Creativity

Everyone is creative, just in different ways

Recently I was discussing creativity with a few people and I came to a realization that there are two types of creativity.

Visionary and Improvisational.

The way people generally view creativity is what I call visionary creativity. This is developing innovative and well thought out solutions to problems, creating something completely new, or pushing a new trend. Examples of this are designing a new product, creating a new technology, creating a new fashion style, art, developing an investment strategy, building a business plan, etc. All of these require you to think about solving the problem with a longer term vision and a deep focus on differentiation. You are not trying to just solve the problem, but you are trying to improve and differentiate.

However, there is another type of creativity that is less recognized, but still quite valuable. Improvisational creativity is being fast and agile to solve a problem by coming up with an idea quickly and making it work within almost impossible constraints. This would be fixing broken technology, pivoting a strategy, adjusting a portfolio in a dire situation, fixing a broken down car with no tools, etc.

Improvisational creativity is many times looked down upon. Think about all those redneck fixes that we see and laugh at. There is actually brilliance and creativity behind some of these solutions. Imagine having to fix something without the “correct” tools or replacement part, you must come up with something, and to do that, you must be creative. Other groups that posses improvisational creativity are survivalists, mountain climbers, and hikers. If their gear breaks, they run out of food, the weather drastically changes, they must improvise or they die. They are forced to be very creative to solve whatever problem they have as quickly as possible and most likely, without the proper equipment.

A contrasting example of this can be found in comedy. There are plenty of comedians who have a set script and stick to it. Typically they are hilarious, but fall apart when a heckler starts to bother them. These comedians posses visionary creativity, but lack the improvisational creativity needed to act in the moment.

Both of these styles of creativity are awesome and should be recognized. People are creative, and they may not even know it because they think of “creative” in the traditional sense.