Ability to produce something new through imaginative skill, whether a new solution to a problem, a new method or device, or a new

artistic object or form. The term generally refers to a richness of ideas and originality of thinking. Psychological studies of highly creative people have shown that many have a strong interest in apparent disorder, contradiction, and imbalance, which seem to be perceived as challenges. Such individuals may possess an exceptionally deep, broad, and flexible awareness of themselves. Studies also show that intelligence has little correlation with creativity; thus, a highly intelligent person may not be very creative
Creativity refers to the phenomenon whereby a person creates something new (a product, a solution, a work of art, a novel, a joke, etc.) that has some kind of value. What counts as "new" may be in reference to the individual creator, or to the society or domain within which the novelty occurs. What counts as "valuable" is similarly defined in a variety of ways. Innovation is the creation of better or more effective products, processes, services, technologies, or ideas that are accepted by markets, governments, and society. Innovation differs from invention in that innovation refers to the use of a new idea or method, whereas invention refers more directly to the creation of the idea or method itself.

The Purpose of Creativity

14 05 2008

Why do the best of us continue to strive to be the best of us? What is it that drives us? Compels us? Pushes us ever onward and upward? Why do we do the things we do? The simple answer is the superego. According to a former student of mine, the superego is one of the three divisions of the psyche in psychoanalytic theory that functions to reward and punish through a system of moral attitudes, conscience, and a sense of guilt. In other words, if we dont strive to succeed we will find ourselves left behind. A safe answer to be sure. Not that safety has anything to do with the creative process. I prefer to think of the creative process as simply the manifestation of an insane desire to not leave well enough alone. To fiddle. To niggle. To tickle whatever it is to death and still not be satisfied. Simply put, those of us who are creative are simply creative because we can be. We have an insatiable desire to change shit up. But not just change for the sake of change. Change for the sake of making something better than it was. As my student Diana says, I like making stuff. What more is there for any one to say about the creation of anything. It used to be that the only things that were certain were death and taxes. Now the fact of constant, eternal, unending change has been added to that relentless duo. But as in all things, the addition of a third element introduces tension. Imbalance.

Conflict. Two is company. Three is complexity. Two is an alliance. Three is a conspiracy. Two is a romance. Three is a divorce. Me and you are a partnership. Me and you and her is a distraction. Two is solidarity. Three is uncertainty. The addition of change to what we hold to be self-evident indicates that nothing is set in stone. Maybe we dont have to die. Maybe we dont have to pay our taxes. If things can change maybe death and taxes can be negotiable. We just have to apply creativity to the equation. Creativity is the grease of progress. There must be a better way. There must be a stronger idea. There must be a simpler solution. Just another way of saying Change or Die. Oil companies in California have figured out a way to not pay taxes. The Govenator had to come up with a way to cover the shortfall left by the windfall. He got creative. And 20,000 school teachers got pink slipped. This tells me that taxes might not be as certain as death and change. Thats the conflict that happens when a twosome becomes a threesome. One of the three becomes a target. One of the three becomes creative. And the purpose of that creativity is to change the status quo. Which means that all creativity is applied creativity. The creative process employed to do a specific task or accomplish a specific objective, or realize a specific outcome. Nobody is creative for the sake of being creative. Even fine art ( as opposed to commercial art) is created to be sold. Art for arts sake is generally considered as self indulgent and marginalized as uncommercial which in the Art World is a certain kiss of death. But what if this were not the case? What if someone decided in our wacky world of advertising to be creative, purely for the sake of being creative? What if the concept of user-generated content were taken to the next level of sophistication.? What if those generating the content were not just the random amateur but were the accomplished professionals? Would there be a place for it? A purpose for it? Would anything change as a result of it? Right now there is only good advertising and bad advertising. Two elements. What if there were three? What if the third one was neoadvertising? New for the sake of new and nothing else. What if you came to MadisonAveNew.com and instead of reading about the need for new you could actually see something new? Now that would be a change for the better Features of creativity Submitted by TE Editor on 3 October, 2007 - 12:00 This is the second in a series of four articles on transforming activities for creativity. The first introduced the concept of creativity in the language classroom. This one focuses on the features of creativity.

The four features of creativity o Imaginative o Purposeful o Original o Of value Making activities creative Conclusion

The four features of creativity Suppose you didnt know what an apple was. Which of these two descriptions would help you more if you wanted to have an idea of the actual fruit? 1. fruit of the genus Malus (about 25 species) belonging to the family Rosacea, the most widely cultivated tree fruit(1) 2. round fruit with firm juicy flesh and green, red or yellow skin when ripe(2). Perhaps you agree with me that the second one with a list of characteristic features would be a better starting point for building the concept of an apple. This is why I have chosen to start exploring creativity with its four features as they are listed on the National Curriculum in Action website (3). It says that creative thinking is:

Imaginative Purposeful Original Of value

Imaginative Creative thinking is imaginative as it brings about something that did not exist or was not known before, so it had to be imagined first. We can easily see this in art, but science and technology are also full of imagination.

It could only be through imagination that Johann Gutenberg was able to combine the wine press and the coin punch to create his printing press. When Galileo was in prison, he wrote about imaginary experiments he made in his head.

Another example is Einstein, who just to give one of the many possible examples described the random movements of atoms before they could be seen in laboratories. He must have imagined them! (4)

Purposeful The examples of scientific imagination above have already indicated that creative imagination is not daydreaming. It has a purpose, an objective, which can be a variety of things from surviving after your boat has sunk, through opening a bottle of wine without a corkscrew, to saving the life of cancer patients by finding a new treatment, or creating the complex emotional impact of catharsis. Original The third feature, originality, highlights that creativity has individuality built in it. It grows out of the individual as a plant grows out from a seed, and it is characteristic of the individual, too. The Nobel Prize winning physician, Albert Szent-Gyrgyi, who discovered vitamin-C, emphasises this feature of creativity in his definition: Discovery consists of looking at the same thing as everyone else and thinking something different. (5) Of value The last feature, which says that the product or result has to be of value, adds the element of evaluation into creative thinking. When evaluating our creation, we need to see how it serves the purpose. Also, we may need to judge the purpose, the goal itself. There are highly imaginative and original solutions that serve the purpose all right, but the purpose itself may be totally destructive, harmful or immoral. Although the feature of value is a very important one, it is not a clear-cut category as different people are bound to find different things valuable to different degrees. What is of value for me may not be of value for you. Just think of the many different views people hold about graffiti. So it is worth asking the question: "Whose values and what sort of values are we using to judge and act?" Making activities creative What does all this teach us about creative language learning activities in the classroom? The sum of it could be the following:

We need to give the activity a purpose that is something outside practising a certain language point. This purpose can usually be defined as some kind of outcome or product, which can be very simple like writing a shopping list for a new dessert learners would like to make for a friends birthday. Or it can be something really spectacular like putting a scene students write on stage. In this kind of activity, language is used as a tool, as a means to an end like in real life.

We need to organise the learning process in a way that gives time, space and freedom to learners so that they can use their imagination and originality. This often means suspending judgement for the time of the activity and being open to many possible answers, solutions and products. Learners need to understand that there is no one right answer, that there are many valuable solutions possible. This calls for tolerance for ambiguity in the classroom. Managing a creative classroom activity also makes it necessary for the teacher to act more like a facilitator or helper. All this of course does not mean losing sight of the objective or lacking realistic timing. We need to make evaluation an integral part of the creative process. For evaluating a creative activity, it is very important not to restrict the evaluation to language use, as this would give learners the message that the outcome of the activity is not really important.

Generally speaking, my experience is that the more varied yet more focused the evaluation is the more motivating and more formative it is for the learners. What do I mean by varied? I mean that it comes from different sources: It combines self-evaluation, peer-evaluation and teacherevaluation. It aims at different things: We evaluate the end-product, language use and the process (how learners worked together and contributed individually) using different criteria, which we preferably previously agreed on with the learners. By focused I mean that the evaluation is governed by the purpose or aim of the activity and the criteria we have set.

Conclusion In conclusion we can say that if we want to run a creative activity in the classroom, we need to check for the presence of these four features: imagination, purpose, originality and value, and organise the process in a way that all these can be incorporated.

The editors admit that some of the concepts are tried-and-true management tenets dating back over the decades, but the backdrop to all this is an explosion of information technology and data that enables managers to look at what theyre doing in a whole new light. 1. Shareholder Value as a Strategy. This eclipsed all else. What about customers? 2. IT as a Utility. The cloud. 3. The Customer Chorus. Brought to you by social networking. 4. Enterprise Risk Management. None too soon. 5. The Creative Organization. Innovation matters. 6. Open Source. Community resources beyond software. 7. Going Private. SOX workaround. 8. Behavioral Economics. Freakonomics, anyone? 9. High Potentials. Nurture, nurture, nurture. 10. Competing on Analytics. Well beyond the gut level. 11. Reverse Innovation. R&D closer to global markets.

12. Sustainability. Green is good.