Creativity can be defined as the main tool to develop innovation. Although for many people, the word most immediately conjours associations with artistic endeavours and writing, it has also been linked to science as far back as the muses of Ancient Greece. Today, creativity forms the core activity of a growing section of the global economy—the creative industries—generating wealth through the creation and exploitation of intellectual property or the provision of creative services.

Much praised in principle, much derided in fact, popular legend sees creativity serves as a refuge for the outsider with imagination. Some of the ambivalent attitude to creativity may stem from seeing the creative process as parallelling or suggesting the ingesting of drugs to generate visions, or simply from viewing creativity as eccentric behavior outside of the mainstream.

The word "creativity" bears an implication of constructing a novelty without constituent components ex nihilo (compare creationism), as opposed to (say) alternative theories of artistic inspiration which posit the transmission of visions from divine sources such as the Muses. Compare invention.

Professional "creatives" do not have a monopoly on the concept of creativity. Problem solving in general may require a creative mind. Employers may value lawyers, accountants, people in sales, and others more highly if they can use a "creative" approach to their work. The phrases "thinking outside the box" and "thinking outside the square" express this idea. It is the general consensus among the proffessional community that it is possible to learn to be more creative. Several approaches have been proposed, ranging from psychological-cognitive such as Synectics, Purdue Creative Thinking Program, lateral thinking, to the highly structured such as TRIZ, the Theory of Inventive Problem Solving, and ARIZ an Algorithm for Invention, both by the Russian scientist Genrich Altshuller. There are some creativity techniques listed elsewhere.

In The Act of Creation, Arthur Koestler (1964 and various imprints) lists three types of creative individual, the Artist, the Sage and the Jester. Paul Birch and Brian Clegg (Crash Course in Creativity 2002) have called the three types of creativity that result aaahhh, ah ha, and ha ha. The Artist creates beauty or challenge (aaahhh). The Sage creates ideas or solutions (ah ha) and the Jester creates humour (ha ha). All three are necessary in business and if you look at truly creative companies you will find them all.

Creativity can also be looked at by where it arises. There are four key ways that something creative can happen:

1. Generating something wholly new
2. Combining ideas in a new way
3. Finding new uses for existing ideas
4. Taking existing ideas to new people.

The first of these is very rare.

The scientific study of creativity is called creatology.

See also

• creative accounting
• creative writing
• creativity techniques
• design
• fine art
• Flow
• Albert Rothenberg
• visual arts and design

External links

• Creativity & Innovation Portal-biggest collection of links (http://www.creax.net)
• Creativity in the Bible (http://www.worshipinfo.com/materials/creativity.htm)
• Creativity - Lecture notes from university course (http://frontpage.et.byu.edu/mfg201/Lecturenotes/lecture2.htm)