We've engaged the Emory University community and academic colleagues from across the country by asking "What is Creativity?" Here are a few of the answers we've received.
If you'd like to share your own thought of Creativity, email us at creativity@emory.edu.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Professor of Psychology and Management, Claremont Graduate University
Psychologist Mihaly Csikszemihalyi, who has studied creativity for over thirty years, describes it as "the cultural equivalent of the process of genetic changes that result in biological evolution." To understand creativity, he says that we must look beyond individuals to the intellectual and social networks that stimulate thinking and the social mechanisms that recognize and spread innovations.
Marshall Duke, Candler Professor of Psychology, Emory University
"The capacity to see connections and possibilities where others do not. The ability to disorganize received ways of thinking and to reorganize them in a way unknown before. The process whereby one's ideas or productions delight, surprise, and inspire others. The ability to move us forward whether we want to move forward or not. The capacity to stretch our minds so they simply cannot ever go back to where they were."
Fereydoon Family, Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Condensed Matter Physics, Emory University
"Our imagination is boundless. In a split second we can imagine an incredible number of things. To give form to what is imagined takes great creative powers. That's why I believe creativity is giving form to imagination."
Ryan Hays, Office of the Secretary, Emory University
"What makes creativity so, well, creative is that our words, no matter how eloquent or erudite, cannot capture its essence. When pressed for a definition, I typically steal a line from Michel Foucault and say that creativity enables us to 'free thought from what it silently thinks.'"
Andrea Hershatter, Associate Dean and Director of the BBA Program, Goizuetta Business School, Emory University
"The ability to take conceptual or physical raw material and put it together in such a way that a new perspective, solution, or physical entity emerges that is greater than the sum of its parts."
Michael Mandl, Executive Vice President for Finance and Administration, Emory University
"To me, creativity is a process that stems from thinking about or conceptualizing something in way that others haven't before – the process often begins by framing a question differently than it has been framed before. For me, creativity in problem solving often stems from simplifying an issue to its root and then thinking about a solution that addresses what is indeed at the root, but often overlooked or disguised by something else. So often we miss creative solutions, or even creative thinking, because we rely on a historical or another person's definition of the issue. To fully foster creativity, we must remove the constraint of fear from our thinking and develop a spirit of positive belief in the concept of what is possible. "
Sara McClintock, Assistant Professor of Religion, Emory University
"Creativity is absorption in experience, savoring complexity, recognizing interdependence, and striving to embody love."
Santa Ono, Professor of Ophthalmology and Vice Provost of Academic Initaitives and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs, Emory University
"To me, creativity means having the courage to think 'outside of the box'. Creative people are so because they approach problems and projects in many ways and are most pleased when the approach is novel. A creative campus will result in three or more answers from two individuals pondering a single question. The coffee break discussions will have a constant focus on the question mark rather than the phrase, and people will regularly lose track of time. Creativity requires that a person be more focused on inner vision than one's image - a willingness to be seen at moments as a fool. As true innovation almost always requires trial and error and mis-steps, creative people are usually misunderstood or underappreciated. They may not be popular or even liked in their lifetime...but their work will reveal previously unseen or unheard beauty in this world. Although the lives of creative people will be as epehmeral as all humankind, their work will live on, having made a unique mark, however small."
Sidney Perkowitz, Charles Howard Candler Professor of Physics, Emory University
"Creativity can mean the creation of an absolutely new idea, but it also means seeing how to combine known ideas in a new way, or exploring something we all know from a unique angle."
Steven Tepper, Associate Professor of Sociology and Associate Director of the Curb Center for Art, Enterprise, and Public Policy, Vanderbilt University
Sociologist Steven Tepper defines creativity as "producing something new (or combining old elements in new ways) to advance a particular field or add to the storehouse of knowledge." In each case, creativity is as relevant to the health sciences, business, and law as it is to the arts and sciences. Tepper describes several conditions that scholars believe are necessary for creativity:
- an atmosphere where collaboration thrives
- diverse environments where there are adequate opportunities for cross-cultural exchange
- interdisciplinary exchange
- time and resources
- an environment that tolerates and even encourages failure
James Wagner, President of the University, Emory University
"We must ask the arts and the humanities to help us define what it means to be fully, humanly alive, to live in community, to understand our souls, and to express ourselves with the full range of communication that goes beyond words to the celebration of our humanity. That is a tall order. It is one that we at Emory must invest in. And for that reason the theme of creativity and the arts is not merely one among many themes in the Emory Strategic Plan, it is one of the fundamental goals and building blocks of what we are attempting to become." (State of the University address, Sept 26, 2006)
