I came across this post with a collection of unique and creative answers kids have written on their school tests. First of all, a lot of them are pretty hilarious and show the depth of understanding of the material beyond the “correct” answer. But it also got me thinking about the nature of creativity.
While creativity is often linked to artistry or imagination, at its core, true creativity is about problem solving.
“Creativity, as has been said, consists largely of rearranging what we know in order to find out what we do not know. Hence, to think creatively, we must be able to look afresh at what we normally take for granted.” — George Kneller
“Focus should be to encourage and develop creativity in all children without the ultimate goal being to make all children inventors, but rather to develop a future generation of critical thinkers.” — Faraq Mousa
“The world we have made as a result of the level of thinking we have done thus far creates problems we cannot solve at the same level of thinking at which we created them.” — Albert Einstein
What’s more valuable for today’s economy? Knowing the “right” answer or the ability to solve problems that others aren’t able to?
There has been far too much emphasis on rote memorization and recitation of facts in our culture. That’s not to say that it’s completely unrequired. A formal educational base is essential in order to create.
As Albert Einstein said, “the secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.” As well as Picasso… “good artists borrow; great artists steal.” (Fittingly, that quote has been attributed to T.S. Elliot, Igor Stravinsky and more)
However, it’s a shame that we often resign ourselves to constantly seeking the “right” answer, as opposed to the asking better questions. As marketers, we continually seek to optimize our efforts by analyzing our analytics and researching our target markets. Again, those are excellent best practices. But it’s easy to get caught up in the minutiae and begin to think that the map is the terrain.
Jerry Seinfeld (in collaboration with ad agency, Mullen) recently came out with a series of spots that does exactly everything you’re not supposed to do for car advertising. It promotes irrelevant, ubiquitous features. Rather than future-looking, it uses the past as a motif. It makes fun of the brand, instead of lifting it up.
What it told me is that Acura isn’t afraid to be sarcastic and silly. They don’t need to overcompensate on the reliability of their product, so that must mean they have a damn good product to begin with. After watching those spots, they earned so much more respect from me than if they put out the same generic dribble so much of auto advertising represents. I want to buy an Acura for my next car because of those terrible ads.
Creativity is looking beyond the “right” answer and finding a better answer.
“There is no doubt that creativity is the most important human resource of all. Without creativity, there would be no progress, and we would be forever repeating the same patterns.” — Edward de Bono