CREATIVITY IS NOT ART.

When people think about and discuss art, they are typically referring to things such as literature, drawings, paintings, sculptures, architecture, photography, music, film, and other types of performances. What they are referring to is the communication, expression, or application of the uniquely human trait and skill of creativity. Art is one type of creative product.

CREATIVITY IS NOT AN IDENTITY.

The world uses words and labels such as ‘creatives’ or ‘creative types’ or ‘creative agencies’ to describe people who produce art. These words and labels are used to describe people who they identify as being actively engaged in the production of art through the process of innovation (i.e. the process involved in the execution, delivery, and implementation of ideas).

All humans are born with creativity. You only need to observe a child in action for a few moments to see the anecdotal evidence of this.

For those who prefer research evidence, Dr. George Land took the simple Creativity Test that he developed for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and conducted a longitudinal survey to test for the ability to look at a problem and come up with new, different, and innovative ideas in 1,600 children when they were at the ages of 5, 10, and 15. At age 5, 98% of children tested as creative geniuses. At age 10, 30% of children tested as creative geniuses. At age 15, only 12% of these children tested as creative geniuses. Dr. Land also conducted a lot of testing with adults (over 1,000,000 of them in fact with an average age of 31) and a startling 2% of adults tested as creative geniuses.

The creative person is someone who is observed to maintain higher than ‘normal’ levels of creativity into adulthood, and certainly includes anyone who tests within this 2% of adult creative geniuses!

CREATIVITY IS NOT LOST FOREVER.

Despite what it looks like on the surface, the steep decline in creativity as children grow into adults can be reversed.

Dr. Land found that our education systems are failing us where creativity is concerned; teaching us to generate ideas and judge or discard them at the same time. To reconnect with creativity, one of the most powerful things we could do as adults is to disconnect our divergent thinking (the ability to imagine and generate new possibilities or new ideas) from our convergent thinking (the ability to make judgments and decisions through testing, criticising, and evaluating the imagined possibilities and ideas); and treat them as two distinct activities rather than the one activity as we are taught in school.

Divergent thinking is an accelerator to creativity; whilst convergent thinking acts as a brake to creativity. The creative process is both the difference and the synergy achieved between divergent and convergent thinking.

CREATIVITY IS…

Creativity is what you see and how you think in your inner world.

Creativity is the possibilities and the ideas that you come up with.

Creativity is absurd.

Innovation is about changing peoples’ perception of ‘normal’.

Innovation is about making possibilities and ideas real'; turning them into creative products.

Innovation is about sharing what you see and how you think with the outside world.

CREATIVE PRODUCTS EMERGE FROM CREATIVE PERSONS WHO USE THE CREATIVE PROCESS.

So where to from here?

1. If you’re interested in hearing directly from Dr. George Land about his research, watch his TEDxTucson Talk at the bottom of this page.

2. If you’re interested in boosting your creativity, practice your divergent thinking and reconnect with your creative capacity with these 200 Creativity Challenges At Your Fingertips!