Creativity and Innovation: Where to Draw the Line
What is creativity? What is innovation? What is the difference between the two? What are their relationships? These questions are the concerns of this article. It is a response to some of my students for communication, technology and society course in the Tim Russert Department of Communication at John Carroll University. I address the questions from a science and technology, business, and organizational point of view.
An opinion
Some see creativity as the idea about a thing. Innovation, on the other hand, is the realization of the idea to become physical things instead of mere thought. Nice view. I like it because it connects one (creativity) to the other (innovation) using idea as a common denominator.
However, one of the weaknesses of this view is that it seems to claim that any idea is creative, including those that do not have much value or the ones that are already there and well known. For example, the idea of an electric car is creative, but it is already everywhere. It is ordinary, nothing special about it. Similarly, this view makes the production of any idea innovative as if to say that when you replicate the design module of iPhone, you are innovative. Are you? Not really because someone has already done it, and you are copying what the person did. Also, in any innovation there is an idea, but not just any idea. Some ideas aren’t creative.
Another view
Creativity is like starting on a fresh slate, thinking about an idea. Innovation is using your resources to produce an item or product. Creativity is more in the thinking, whereas innovation makes the thought come to life — actual existence. This, too, is a good view though it’s weak.
We hear people all the time use the phrase, be creative. Does it mean that our creative thoughts must be things nobody has thought of before? How about the reality of creativity that happens because we discover new patterns in the creative ideas that someone has already thought through?
Creativity is undoubtedly about thinking. It is also about discovering new patterns that have not yet been seen. Some say it is thinking outside the box or in new ways.
I agree. But it is also about thinking differently within the box, in such a way you see new patterns that may not have been heard or seen before. There are so many things inside the box that have not been explored. A creative person could easily see those untapped patterns. It’s not always necessary that one must think outside the box. One might be exceptionally creative by thinking creatively — pun intended — inside the box
Yet another view
Creativity is thinking of something differently or doing things differently, but it must not always be new. It must not be something that has not been thought of before. Innovation is creating something new, something that hasn’t been done before or something not seen before. It takes some creativity, but it’s mainly using other things available to you to make something new, whether it’s your knowledge or the creative ideas of others.
This view introduces two more elements. First, we can be innovative by drawing from our creative knowledge. Second, we can also be innovative by tapping from someone else’s ideas and making something new. There is yet a third: being innovative could be a combination of both the first and the second.
This perspective introduces the element of newness to innovation. It is getting closer to the idea, except that something that is made that does not solve any problem or serve any value may seem to be innovative, but it isn’t because it has no use or value. Some creative ideas may be delivered and practical goods or services but without much value to anyone except those who believe it does, when it doesn’t. When the claimed value is not met, I’m afraid it would not be the sort of thing that would reasonable pass the test of innovation.
Here is a professional view
1. “Any thinking process in which original patterns are formed and expressed” (Fox, n. d). Notice it is about thinking that shows or discovers original or different patterns.
Professor Bacharach of Cornell University, who was my professor, and the co-founder of BLG brainstormed with his team on some definitions. Analyzing their discovery brings clarity to the concept. He proposes that creativity is:
2. Bringing completely different thinking in a completely different way. Notice that the practical usability dimension is lacking.
3. “Creative thinking involves imagining familiar things in a new light, digging below the surface to find previously undetected patterns, and finding connections among unrelated phenomena.” (Bacharach, 2018).
In all three and other definitions we’ve seen, we observe that creativity is about thinking in new ways or different thinking to uncover new patterns. Creativity deals with thinking more than it does with doing or with practical, measurable things.
Creative people bring a fresh light into things. They do so much to extend the intellectual wealth of society — a no less valuable work to be sure. Nevertheless, it is not innovation. Thus, creativity isn’t synonymous with innovation.
What then is innovation and what is its relationship with creativity?
Imagine Van Gogh’s The Starry Night. It may not seem different to you since many of us have become familiar with this kind of painting. Nevertheless, it was remarkably different over a century ago when Van Gogh brought incredible creativity to arts and painting. While many saw painting as the creative use of different colors, textures, or paints, Van Gogh saw it as more about drawing, which creates a stunning path to the art of painting. It was highly creative, if not innovative, especially for those who find it valuable in their art collections. The value in the current market can testify to what people are ready to spend to have a piece.
How about a situation where it seems you’ve made a discovery? It is something new to you though it is common knowledge in a different country. Would that also be considered innovation? In a sense, yes, because those within your society do not know it. There are many things of which our society is not knowledgeable. If we found solutions to those things without copying others, it may be innovative within our organization or society. Nevertheless, in the community that knows about it, it isn’t.
Innovation is time-based and society-based
Thus, innovation is time-based and society-based. It is time-based because its breakthrough is judged within the time it happens or when its elements have been recognized. Later years may find that what used to be radically innovative has become a common knowledge and rewinding the clock of that discovery would be a waste of time for it is simply unnecessary. This is true with the theory of velocity as with quantum mechanics.
Innovation is society-based too for it is judged within the society or world in which it is experienced. It is examined in the context of the society within which it occurs. For example, many historical books claim that Christopher Columbus discovered the so-called New World; just as many historians and political philosophers attribute the discovery of the so-called Niger River in West Africa to the Scottish explorer Mongo Park. Though many see both, each in his own right, as innovative explorers of the Americas and West Africa, respectively, those of the Americas, the Native Indians, etc., already live in the vast land called the Americas. They know this place. It isn’t innovation to them and shouldn’t be, yet many make a passionate case for the claim. The same applies to West Africans — Malians, Nigeriens, Beninese, and Nigerians to be precise — whose ancestors in many centuries bathed in that water centuries before Mungo Park was born.
The problem
Time-based and society-based judgment of what counts for innovation raise another question. It is ethical, historical, sociological, and political. How much of what we know as innovative has never been done before? How much of it is dependent on opportunity for those whose voices were heard first, than those who may have solved the need, but whose voices no one has heard? What is the relationship between power and economy to the discoverability of innovation?
The case of Charles Darwin on biological evolution is common knowledge to experts, so is Thomas Edison’s moving images (movies). A fair review of historical reports of innovations has more frequency of such occurrences than one may expect. Is it innovative because it is published first or because someone discovered it first or both? I prefer to leave this debate for another time. (Continue Part 2: Creativity vs. Innovation).
References
Bacharach, S. (Fall, 2018). Class lecture on creativity and innovation. Cornell University.
Biagi, S. (2017). Media impact: An introduction to mass media (12th ed.). Boston, MA: Cengage Learning.
Bower, J. L. & Christensen, C. M. (1995, February). Disruptive Technologies: Catching the wave. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/1995/01/disruptive-technologies-catching-the-wave.
Christensen, C. M., Raynor, M. E. & McDonald, R. (2015). What is disruptive innovation?. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2015/12/what-is-disruptive-innovation
Fox, H. H. (n.d). Quoted without citation in Philip Pasquier (2008, January). Elements on creativity. Metacreation, Simon Fraser University. Accessed 2021, September 1. http://www.sfu.ca/pasquier/IAT-811/Files/IAT-811-Creativitiy.pdf
Merriam-Webster Dictionary (n. d). Technology. Online version. Accessed, 2021, September 1. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/technology
The editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. (2019, October 20). Technology. Encyclopaedia Britannica Inc. https://www.britannica.com/technology/technology.
University of Minnesota (2013). Communication in the real world: An introduction to communication studies. Minnesota. Libraries Publishing. [online]. https://open.lib.umn.edu/communication/
