Working Creativity – Blog by Mark Batey, PhD at Psychology Today
October 28, 2009 by Andrew (Drew) · Leave a Comment
The second of a 12-part series focused on organizational creativity:
OK – a few words on reclaiming creativity from the banal…
We’re lost. We have drifted. The safe shores of lexical precision, descriptive accuracy and the exacting use of words have slipped over the horizon. Etymologists the world over sob silently to sleep each night.
Once, a word like “awesome” would refer to the capacity to render someone struck with overwhelming, soul-smacking reverence. Now it is just as likely to be used to describe a promotion…
Truly Awesome Sale – Prices Slashed!!!
So too, is there a tendency for the advertizing industry or the “mad men” to proclaim any faint product improvement as an innovation or a marvel of creativity. Think of the boxes of soap powder which claim to be “New and Improved” but appear to be remarkably similar to that which went before.
The same charge of imprecision can be leveled as to the way the word “creativity” is used. “Creativity” is employed to refer from literally any artistic product of a child through to the intricacies of the theory of evolution, the poetry of Shakespeare, the music of Bach or the ingenuity of the Apple company.
More of Dr. Batey’s entries may be found here.
About Andrew (Drew)
