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12.2: Creativity

  • Page ID
    92850
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    What do the following have in common: the drug penicillin, the Eiffel Tower, the film Lord of the Rings, the General Theory of Relativity, the hymn Amazing Grace, the iPhone, the novel Don Quixote, the painting The Mona Lisa, a recipe for chocolate fudge, the soft drink Coca-Cola, the video game Wii Sports, the West Coast offense in football, and the zipper? You guessed right!

    All of the named items were products of the creative mind. Not one of them existed until somebody came up with the idea. Creativity is not something that you just pick like apples from a tree. Because creative ideas are so special, creators who come up with the best ideas are often highly rewarded with fame, fortune, or both. Nobel Prizes, Oscars, Pulitzers, and other honors bring fame, and big sales and box office bring fortune. Yet what is creativity in the first place?

    Picture1.png
    Figure 1. People often have difficulty describing where their creative ideas came from. When you think of something creative, how do you typically come up with it?


    This page titled 12.2: Creativity is shared under a CC BY license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by Mehgan Andrade and Neil Walker.