The word ‘creativity’ comes from the Latin word crea “to create or make”. It is the act of using one’s imagination to generate new ideas, events or objects. It refers to bringing new things into existence. Creativity can also be defined as the process of producing something that is both original and valuable. It also involves improving existing ideas or rearranging old things and ideas in new ways. These definitions help us understand that creativity is contrary or opposed to copying.
Creative people try to develop and invent new things to solve problems wherever they are. Creativity is experienced in all fields of human activity, such as art, engineering, science, medicine, police, law, commerce, civil service, military, politics, teaching, etc.
A creative person is someone who is able to use their own imagination or ideas to generate new things that are very useful in our daily life activities. There are two kinds of creative people, namely the High/Genius creative person and the Less/ordinary creative person. This classification of creative people depends on three important factors. These are:
• Fluency – The total number of interpretable, meaningful, and relevant ideas generated in response to the stimulus.
• Originality – The statistical rarity of responses among test subjects.
• Elaboration: the amount of detail in the answers.
Tall creative person/genius
This creative person has more general intellectual habits, such as openness, levels of ideation, autonomy, experience, exploratory skills, etc. He/she is able to create items with ease; he comes naturally as if without effort. Creative people tend to be more open to new experiences, more self-confident, more ambitious, driven, impulsive, domineering, and hostile compared to people with less creativity. The lives of history’s creative geniuses were marked by extreme dedication and a cycle of hard work and breakthroughs as a result of their determination.
Less/ordinary creative person
This group of creative people can create, but they usually need direction or guidance. They are limited in their abilities and ideas. They usually struggle before they can craft items. Most of them usually need a push to awaken their creative abilities.
There are several traits of a creative person. Some of these have been explained below.
(i) He is very curious and is eager to learn or discover things about his environment. A creative person always wants to find out why things happen the way they do. He asks a lot of questions about things around him and is always willing to learn from people how things were made.
(ii) He is ready to explore or try new things and ideas: A creative person is always thinking of new things, how to approach a particular problem in a different and more efficient way. You try to explore with various materials, tools and techniques with the sole objective of addressing relevant problems in your community.
(iii) He works hard and does not give up easily in times of difficulty. A creative person is not lazy, but is serious about what he does. In the course of attention to his work, when faced with a difficulty, a creative person does not give up on work. On the contrary, it quickly generates many ideas about how to deal with the difficulty. He keeps trying until he overcomes the difficulty he encountered while going about his work.
(iv) It is highly imaginative, practice-oriented and experimental. You are always thinking about how to solve problems by producing or creating functional items. He is a scientist testing a variety of methods and ideas to come up with a workable tool that is an absolute answer to a problem facing communities and the nation.
(v) Accepts challenges and tasks and completes them: A creative person is very confident and has great determination to succeed in any task assigned to him. He is not a coward, but a positive-minded person who is ready to emerge victorious. He leaves no stone unturned in his work.
(vi) He is always hopeful and disciplined. He has high hopes that his work will bear good fruit. It does not give rise to disappointments and ‘it can’t be done’ statements. He works to meet all deadlines and is loyal to his clients.
(vii) Is original – Does not steal ideas or copy existing ideas, products or articles. On the other hand, it brings out new and first-hand ideas. A creative person can also improve the efficiency or functionality of an existing item or product. However, it does not copy it, but instead tries to address the shortcomings of the existing product, all in the quest to produce a product that better solves the problem at hand.
(viii) He has a great interest and love for what he does. A creative person is very proud of what he does and takes deep delight in it. This is very evident in the passionate way he goes about what he does. Derogatory comments about his work are like a drop of water to put out a wildfire, they do not affect his disposition and attitude towards his work or profession.
(ix) Is able to adapt to a new situation: he finds his way easily, even in a new environment or situation. His presence is soon noticed and alarmed. He learns quickly and is able to adapt to his new environment, be it a new duty, workplace, school, etc.
(x) Is able to come up with many ideas quickly. He is able to generate a wide variety of ideas that are fresh and well-intentioned. He is a good contributor of knowledge and skills. He is a thinker and a storehouse of ideas.
There are stages or periods of vibrating furnace in the creative process. Each of them takes a huge amount of time. The stages are Period of preparation, Period of incubation, Period of understanding or inspiration and Period of verification, elaboration, perception and evaluation.
1. Preparation period
This is the first stage of the creative process where the creative person prepares to handle the problem at hand. It gathers a lot of information about what you are about to do and explores the dimensions of the problem. It also explores various learning techniques to help you build up a deep understanding of the work you are about to do.
2. Incubation period
This is the stage of the creative process where you run into difficulties while attending to work and then take temporary leave of absence from work. She dedicates herself to another job in the hope of finding a remedy to the problem she has encountered.
Incubation aids in creative problem solving by allowing misleading clues to be ‘forgotten’. The absence of incubation can lead the problem solver to fixate on inappropriate strategies to solve the problem. Creative solutions to problems mysteriously emerge from the unconscious mind while the conscious mind is busy with other tasks. Therefore, he keeps working on other things until he finally finds a solution to the problem.
3. Period of intuition or inspiration
This is the period during which the creative person finds a solution to the problem they encountered while doing the work. She drops everything and quickly gets to work. This can take days, weeks, months, or even years. It is also known as bullying and enlightenment period.
4. Period of verification, elaboration, perception and evaluation
At this stage, the creative person works very hard with great joy in order to complete the work. Show your work to friends, family, and experts for their appreciation and critique.