Continual Innovation

“Creativity is…seeing some thing that doesn’t exist already. You need to find out how you can bring it into being, and that way be a playmate with God.” – Michele Shea

According to Webster’s Dictionary, the definition of creativity is artistic or intellectual inventiveness. Creativity is marked by the capability or power to produce or bring into existence, to invest with a new form, to produce by way of imaginative skill, to make or bring into existence something new. When you generate something, you are actually bringing it into being, making it from nothing.  But how do you make some thing from nothing? How do you obtain creativity? What is the essence of creativity?

Maybe only magic can explain creativity, that sudden “aha!” moment when it all comes together. Some have said that it’s something mysterious and puzzling, maybe impossible to figure out.  Some have said it should be divine inspiration. Creativity is basically thinking the impossible, and then performing what no 1 else has performed before, occasionally developing totally new worlds. If you’ve taken a new approach to a problem and it works, then you’re making use of your creativity.

Creativity comes in several forms. It can be scientific creativity, resulting in inventions or medical cures. It can be artistic or musical, resulting in stunning paintings, sculptures or operas and songs. It can be creative writing, resulting in novels, short stories and poems. Creativity can even be as simple as arts and crafts, such as needle arts, yarn crafts, and woodcrafts – issues you produce with your own two hands.

The essential thing to remember is that creativity includes generating the idea or concept, as well as applying that idea and producing or manifesting the end product or result. Creativity or imagination is an integral part of being human and separates us from the animal world. Carl R. Rogers said, “The extremely essence of the creative is its novelty, and hence we have no standard by which to judge it.”