Creativity and the creative product?
When I first started looking into creativity I knew that I wanted to look into product creativity. While this decision was clear to me right from the beginning, I remember reading an article in the Creativity Research Journal that stated something along the lines: 'to talk about creativity without focusing on the creative product (however judged) is like discussing the play Hamlet without mentioning the protagonist'. This made perfect sense to me at that time and I've happily focused my research on the products of creativity. Lately, however, while planning my thesis structure, I have realised one thing: no matter how much I want to focus on the "protagonist' I cannot ignore the fact that creative products are the results of a process - a process that lives and turns it's wheels in the mind of the creator - and this individual created the 'protagonist' while sitting in an environment. This is turn raises the question, can we truly focus on the creative product while ignoring the process, individual and the environment? Perhaps for my own sanity, I will continue focusing on the 'protagonist' but I can no longer put these in separate boxes.