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Cropley, A. J. (2004). Creativity as a social phenomenon. In M. Fryer (Ed.), Creativity and cultural diversity
(pp. 13-24). Leeds: Creativity Centre Educational Trust.
Quasicreativity, on the other hand, certainly has many of the elements of genuine
creativity - such as a high level of fantasy - but the connection with reality is
tenuous. An example would be the creativity of daydreams. Pseudocreativity and
quasicreativity differ from genuine creativity because the latter requires a further
element over and above mere novelty. A product or response must be relevant to
some issue that the society regards as worth looking at and must offer some kind of
effective response to the issue, even if the relevance and effectiveness only become
apparent after the fact. Victor Kayam rejected the opportunity to acquire the rights
to Velcro because he could see no use for it. Until somebody else did, in terms of the
present social definition of creativity, Velcro remained uncreative.
A further crucial property of creativity as a social phenomenon arises from the fact
that the concept has highly positive connotations. It is difficult, for instance, to think
of novel forms of terrorism as creative, even though they might, in a purely formal
sense, satisfy the criterion of introducing useful (to the goals of the terrorists)
novelty. Furthermore, in a second paradox of creativity, revolutionary new ideas and
products that are well-intentioned, and may even achieve significant social good,
often open the way for serious negative consequences for society, regardless of the
intent of the people producing them. The highly acclaimed discoveries of people like
Jenner and Pasteur, to take one example, laid the foundations for germ warfare!
Thus, creativity has a dark side (McLaren, 1993). Nowadays we are experiencing a
climate of general intoxication with creativity (ibid.), so that this problem has
become particularly acute and the need for social responsibility is increasingly being
stressed (see, for instance, discussions of cloning human beings). As King (1992)
argued, the term innovation should only be applied to change introduced with the
deliberate intention of benefiting the system into which it is introduced. Thus, the
ethical element takes on particular importance (Grudin, 1990).
behaviours are really guilty only of deviating too much from what the society will
tolerate at the present time. Perhaps the best known classical example is the
sentencing of Galileo in 1633 for supporting the now commonplace Copernican
position that the earth orbits the sun. The degree of novelty was too much for the
society to tolerate. The societys reaction to levels of novelty that exceed the limits,
i.e., that introduce intolerable levels of surprise, are closely connected with the age,
occupation or social role of the person involved. An artist is allowed to be more
outrageous than an engineer or a brain surgeon, for instance.
Creative products
According to economic theory, returns on investments in rich countries should have
been lower during the second half of the 20 th century than during the first, because
the stock of capital was rising faster than the workforce. However, the fact is that
they were considerably higher. The decisive factor that defeated the law of
diminishing returns is now seen to be the addition to the system of new knowledge
and technology, i.e. innovation. Innovation involves the practical insertion of novelty
into a functioning system, i.e. what might be called applied creativity. It currently
accounts for more than half of economic growth in more technologically developed
societies (Economist Technology Quarterly, 2002, p.13). As Higgins (1994) put it, the
task of this applied kind of creativity is to generate new and valuable ideas, products
and processes, devices or systems that perform tasks or solve problems
(Horenstein, 2002, p.2). Burghardt (1995) referred to this not as applied but as
functional creativity, contrasting it with aesthetic creativity that, in his view, has no
functional purpose, only aesthetic purpose. It is this functional creativity on which
the present paper focuses.
An essential element of functional creativity is the devices or systems that
perform tasks or solve problems, in other words, the products. Although earlier
discussions of creativity gave considerable emphasis to tangible products (eg.
Gordon, 1961; Roe, 1952; Rossman, 1931), this aspect has not received as much
attention as might be expected in recent years, perhaps because modern research
has been dominated by psychologists and educators. I have argued, as have other
writers such as Albert (1990), that it is too difficult to define creative products in a
practical, objective way, because the concept is so subjective; and have
recommended focusing on creative processes and characteristics of the creative
person, thus treating creativity as a sociological or psychological phenomenon.
Although I do not want to reify creativity, repeating the mistake made by treating
intelligence as though it were a real and tangible entity rather than simply an
explanatory construct used to make sense of observable behaviour, the creativity of
products is not as diffuse a concept as it might at first appear.
Cropley and Cropley (in press) defined four key properties of creative products.
Somewhat modified for present purposes, these are:
seminality (it opens up possibilities in contexts other than the one into which it is
being introduced).
Extending Taylors (1975) idea of levels of creativity, Cropley and Cropley argued
that the criteria just listed form a hierarchy. Although in theoretical discussions
novelty is the main characteristic of creativity, in practical settings the first criterion
in the hierarchy is usefulness. For instance, if a bridge falls down instead of carrying
traffic across a river, no amount of novelty or beauty can justify its cost. However,
although usefulness is a necessary criterion for functional creativity, it is not
sufficient on its own. A product that is simply useful is not creative but routine. Of
course, routine products can be extremely helpful, but because they lack novelty
they are not creative.
The second necessary criterion is novelty. In the case of aesthetic creativity,
novelty may be sufficient on its own (i.e. aesthetic creativity may not demand
usefulness), but in the case of functional creativity it is insufficient without
usefulness. When a products usefulness is supplemented by novelty it achieves the
lowest level of functional creativity and can be labelled original (useful and novel).
The further addition of beauty yields an elegant functional product (useful, novel
and beautiful), and usefulness, novelty and beauty supplemented by seminality
yield innovative creativity. Original, elegant and innovative products can all lay
claim to functional creativity, although at successively higher levels.
Functionally creative products that solve concrete and practical problems in
economics, business, manufacturing, science, engineering and the like can be
contrasted with the merely aesthetic products of some forms of art, music,
literature, etc, in which the primary focus is on novelty and/or beauty rather than on
practical usefulness, with the result that usefulness in a specific, concrete, physical
situation is missing. Of course, it can be argued that such products display their own
form of usefulness, since they solve aesthetic problems such as how to
communicate an artists sense of wonder. However, this form is different from the
usefulness that is seen in functional creativity. Without decrying aesthetic creativity,
the present paper defines usefulness in a functional way.
Kinds of novelty
A framework has now been established for distinguishing among the four forms of
introduction of novelty into a social setting (functional creativity, aesthetic
creativity, madness and criminality). This is based on the six criteria discussed
above: novelty, usefulness, beauty, seminality, ethicality and social acclaim. Table 1
shows how this can be done. Here, a plus sign means that a criterion is satisfied, a
minus sign that it is not, and a question mark either that the role of the particular
criterion for this form of novelty production is unclear or the property in question is
possible but not necessary. Thus, for instance, criminal novelty is obviously novel
and useful (to the criminal), and therefore receives plus signs in these areas.
However, it is clearly unethical and does not receive social acclaim, since it is illegal
(at least officially), and therefore receives minus signs on these two dimensions. It is
unclear whether novel criminal behaviour can be beautiful, since it is imaginable
that some people could regard it in this way, and it is possible but not necessary
that it be seminal (i.e. that it open up new perspectives for novel kinds of criminal
behaviour in other settings). For these reasons criminal novelty receives a question
mark for both beauty and seminality.
Table 1: Forms of novelty production
Usefulness
Novelty
Beauty
Seminality
Ethicality
Social
acclaim
Derange
d
+
?
-
Criminal
+
+
?
?
-
Aesthetica
lly creative
?
+
+
?
+
+
Effectively
creative
+
+
?
?
+
+
Force
Effect
Change
mode
Benefits
Despite change:
Change:
Conservin
g
is relatively
slow
builds on what
already exists
may appear to
be blocked.
Evolutionary
Renewing
is
rapid
(paradigm
shift)
sweeps away
what
already
exists.
As a result of change:
Revolutionar
y
novelty is obvious
progress is often rapid
problems are often solved
quickly
people are encouraged to
introduce novelty
existing structures are
threatened.
6. reconstruction and redirection (it breathes new life into an approach previously
abandoned);
7. Re-initiation (it begins at a radically different point from the current one and
takes off in a new direction).
The first six of these involve building on what already exists rather than introducing
something entirely new. At least the first three seem to me to involve evolutionary
rather than revolutionary change (see Table 2). Miller (2000) too emphasised that
the commonest form of production of novelty involves building on the already
known.
Blind, wholesale novelty may fail to satisfy social criteria such as usefulness, even
if it introduces novelty. There are also other factors that can hinder a societys
acceptance of change. Even if the novelty is useful, possibly beautiful and seminal,
revolutionary change may introduce it at a pace that is beyond what a society can
tolerate. The area of change may be too central to the psyche of the society in
question or too sensitive to permit an overnight paradigm shift. Powerful vested
interests may wish to maintain the status quo. Thus, there may well be situations
where an evolutionary process leads to successful introduction of socially
acceptable, relevant and effective novelty, where revolutionary novelty would not.
Thus, from the point of view of creativity and culture, introduction of novelty
requires both conserving and innovating - revolution to be sure, but also evolution.
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