Curious to Know How Creative You Are? Take This Quick New Test!
The what and why of creativity?
It seems no matter where you look these days, someone’s extolling the virtues of creativity and the absolute necessity for it. The WEF Future of Jobs Report 2020, lists 15 skill groups as essential for 2025. One grouping is: ‘creativity, originality, and initiative’. However, the report neglects to say what creativity is and creates confusion over the concept by labeling another skill grouping as: ‘reasoning, problem-solving, and ideation’— unarguably also creativity. The lack of definition and common understanding of creativity leads to problems for employees and employers as to what exactly they need to be upskilling.
So how do psychologists, who study creativity, define this elusive concept? Sorry to disappoint, but there is no widely accepted definition of creativity amongst scientists either. Naturally, many studies do attempt to define creativity and often by breaking it down into 4 categories: creative products, creative people, creative processes, and creative environments. However, scientists seem most comfortable defining a creative product as one that is novel and useful. But even this is not as straightforward as you might first think.
Some obvious questions arise: What are the criteria for novel and useful and who says…
