it means to be creative. While we may at some point reach a consensus, creativity as a concept cannot be easily pinned down due to its characteristics of abstractness and complexity and the near impossibility of developing objective measures of creativity. This presupposes therefore that any definition of creativity is likely to be subjective, and personal or organisational, rather than universal. As students looking to hone our creative thinking skills, it becomes necessary for us to consider what creativity looks and feels like for us, and develop our personal standards and benchmarks for assessing expressions of creativity around us.

Made visible through creation

A very common first expression of creativity is an articulation, such as in the form of an idea, that connotes new ways of seeing the old, new ways of doing things, or a brand new inspiration for something that is not in existence. What is interesting about creative expression is, we intuitively know when something is creative or not, but we are often unable to explain why we think so. We are also often our harshest critics, holding ourselves to the highest standards of creativity and discounting our everyday creative efforts, not recognising that our little hacks to make life easier counts as expressions of creativity. And this is why we need the Four C Model of Creativity by James Kaufman and Ronald Beghetto, to expand our understanding of the different ways creativity can manifest in our lives.

Purposeful artistry for value creation

Creativity is often wrongly equated with artistry, which is defined by Cambridge Dictionary as, “the special skills possessed by someone who has the ability to make art.” While artistry and its pursuit of the aesthetics is a form of creative expression, it does not adequately explain creativity. For creativity is purposeful, whether it is to get us out of an undesirable situation or to create economic benefit or social value. Works of art, as embodiment of artistry are also often mediums through which messages as communicated. This tells us that three is always a driving force behind each creative endeavour, which is why if we were to think about all the creative thinking tasks we were given in school, we were seldom motivated to complete them, because we were not really sure if there was any meaning in doing these tasks.

If we accept that creativity is purposeful, what then does that mean for creative thinking? In order to tap our creativity when the occasion calls for it, we must be able to exercise creative thinking as and when we need to, which suggests therefore that thinking creatively is intentional and within our means to manage and control. Yet, more often than not, when we experienced creative success, we were not sure how we did that, and why we were able to be creative then and not in the next instance. These encounters might make some of us feel that creativity is something that happens to us, not something inherent in us that we can tap on anytime we need it. However, I tend to disagree with this view.

By choice and not by a stroke of fortune

Creativity does not have to be something that happens to us by a chance. Thinking creatively can be a choice, a way of doing things that we can consciously and repeatedly apply to the problems and challenges we encounter at work and in other aspects of life. Design thinking as a methodology and toolkit demonstrates this possibility. To me, creativity is an outcome of thinking creatively, which demands not only cognitive engagement but also sensory and emotional engagement. And it is also not something that you can simply make happen by following a step-by-step guide, typically in the form of frameworks and protocols. I propose that we can unpack of creative thinking as a set of behaviours that can be observed, which also serves as a demonstration of a set of core skills that can be taught and honed.