Types of Creativity (with examples)

The creativity is the ability of human beings to develop new ideas, new ways of doing things or knowing the world. Also to express themselves and produce new concepts and realities.

The creativity It is a very important function for the development and advancement of humanity in different fields, such as technology, industry or artistic, because, from new and original solutions, the improvement of daily life and the evolution of species.

The characteristics associated with creativity are intelligence, curiosity, passion, inspiration and the constant search for combinations and fusions that can generate new experiences. That is why, from psychology, various types of creativity have been categorized according to the result and the innate conditions in which a person develops.

• See also: Creative thinking

types of creativity

According to Jeffrey Thomas DeGraff, a University of Michigan professor, speaker and consultant, there are five types of creativity that depend on each person:

bisociative creativity

Bisociative creativity, as its name indicates, is that which occurs with the association of two elements, techniques, paradigms or any form that can be used in parallel and that, when worked or manipulated in a single process, produces a new element that breaks the limit of the known and proposes a structure novelty For example: A chef who takes various ingredients and cooks, using a Japanese and a Mexican recipe to make a fusion dish.

Bisociative creativity can also be adopted as a work methodology to be inspired by various currents and, from this, find untrodden paths. In art, bisociative creativity can be seen when an artist tries to combine different techniques in a single product. For example: A photographer who reveals her images and intervenes with watercolor painting.

One of the ways to stimulate bisociative creativity is to develop the habit of curiosity, which allows the person to be exposed to different cultures or scenarios, because from there the necessary stimulation can come to reach the association of two or more concepts.

mimetic creativity

Mimetic creativity consists of the apprehension or understanding of a process or of a form already created to to be able to reproduce it in other contexts and that the new environment be the shock that allows the creative variety. For example: A dancer who learns a famous choreography exactly and jumps out of a plane to recreate it suspended in the air.

This type of creativity is highly appreciated in people who manage to propose solutions or alternatives in certain moments taking things that they have already learned in other moments or areas that may seem opposites.

In pedagogical disciplines, it is a type of creativity that usually works very well, by taking different techniques to teach. For example: A teacher who repeats the movements and speech of a politician to teach her students the functionality of gestural language.

analog creativity

Analog creativity is one that occurs when comparing or finding similarities between two things that may seem different. It can be established that this type of creativity is one of those that involve a mental process and a commitment depth of the person to establish conceptual bridges and links between various elements. For example: Write a poem based on the comparison of two others that come from different literary traditions.

Some of the ways in which analog creativity can be stimulated is the practice of metaphors, that is, superimposing two scenes that have a common aspect or randomly taking two objects and making a detailed description of their similarities.

Analog creativity develops qualities such as recursion, as it allows an individual to make use of the elements at hand to create new things. For example: An artisan who uses bottle corks to create curtains.

intuitive creativity

Intuitive creativity seeks to be the purest or most personal of all types, because although all creation processes are established by knowledge and the experiences of people, when working from intuition, we seek to explore the interior and the unique and unrepeatable gaze that the creator possesses. For example: A mother who entertains her son with body movements and sounds that she makes freely without having a specific reference.

Some recommended methods for exploring intuitive creativity are those that work within the person and the approach of questions of the transcendence of being, among them we can mention meditation or mindfulness.

narrative creativity

Narrative creativity directly concerns the forms of expression of the human being, the art of telling stories. This type of creativity is typical of writers or speakers, since they make use of a specific linguistic code to unfold it and combine it in the most unheard of ways for the purpose of telling a fact, whether maximizing humor or tragedy, parody or sarcasm. For example: A storyteller who invents a modern version of Cinderella to tell to a group of children.

This type of creativity is widely explored by artists in general, since narratives can be configured either with the written word, images, tastes, sounds and almost all forms of affectation sensory. For example: The choreographic staging of Swan Lake which tells Odette's love story only with music, decoration and choreography.

Throughout history, many writers have been recognized as excellent storytellers and bearers of exceptional narrative creativity.

Other types of creativity

expressive creativity

Expressive creativity refers to the ability to communicate in a variety of ways. It differs from narrative creativity because it refers more to the spontaneity and fluidity with which a person can convey what they think or what they feel. For example: A woman who uses looks to accurately convey what she thinks to her partner.

Expressive creativity is characteristic of all human beings and develops as soon as it is put into practice the habit of saying what you think or what you want to convey being as assertive and direct as possible. It also arises from the basic need to be understood. For example: A child who draws a dark and empty room on a piece of paper to say that he feels sad because of his parents' separation from him.

cold creativity

Cold creativity is defined by circumstances that require a person to make a decision or find the solution to a problem by alluding to its rational process and the delicacy of the situations. For example: A doctor who discovers a new method in the middle of a highly complex surgery.

This type of creativity can be studied or analyzed in greater detail in areas (such as political, economic or social), in which leaders and creatives they find original techniques and procedures to be able to handle situations that are complicated, in which they must use their intelligence in a exponential. For example: The idea of ​​the Trojan horse, in which the army finds the solution to be able to enter and take the enemy city.

hot creativity

In contrast to cold creativity, hot creativity is the development of the authentic or the original in the midst of a context in which the person is receiving multiple stimuli external. For example: A singer who improvises a song in the middle of a concert.

Hot creativity is carried out from experiments in which individuals take their experiences to extremes in order to find inspiration. For example: A painter who works listening to music at full volume.

examples of creativity

1. A chef who makes fusion recipes in his restaurant puts into practice the analog creativity.
2. A contemporary dancer moving freely to the music is using his intuitive creativity.
3. A soldier preparing a strategy to defeat his enemy in battle puts cold creativity into practice.
4. A popular music singer who imitates a classical operatic soprano to incorporate new elements into her own compositions is employing the mimetic creativity.
5. The book Rebelion on the farm, of George Orwell as a critique of social reality is an example of narrative creativity.
6. An architect who includes large artistic murals in his buildings is using the bisociative creativity.
7. A stockbroker who employs strategies while stocks go up and down to obtain higher returns makes use of his hot creativity.
8. A writer who tells the story of his country in an epic poem with meter uses his narrative creativity.
9. An abstract painter who makes strokes on the canvas without established rules is using his intuitive creativity.
10. A composer who creates a melody that symbolizes his sadness is using his expressive creativity.

Interactive exercise to practice

Follow with:

• 50 inventions that changed the world
• 20 innovations that changed the world
• convergent and divergent thinking
• Scientific and technological discoveries

References

• DeGraff, JT and Lawrence, KA. 2002. Creativity at Work: Developing the Right Practices to Make Innovation Happen. University of Michigan Business School.
• "Types of creativity: which ones exist, characteristics and importance"in LINK.
• “How many types of creativity are there?” in UNADE University.