Thoughts on creativity

Finger painting at the campfire

Tobias Hein studied laboratory and process engineering, specialising in biotechnology. For his degree, he developed PCR tests for genetically modified maize, but then followed the call of marketing. As a B2B online marketing expert at LUMITOS AG, he helps companies in the chemical, life science and biotech sectors win new customers. In his spare time, he writes pieces like this one. © WISTA Management GmbH

Have you ever wondered what creativity actually is? When you’re chatting to your friends about your kids’ talents, do you say things like “Our Deniz is so creative, he’ll win the Nobel Prize one day!” or “Alex has asked Father Christmas for a second microscope. Naturally, we’ll be sending her to art school when she’s older.”No, of course not. Creativity is creative, and science is...well, it’s science.

Or so I thought. Then along came Wikipedia. It’s telling me that creativity is the ability to produce something new or original that is also useful or practical.

Mhm. Here’s what I’d like you to do: grab your little hip flask, head over to the New National Gallery, and take a generous swig every time you come across something useful or practical.

Rather dry affair, don’t you think?

Do you think it’s fair that the definition of creativity should be tied to something as mundane as usefulness, thereby excluding precisely those artists and their works whom we regard as the very embodiment of creativity? Neither do I. If you keep scrolling, the Wikipedia article does feature a bit of nuance. One is that usefulness can also mean that the creative process and/or the creative product evokes emotions. But I can hardly send people off to a museum and tell them: “Drink every time you feel something.”

Let’s summarise: creativity means creating something new and useful; art, music and literature evoke emotions; emotions are apparently useful, which means that the fine arts also qualify as creative. The logic strikes me as a little contrived.

Wikipedia also cites an EU study which found that “the proportion of people with university degrees working in creative occupations […] had an effect on [economic] productivity roughly four times greater than the proportion of people working in non-creative occupations”. Really? Do creative people contribute so much more to the economy than non-creative people? Let’s look at the fine print.

For a start, the study classifies government and public-sector employees, managers, businesspeople, lawyers and others as “non-creative occupations”. Pretty much everything else, including natural and social sciences, life sciences and healthcare, teaching and engineering, is lumped in with the “creative occupations” category.

Are scientists and engineers creatives after all? Was I unfair to Alex, the microscope enthusiast? Will he have a creative career after all?

The best way to resolve these contradictions is to broaden our understanding of the less artistic forms of creativity. Creativity is not found only in museums, galleries and on stages. It also includes problem-solving skills. Being able to develop ideas. Find new ways of doing things. Yes, the creative result can be a painting or a song. But it can also be a new theory, a machine, a drug, or a business. It is this boundless variety of creative expression that defines us as a species. Without creativity, we would still be hiding in caves from sabre-toothed tigers. But we wouldn’t be painting them on the cave walls. We wouldn’t be lighting fires in the darkness or telling each other stories. We would accept oceans as boundaries rather than asking ourselves how to cross them. Everything would just be the way it is. We would want for nothing. Like bonobos, hyenas, or termites want for nothing. But we would stop being human.

Guest article by Tobias Hein for Adlershof Journal