The discourse and nature of creativity and innovation: Ways of relating to the novel

Abstract

In the discourse of the knowledge-based economy, the link between creativity and innovation is usually taken for granted. However, not only is this link of recent date, it joins together two diametrically opposed concepts: the economic concept of innovation and the humanistic concept of creativity. In research too, there is a lack of enquiry into the nature of the processes of creativity and innovation and into how these processes are similar yet different. Building on the original insights of Henri Poincaré and Joseph Schumpeter, I present the hypothesis that creativity and innovation are similar in nature, not in regard to knowledge or skills, but in that both are ways of relating to the novel. My findings suggest, meanwhile, that creativity and innovation differ in that creativity is about experiencing the novel in the creative process, whereas innovation is about willing the novel as a strategy for the innovative process. Furthermore, my findings suggest that there exists a structural similarity between creativity and innovation and Aristotle’s concepts of practical and philosophical wisdom, in that innovation is a form of practical wisdom in regard to the novel, whereas creativity is a form of philosophical wisdom in regard to the novel.

Keywords:

• Creativity
• innovation
• knowledge-based economy
• Aristotle

Notes

1. Such crisis consciousness is absent from one of the forerunners of the discourse on creativity and creativity, namely humanistic psychology, which is an existentialistic movement that was established in the mid-twentieth century in the US by psychologists like Carl Rogers, Erich Froom and Abraham Maslow. According to humanistic psychology, humans have an inner drive for self-actualisation and especially a drive for expressing their creativity. This view on motivation and creativity established a new foundation for human capital in the workplace. The difference is, however, that here self-actualisation and creativity were seen as important sources of motivation for work, not as a means of being innovative in order to survive in times of rapid change.

2. In the book Creativity, Wisdom and Trusteeship (Craft, Gardner, & Claxton, 2008), the authors argue that ‘a blend of creativity and wisdom combined with revisiting the notion of trusteeship in education would be highly desirable, and perhaps even necessary, for the survival of the world as we know it and as we would like it to be’ (Craft et al., 2008, p. 1). This is the idea of the necessity of equipping creativity with a ‘normative superstructure’, which overlooks the fact that creativity includes the question of judgement of relevance, as I have argued. There are no references to or discussions of Aristotle’s concept of wisdom in the book.