The Scientization of Creativity: "Innovate or die!"

Abstract

The tech-bubble, its ultimatum to innovate, and its subsequent bursting at the turn of the twenty-first century placed an economic emphasis on creative, original, innovative, iterative, and relevant ideas to drive growth in the marketplace. The resulting Creative Economy is now the new economy that tech, business, and higher education professionals seamlessly live, work, and create. Corporatized creativity, its discourse, and its call to innovate in the university seems, however, different in-kind than the object of study in a liberal art's classroom. Corporatized creativity discourse vastly differs from Immanuel Kant's long-standing definition that creativity produces both original and exemplary work. In the current economy, creativity must be both original and appropriate to the problem to solve. Additionally, the corporate sphere depends on not only knowing how and idea comes about but also how to be able to replicate its process and methods. The current corporatized creativity discourse 'scientizes' creativity or rationalizes and institutionalizes its processes and does so in order to monetize its creative productions for the marketplace. Within the new creativity discourse, a subtle but vital shift in vocabulary highlights the importance of also shifting the learning outcomes in most university classrooms. Traditionally, humanities courses teach the concept of creativity and its various applications from exalted individuals who produce objects across media and history. Now, every classroom is or will soon be expected to actively teach how to be creative no matter the course, subject, or student's aptitude or talent for it. For that to happen, this paper contents that teaching the concept of creativity in the classroom needs to make a fundamental change to teaching how to be creative.