Task 20 Creativity

Creativity is a mental process involving the generation of new ideas or concepts. From a scientific point of view, the products of creative thought are usually considered to have both originality and appropriateness. An alternative, more everyday conception of creativity is that it is simply the act of making something new.

Some researchers believe that creativity is the outcome of the same cognitive processes as intelligence, and is only judged as creativity in terms of its consequences, i.e. when the outcome of cognitive processes happens to produce something novel, a view which Perkins has termed the "nothing special" hypothesis. However, a very popular model is what has come to be known as "the threshold hypothesis", stating that intelligence and creativity are more likely to be correlated in general samples, but that this correlation is not found in people with IQs over 120.

Creativity is typically used to refer to the act of producing new ideas, approaches or actions, while innovation is the process of both generating and applying such creative ideas in some specific context. “creativity by individuals and teams is a starting point for innovation; the first is a necessary but not sufficient condition for the second".

Measuring creativity

Several attempts have been made to develop a creativity quotient of an individual similar to the Intelligence quotient (IQ), however these have been unsuccessful. Most measures of creativity are dependent on the personal judgement of the tester, so a standardized measure is difficult to develop.