On Creativity: A brainstorming session

Critical Analysis

This text represents notes on the topic of creativity; the author presents a variety of qualities of creativity, as it is spoken of and considered in popular culture and in grounding philosophy.

The author claims that “creativity is tied to the human potential to bring into being something new” (513), firmly grounding the definition in a metaphysical idea of divine creation and novelty: creative efforts are about making things (ideas) that did not exist a moment ago. It is, the author argues, a natural process that “cannot be forced” (514), but this establishes a contradictory because it is also meant to be controlled.

A creative person is often described through metaphor. A common metaphor is production and work, where “the focus here is on individuals as beings who realize and objectify themselves through work and its products; the craftsman is here an exemplary figure” (515). Referencing Marx, the author views this as “’general labour’, the innovative side of general intellect and, as such, a direct productive force” (517). This is argued to contrast with creativity as a form of problem-solving, “with stress being placed on invention and innovation… human beings are beings who master their lives” (515) and so creativity is a process of addressing life’s problems, not an artifact that is representative of a person’s identity. This is a reference to his later ideas of an entrepreneurial subject who is formulated around a constant need to creatively optimize oneself.

Creativity is an ongoing process of interpellation related to identity development, as it cannot be reached as an end-state: it is learnable and extensible. The author compares this Rousseauism to Schumpeter’s more common view of creativity as entrepreneurial: creative destruction as an ongoing process of market competition, and “entrepreneurial action thus demands permanent innovation—and consequently ceaseless creative exertion” (517). As an entrepreneurial activity, creativity demands external labeling: “whether or not something is creative only emerges afterwards… when it experiences valuation, or at least attracts attention” (517).

The author turns his attention to creativity education. With some disdain, he explains that new corporate training models propose to institutionalize innovation management, yet counterintuitively embed normality. This form of training “normalizes deviations from the norm” through lateral thinking and other templated or procedural methods. It becomes a form of work; “being creative means hard work yet demands the lightness of play” (518). When viewed through a lens of market-innovation and in a corporate context, it runs into a need for speed, where “the higher the pressure to innovate, the shorter the half-life of the new and the greater the corroding of creative potential” (519). As a result, a corporate demand for creativity generates ongoing anxiety to be constantly creative, with no real endgame to be achieved.