Creativity is not normal

I am currently absorbing a book called “The Universal Traveler”, a book on creativity and problem solving using a (soft) systems approach.

The authors suggest that by definition, creativity is innovation, which is about coming up with something new.  Something new is something not normal but different.

“If you accept the fact that the goal of creativity is innovation, you should realize that creating something “new” is NOT NORMAL but DIFFERENT from normal, perhaps even ‘abnormal.”

Think about it. If people are immediately accepting of your ideas or your behaviour, then perhaps your ideas are not really that unique.

“If you believe you are behaving creatively and your behavior is readily accepted in normal society, one of two conditions is probable: either you have conditioned society to accept your abnormal actions or your input is really not as unique as it seems.”

You may come up with innovative ways of attacking a problem.  But is it really innovative, or is it just an idea already applied elsewhere (perhaps even by yourself).

Underwater weddings, wedding on rollercoasters, getting married while parachuting are all variations on a unique idea.  Whoever first thought of getting married differently from the norm gets the credit for creativity.  The rest are just extensions of the same basic idea; they are not innovations.

What is the point of creativity though?  Creativity for its own sake may be important for art, but where else?  For businesses certainly, it becomes important as a differentiator: new products and services. 

The iPhone is innovative. All the other look-alike smartphones are variations.  As we can see, innovation by itself does not guarantee commercial success.  While the iPhone may be the leading smartphone, the Samsungs and others are enjoying tremendous profits as well.

But to me the most important application of creativity is for meeting the challenges of new problems.

New problems, by definition, do not have a history of solutions that have been successfully applied against them (that would mean they are old problems, not new).   New problems require new solutions, something that have not been tried before.

And that is where creativity comes in: in the generation of new ideas.