Defining Creativity
Expressing the meaning in terms of etymology or root word may not be the best way to explain creativity. Let’s take a different route to understand creativity. We see hundreds of human creations and find some things really creative. Think of any one such instance when we feel it’s creative, there are some common circumstances associated with the context and content of an idea to feel it as creative. Understanding creativity leads to understanding a new word called “Idea”. Ideas become creative ideas if it solves a problem, without solving a problem an idea cannot become creative.
It was a great idea when Elon musk invented reusable space rockets, but we appreciate it as a creative solution when he implements the same technology to reduce travel time between New York and Dubai from 12 hours to 29 mins. When an idea solves a problem we also say it’s a creative solution.
Let’s take an example of a creative agency trying to stick an emotion into consumers subconscious mind, there could be an image that looks like a great photograph when you add some text to describe the image it becomes creative. An idea is there on the text(the way it is described) and also on the photograph (technical aspects) but the combined image with photograph and text and the relationship between these two ideas drives a message to make it more creative,because the image and text together solves a bigger problem of making us understand a message at a subconscious level.
Creative ideas is not about identifying the best idea from millions of ideas, it is often the only idea that is available to solve a problem at that instant considering the constraints of that problem. Getting a creative idea is usually a eureka moment, we feel an idea has appeared from nowhere. When you trace it back to the way you have cracked a problem with a brilliant idea, it would be because you were trying to find a path to progress with several obstacles as constraints and after several iterations you had come out on the other end of the maze, the only possible way out. That moment when you come out of the maze with all the constraints, look back, you will see a path to your problem -its called Solution. This unique path emerges as an idea and you call it creative because it solves your problem in spite of several constraints.
Every time you see a problem understand that there is a chance to be creative. Once you spot the problem list your constraints to solve the problem. These constraints will decide the quality of your creative solution. For example, A creative solution to produce a comfortable drive which is fast will be different from comfortable drive which is fast, 100% safe and a comfortable drive which is fast and safe at a low price. The more the constraints harder it is to find a way out of the maze, the harder it is, better the idea
Let’s look at the contrary, If an idea is removed from a system and if you see problems popping out, it was a creative idea. For example, while we appreciate the creative ideas that we create, we fail to appreciate the creative energy of the nature. We can understand the beauty of it but never understand it from a creative perspective. Why ? The reason is we will never understand the problems solved in making the nature be in a certain way. Every time humans exploit or destroy or change the nature, Ideas behind the nature which supports it are crushed and what is leftover are new problems.
Lets gets creative to solve problems and avoid breaking existing solutions to create problems.
