Ingredients of Creativity: Originality and More

Abstract

In spite of voluminous research into the nature of creativity, the definition of the term is still highly controversial. Much of the work in this area has focused on the questions of what, and how many, factors should form the definition. This study took an empirical approach to the question considering the various perspectives such as the standard definition of creativity, the US Patent Office definition, and the Creative Product Analysis Model. Subsequently, the usefulness of four major factors of creativity—originality, value, surprise, and aesthetics in the context of 3 types of outputs (ideas, everyday products, and socially recognized products) were investigated. The major focus of the study was to reveal which of these 4 factors are most crucial to creativity. The analyses were also extended to the concept of innovation. Data collected from both experts and nonexperts indicated that originality was the strongest correlate of both creativity and innovation. Surprise explained a significant amount of variance in creativity above and beyond originality and value, which supports the 3-dimensional Patent Office definition. However, it played a less significant role in explaining differences in innovation. Aesthetics was also significantly related to creativity in all types of outputs but was mostly unrelated to innovation. Interestingly, expertise mostly did not influence the evaluations. Limitations and further research are discussed.