So, we've talked a lot about what creativity is not,
but that begs the question,
well, what is it?
What is it? We better have an answer.
It's about changing perspectives.
Creativity is about changing perspectives.
So, we have knowledge and
we take the knowledge to think about whatever it is we're doing.
That's ordinary thinking.
The difficulty comes when out of habit and repeated use,
we get committed to particular ways of seeing the world and thinking about the world.
And what creativity is all about,
the process of creativity is breaking
those commitments and changing the perspective that we take on the world.
It's not just about learning new facts,
it's about understanding things in a new way.
So, one day I was walking home,
I'm actually strolling because it was such a nice spring day and I was
looking at the beautiful lush grass and how green it was.
And I happened to look down and there among the green grass was a $10 bill,
and I reached down and grabbed it.
Now, this was a new experience for me.
It's definitely novel because it's not every day I walk home and discover a $10 bill.
And it's also useful.
Since I found a $10 bill I can use it to buy any number of things,
coffee for the next couple of days, lunch, who knows?
But it's not creative,
because creativity requires a change in perspectives or seeing something in a new way.
It doesn't mean that something happened by
accident and it doesn't mean simply acquiring a new piece of knowledge,
you have to actually change your point of view on something.
And so, just finding a 10 dollar bill may be novel,
it may be useful, but it's not creative.
So, here's a very simple example,
a study from two Illinois psychologists, Anderson and Fischer.
They had people come in and read a story about two kids skipping
school and wandering around somebody in a one of their houses.
So, two kids skipping school,
they go to somebody's house or whatever,
and the participants in the study were asked to imagine
while they were reading that they were a prospective home buyer.
So, they hear about the boys walking in this room,
walking in that room,
and all kinds of information.
And at the end of reading this little story about the boys skipping school,
the participants in the study were asked to recall
everything they possibly could from the story.
So, they remembered to say that the yard was big,
that there was new siding on the house,
that the basement was damp,
that there was a broken window or whatever.
Then they did another task.
But then what they did was they were asked to imagine
now that they were burglars looking to rob houses,
and see if they could recall anything else from
the story that they had forgotten previously.
And what's interesting is at this point
instead of being a home buyer now that there are a burglar,
they went, "Oh yeah, wasn't there a jewelry in that upstairs bedroom?"
and "Was there fine china in the cabinet?"
So, items that they neglected,
when they were thinking about being home buyers now popped to
mind that they were in the role of being a burglar.
So that is when we switch our perspectives
say from home buyer to burglar or something like that,
we're just going to think about the information that we have differently.
We're also going to remember
different knowledge and bring that to bear in a different way.
And that's what creativity is about.
When we're changing our perspectives,
we're not only transforming how we're thinking now,
we're also transforming what we get from memory,
what we remember, and what we would imagine going forward.
Jeffrey LoewensteinAssociate Professor of Organizational Behavior
Jack GoncaloProfessor
