Defining ourselves out of creativity?

There comes a point in every researcher's life when they have to answer the following question: 'what is your working definition for x?' This was one of the first questions that I wanted to be able to answer when I first started looking into creativity.

I had a plan...I was going to start by looking at the dictionary definition and then use several books and articles to confirm it. Sorted!

Armed with a plan, I went to the library naively thinking 'Why do other PhDs ever complain about this?' I've opened the Oxford Dictionary, found page 1171 and read the following: 'creativity=to bring into being'. Good...not the most descriptive definition, but I could work with this. Only that was not the case...after looking into some other books I've realised that things are far from being 'sorted' and researchers do not agree with each-other...and they did not agree with each-other 213 times! That is the number of creativity definitions I found since that day I've walked in the library. And I am certain that there are more.

Time has passed and I can now say that there is some agreement within researchers. They note that 'creativity is a process that leads to a product that is 'novel', 'valuable' and 'surprising'. These are referred to as creativity criterions. Paradoxically these very three criterions seem to be the root of the creativity definition problem. These very descriptors are what make the definition open to interpretation. A twisted kind of agreement in disagreement. Until now...

Enter my newly found research hero: Dr. Robert W. Weisberg who wrote and article in the Creativity Research Journal and blew my mind. Without giving away too much, he simplified things and argued that the criterion value is one of the reasons the definition of creativity is causing so much controversy. After going through 213 definitions I can now see the end of the tunnel. Finally I understand that "Meissoneir was a funny man (Weisberg, 2015) but he could not lose his sense of humour after dying ' and I can finally confidently answer the 'working definition' question.

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