After reading a lot of
Edward de Bono’s works, I am less than happy with the general term 'creativity'. There are many reasons why. I shall outline them.
- The word 'create' means bringing into being something new. But there are too many people just adding junk, or messes. Too many cute little Goths writing poetry that’s been written before, too many aspiring painters who think it’s creative to copy someone else’s painting. That’s not creative; it’s actually the complete opposite. It’s just that ‘poetry’ and ‘painting’ are known as ‘creative fields’. But simply because you dabble in them does not make you creative. It’s not creative if it’s been done.
So we must add to the definition “bringing into being something new”, the phrase “…and of value”. This covers artistic creativity. Yet still, many artists are not creative in the sense of 'change'. It becomes difficult to make progress when we are linked to the artistic model every time we talk about creativity. This is one of the reasons why de Bono invented the term 'lateral thinking' in 1967. (Lateral thinking is concerned with changing concepts and perceptions).
- Creativity has become in this new age a key skill that is required more and more so. Most people have not noticed but we are already moving out of the information age and into the “concept age” or “idea age”. Concepts are the 'genes' of ideas. There was a time when information was the bottleneck. Now we can get all the information we want, but that does not create value unless there is a specific need. The new bottleneck is ‘thinking’, and creative thinking in particular. Progress in technology will provide very little increase in value. Technology is already way ahead of the value we ask it to provide. The emphasis is beginning to shift to value concepts. We need to develop the value concepts directly. Technology can then make them happen. Yet we spend millions of dollars and hours of thinking time on technology when the key area of value creation is largely neglected. It is deliberate creativity that will fashion the value concepts we so badly need.
- Traditional brainstorming is very weak and more useful in the advertising world than elsewhere. Its very existence has prevented us from making progress in serious creativity. Edward de Bono has an interesting analogy:
"An ordinary person is walking along a road. Someone ties that person up tightly with a rope. A violin is now produced. The tied up person cannot possibly play the violin. So we cut the rope. Does that make the person a violinist? Of course not. Yet that is precisely what we have done about creativity for the last fifty years. We have believed that if a person is inhibited then that person cannot be creative. So if we liberated that person (brainstorming) then creativity would follow. This is no more logical than expecting the untied person to become a violinist."
- There exists a belief that some people are born creative and others can only envy them. This is ridiculous. Creativity is a skill which anybody can acquire once they set their minds towards doing so. Creativity is not a mystifying talent or divine inspiration. It is the operation of information in a self-organising information system which forms asymmetric patterns. Once we understand this then we can build deliberate tools of creativity. These are the tools of lateral thinking such as: provocation, random entry etc.
- It is necessary to distinguish between creativity and 'crazitivity'. Far too many people believe that being zany and off-the-wall instantly means they are being creative. But while painting your face crazy colours may be unusual, it is certainly not creative, or useful. This is “show off” creativity, advocated by those who have a motivation to be creative but do not know how. Any creative idea is new and different. So people automatically assume that any different idea is creative. But difference is easy and may have little or no value.