In this episode I explain the definition of creativity and difference between creativity and innovation. You might be surprised at what you learn! Find out why how creative you think you are makes a difference and about two types of creativity.
What You’ll Learn
* The research-based definition of creativity
* The difference between creativity and innovation
* Why your belief about how creative you are matters
* How revolutionary and evolutionary innovation are both important
Resources
* The Quirky Stapler
* Reference for Definition of Creativity: Hemlin, S., Allwood, C., & Martin, B. (2008). Creative knowledge environments. Creativity Research Journal, 20(2), 196-210. (Due to copyright we can not post the full article)
* FourSight Thinking Profile
Transcript
Feel like reading instead of listening? No problem, just the free transcript (PDF) or read it below. Enjoy!
Transcript for Episode #001: Defining Creativity
Amy Climer: Welcome to the very first episode of the deliberate creative podcast. I’m your host Amy Climer and I’m so excited about this first episode. In today’s episode we’re going to talk about this question “What is creativity?” We’ll look at how is it defined and what does it mean and how do we know if we’re creative or not. For the last 15 years I have been teaching workshops to adults on creativity and helping them figure out how to be more creative, whether that would be in personal life or work. I often start workshops with this question, “raise your hand if you think you’re creative.” If you are listening to this just think about how you would answer.
What has happened for me is I have been so surprised with the response that I’ve gotten when I am asking this in the workshops. If it is a small group and they are really excited to be there they all raise their hand “Yeah!” Usually the response is between 40% and 70% of the room will raise their hands believing that they’re creative. And it’s interesting to watch them respond as they process the question because some people just like shoot their hands up. They’re like “Yeah, I’m creative! Of course” Other people are like “Well, kind of” and have the handshake going on and some people sort of look around, they raise their hand, and are like “I’m pretty the right answer is yes.” But then I’ve actually seen people, this has happened more than once, where I saw somebody shove their hand under their butt, like sitting on their hand, like “Oh no, oh no I’m not creative.” Almost like they are afraid that I was going to ask them to do something. That just surprises me because you know if you ask kindergarteners, “Hey, are you creative?” The response is going to be like “Yeah, let’s go!” You know if you said can you sing? Can you dance? Can you draw? They’re all going to say yes but then a shift happens around 3rd or 4th grade usually, sometime in elementary school where we start changing our perception of ourselves and we really start doubting our creativity.
I want to share a story with you that was shared with me from a student of mine. I think it is a common story that many people have. It was about 10 years ago and I was teaching a fabric dying class. Yeah, I used to do a lot of art quilting and fabric dying, and I love teaching. And anyway so I’m in this class and it’s the very beginning and I’m teaching them the process of dying fabric, which is super simple. You take powdered dye and water and you mix it together and you pour it on the fabric. Ok there’s a couple of more steps, but that’s the gist of it. It is really easy. So I gave the directions to the group and then I said,
