Ask The Purple List: What Is Creativity?

We asked some of the trends and innovation experts on the Purple List a couple of questions about the term creativity and they gave us some surprising responses. Today, we publish the answers that came in from around the world to the following question:

Thinking about how things have changed what do you see as the meaning of the word ‘creative’ these days?

“Synoyms for creative: innovative, risky, sexy, engage”
Andres Colmenares of Bogota who offers trend research in Latin American market

“‘Creative’ = what works. It used to be part of the solution. We’re doing an ad…so what’s ‘the creative’. Today creativity is not about art or even cleverness…nor it is limited to those with the actual word in their titles. “Creative” is synonymous with what delivers results. “Creative” drives the entire strategy, including the product itself. “Creative” ties together a singular idea that drives a brand, and is communicated at all levels and through all channels.”
Scott Burns of St Louis who offers experiential integration planning & ideation

“Creative is contextual. It ranges from surprising solutions to welcome interruptions on the senses.”
Charles Frith of Beijing who offers cutural analysis and trend forecasting

“Differentiation.”
David Carlson of Falsterbo (Sweden) who offers strategies in design and brand development and trend insights

“‘Creative’ means not being afraid to change or look things through a different perspective. Creativity is a fine combination of freedom, exploration and discipline to filter and execute the best ideas.”
Ivana Cunha of Sao Paulo who offers brand ID, design ID, behavioral research and insight generation using a global creative trendsetters panel and new products and services development

“‘Creative’ has traditionally been associated with the production of a thing or image. Marketing has been king until very recently. Now, with booming sensory overload and saturation, a new emerging creative seems to be developing based on data aggregation (the organization of things) and disruptive process methodology (the re-organization of things). As a result, qualitative and quantitative practices are bleeding into one another more and more. Strangely enough, these days, statisticians, scientists and even curators are becoming sources of creative (cross-trainer creative if you will). There has never been a time when words like “algorithm” and “genome” have sounded so sexy.”
Jason Tan of Manila who offers trend and research services in Asia

“For me, creativity is applied lateral thinking with the goal of injecting newness into any issue – wherever it is needed, (and often, thinking differently about where it is needed is actually the place that you can get most creative).”
Jordan Herald of Toronto who offers innovation consultancy

“From a communications point of view, The first thing that came to mind when I thought about creativity was the word “honesty” – and I think that has a lot do with the way products and services have been taken to market. It’s a lot of BS on all ends of the value chain. This may explain the current stigma of advertising. You’re creative if you can engage people honestly and in doing so, add value, but not necessarily in a tangible way. If I feel good because of something I saw or read, that in and of itself is value.”
Lourenço Bustani of São Paulo who runs a behavioral trends and innovation boutique that services companies throughout Latin America.

“Things changed but creativity didn’t: we feel the opposite just because our global exposure is rather a new experience and that brings us exposure to others’ (from all over the world) creativity. On the other hand, we must admit creativity sometimes is confused with “ability to do something new” or “having the instruments to be creative”: that’s a consequence of digital technology brought to everyone’s pocket. But we have to keep in mind that creativity is a personal quality (not everybody is creative) and has to be fed in a systematic way (as every human quality it needs strong – professional – exercise to become excellent). Finally our living and professional ambients are no longer definite and our profession is frequently a mix of specializations and competences: in that case creativity is more a communication and collaboration personal attitude to understand and to think on reality.”
Mario Soavi in Milan who is a marketing, communication and design expert

“To me, working with new talent and constantly developing new interesting music of all types that can be presented in different ways through all types of channels the creativity ALWAYS starts with the creator. The more creative the music is, the more it stands out and truly tells a story and speaks from a honest perspective, the more creative I get as a consultant and music supervisor getting it out to the world…”
Patrik Larsson of Stockholm who sees himself as a gateway to cool, trendy and young Sweden.

“Creativity is about experimenting, taking risks, pushing limits, having fun, being naive and fresh, never looking back on previous successes, intellectual curiosity – that hasn’t changed. Of course in the corporate world a ‘creative’ is often more of an artisan than an artist, most are too restricted by their superiors or clients. And when the client is creative (Jacobs, Galliano etc) why would they need an agency semi-suit creative? Instead they prefer to collaborate with contemporary artists for whom the word creative has not changed its meaning.”
Philippe Mihailovich of Paris who offers unique ways to add soul to a brand, alternatives to advertising, CRM and all the other standard marketing tools.