Creativity
From Wikipedia, a free encyclopedia written in simple English for easy reading.
Creativity (or creativeness) is the ability of a person to be creative, participate in creating or be useful in a creative network of other people. It is very difficult to measure, and many think it should not be measured.
Some think creativity is the only thing that makes humans different from apes. While others recognize that apes, other primates, other mammals and some birds adapt to survive by being creative (for example - primates using tools) Liane Gabora believe that all of culture comes from creativity, not imitation. Therefore, they say, human science should focus on it: Ethics for instance would focus on finding creative solutions to ethical dilemmas. Politics would focus on the political virtues all of which need some creativity. Imitation would not be the focus of education as it is now. Linguistics might be more interested in how new words are created by culture rather than in how existing ones are used in grammar.
Intellectual interests (which can be recognized as intellectual rights or intellectual property in the law) are a way to reward creativity in law, but they do not always work very well. A good example is copyright which is supposed to pay authors and artists but may only pay lawyers to make (imitative) arguments in court.
Creativity is a central question in economics where it is known as ingenuity or individual capital - capacities individuals have that do not arise from simple imitation of what is known already. This is separate from the instructional capital that might try to capture some of that in a patent or training system that helps others do what the individual leader or founder of the system can do. In urban economics there are various ways to measure creativity - the Bohemian Index and Gay Index are two attempts to do this accurately and predict the economic growth of cities based on creativity.