In his [A.Maslow's] opinion it is not the outcome of the process that counts, but the process itself. According to this perspective a person who reinvents Einstein’s formula for relativity is as creative as Einstein was. A child who sees the world with fresh eyes is creative; it is the quality of the subjective experience that determines whether a person is creative, not the judgment of the world. While I believe that the quality of subjective experience is the most important dimension of personal life, I do not believe that creativity can be assessed with reference to it. If creativity is to retain a useful meaning, it must refer to a process that results in an idea or product that is recognized and adopted by others. Originality, freshness of perspective, divergent-thinking ability are all well and good in their own right, as desirable personal traits. But without some form of public recognition the do not constitute creativity. In fact, one might argue that such traits are not even necessary for creative accomplishment.
Source: Implications of a Systems Perspective for the Study of Creativity, in Robert J. Sternberg (Eds.) Handbook of Creativity (p313-335). Cambridge University Press
The view emphasized above is particularly important when we consider invention (a novel idea) in relation to innovation (scalable implementation of the idea). For example, subjectively we might experience a "spark of genius" while inventing a solution, but it's no guarantee that the idea we came up with has any value. Creativity, along with money and other fixtures of the modern society, can be considered a status function. That is, somebody is creative because we think she is creative. Creativity itself is probably one of the greatest human inventions.
tags: creativity, invention, innovation, quote, psychology, system, status function
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