Creativity is not One Ability, but a Whole Cluster of Abilities

Creativity is not one ability, but a whole cluster of abilities. The most important ones are:

Ideational fluency: It measures a person's ability to come up with a number of solutions to a given problem.

Flexibility: The ability to provide a large variety of solutions, to respond to a problem from a variety of viewpoints, and to use a variety of approaches in problem solving.

Originality: The ability to come up with unusual but appropriate responses.

Ability to sense problems: The ability to notice the unexplained, the unsatisfactory, or the incogruent.

Ability to grasp the causes:It is the ability to go to the roots of a phenomenon by unravelling its causes, and equality, to visualise its consequences.

Ability to elaborate: It is the difference between a legend (that people talk of) and Shakespeare's drama on it. The ability to elaborate is indispensable to putting a creative idea to work.

Ability to restructure problems: The ability to go behind the surface features of a problem, and see what the "real" problem is.

Pradip Khandwalla

Fourth Eye: Excellence Through Creativity
A.H. Wheeler, Allahabad, 1984

Innovation Chain

Industry relies on innovation to remain competitive.
R&D institutions serve as the fountainhead of such innovation nad academia provide the knowledge required for that innovation.

R. Sunder

Partner Founder
BiSS(P) Ltd.

"Pain and Excitement of Taking Technology to the Market"
Vikalpa
October - December 2004