Creativity
From Wikipedia, a free encyclopedia written in simple English for easy reading.
Creativity (or creativeness) is the ability of a person to be creative, take part in creating, or be useful in a creative network of other people. It is very difficult to measure, and some think it should not be measured. The reason is that creativity can not be defined - although several attempts have been made, a shared definition of the concept of creativity still comes up short.
Some think creativity is an important thing that makes humans different from apes. Others recognize that even apes, other primates, other mammals and some birds adapt to survive by being creative (for example - primates using tools). Liane Gabora believes that all culture comes from creativity, not imitation. Therefore, these people say, human science should focus on it: Ethics for example would focus on finding creative solutions to ethical dilemmas. Politics would focus on the political virtues that need some creativity. Imitation would not be the focus of education. Linguistics might be more interested in how new words are created by culture, rather than in how existing ones are used in grammar.
Intellectual interests (recognized as intellectual rights or intellectual property in the law) are a way to reward creativity in law, but they do not always work very well. A good example is copyright which is supposed to pay authors and artists, but may only pay lawyers to make (imitative) arguments in court.
Creativity is a central question in economics, where it is known as ingenuity (the ability to come up with new ideas) or individual capital - capacities that individuals have, that do not arise from simple imitation of what is known already. This is separate from the instructional capital that might try to capture some of that in a patent or training system that helps others do what the individual leader or founder of the system can do. In urban economics there are various ways to measure creativity - the Bohemian Index and Gay Index are two attempts to do this accurately and predict the economic growth of cities based on creativity.
