The Case for Creativity
Rationale
2.1 There are four major reasons for investigating creativity:
- It is the bedrock of an expanding digital economy
- Extending its practice to those who are unemployed or threatened by structural unemployment will improve economic performance and promote social justice
- Our culture believes that creativity is not susceptible to rational analysis and this belief should be tested
- The weighting of the factors that contribute to creativity (see 1.4) are unknown but should be capable of rational analysis.
2.2 Because of the 'Romantic' theory of creativity it is widely assumed in our culture that creativity is confined to a very few, highly gifted, prominently individualistic people. However, this kind of creativity is largely concerned with the last factor in 1.3, the development of totally new ideas. Much of the creativity required with plastic media, however, is much more concerned with the first three factors: the ability to extend the use of current materials and techniques and the ability to think laterally by fusing existing material or migrating it from one 'silo' to another. The 'Romantic' view which largely locates creativity in the arts environment, is severely limiting and under estimates both the importance of science and the crucial role of arts/science fusion. If our economy is to grow and if more people are to benefit from contributing to the digital age, we will need to understand better how to harness every granule of human creativity and then we will need to know how this can be grown and become productive; for this purpose we will need to learn a great deal more about collaboration and mentoring and support.
2.3 We also need to learn how breakthrough innovation grows out of a productive, constructive, goal-oriented ecology instead of accepting the tradition that creativity is a matter of solo inspiration.
2.4 As more industrial production and repetitive processes migrate from high wage economies and as machine processing becomes more powerful and widespread, creativity becomes ever more important in such areas as:
- Tools design
- Product design
- Product innovation
- Marketing mechanisms
- Economic and payments models
- Applications for new markets
2.5. In summary, creativity needs to be better understood as a combination of scientific capability, design flair and economic modelling.