We all think that creativity is about the development of something new--an idea a process, a product, etc. If it's new, it's creative. Period. That's it.
But I recently heard a speaker say, "creativity is the process of having original ideas that have worth" (Sir Ken Robinsin, in a 2006 TED talk).
In business, it seems to me that the second is the more rational definition.
As soon as a new idea is deemed to have no worth, why would someone spend/invest any more time to develop it further? Time spent developing an idea, product or process that has no value is time wasted.
I have also heard it said that sometimes the person working hardest is the one staring out the window. They are thinking, or maybe even dreaming, and the result of the time spent in such a flight of fancy gives us new products, new processes, and new ways of looking at the world and all its components.
Personally, I believe that creativity CANNOT be taught; that if a child is not curious about the world around him/her, how it works, why it works, if/how something can be changed and improved, they are not creative, and they won't become creative as they grow up.
Schools can guide creativity. They can expose a child to a broad range of things that will refine his or her creative bent. They can show a child the works of Renoir and Picasso, the Elgin marbles and Calder mobiles. Or they can play the works of Mozart and Glass, of Chopin and Stravinski. But a child who is not inherently creative is never going to paint or compose a masterpiece.
Robinson makes the point that "creativity, in education, is as important as literacy, and we should treat it with the same respect." Unfortunately, as he implies in his TED talk, once the schools identify creativity, they are much more likely to kill it than foster and guide it.
Schools are too focused on every child learning the same thing at the same time in the same manner. And they are equally focused on every child using what he/she learns in the same manner toward the same ends.
We are educating our children for a future we cannot even imagine or envision. So how can we be sure that making all children fit into the same box is the answer for the brightest of possible futures.
Certainly, forcing square peg children into round hole roles and ways of thinking about the world is not the answer. We must find ways to identify creative children and give them safe places to play and experiment without the limitations schools currently impose on their students. We must let them play "let's pretend" and stop telling them they need to "grow up."
If we keep killing all creativity in our children, where will we find the next generation of architects and engineers who can respond to a client's needs and enhance the place where a project happens, and do so in a way nobody every thought possible before?
Who will develop new structural systems to keep a 300-floor building standing even in an earthquake?
Who will figure out new and more effective ways to protect the natural environment while building roads, bridges, pipelines and other necessary infrastructure?
Who will figure out how to do these things in ways that are so elegant in their simplicity that the rest of us can merely look, shake our heads and wonder where such ideas come from?