Bill Breen has an interesting piece in this month's Fast Company on the six myths of creativity. For example, the myth that creativity is the exclusive province of creative types. You know. Painters. Sculptors. That prententious phony down the hall with the black clothes, goatee and ponytail...
Wasn't it Ogilvy who quipped that the most creative person in an agency should be the account man? ;)
Roger von Oech, who wrote "a whack in the side of the head" used to teach creative thinking to managers at IBM and all sorts of blue chip places. Of course creativity isn't limited to "creatives", I don't know where that silly idea comes from, though Ihave seen it used as some sort of "turf war" badge. My father who was extremly creative was an engineer - where creativity is needed, in order to come up with new solutions. My mother is also creative, her title is something like economic/estate law (dunno what it is in English). And so on.
Everyone is creative, else we would never have found fire. ;) However, Art Directors are skilled in art direction as well as being creative, and copywriters are skilled in copywriting, as well as being creative. I couldn't build a creativly solved computer as well as my dad did, because my knowledge on the subject is significantly less than his (was). [bummer, I can't even ask him for help]
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