What's creativity got to do with it?
Image Source: Inc.
It is curious that a minute has 60 seconds and an hour 60 minutes. Timekeeping, invented by the Sumerians in ancient Mesopotamia around 2000 BCE, is credited to their development of the sexagesimal system, which uses 60 as its base. But how did they arrive at this number?
Image Source: artistsandillustrators.co.uk
The answer lies in simple observation and curiosity. They looked to their hands. Humans have five fingers, one of which is the opposable thumb. The four remaining fingers are each divided into three sections, making 12 segments in total. This segmentation possibly explains why 12 came to represent a dozen. By using their thumb to count each section on the four fingers of one hand, the Sumerians could tally 12 units. To continue counting past 12, they used the other hand, releasing one finger for every 12 units counted on the other hand. This method allowed them to count to 60—five sets of 12 segments.
As it turned out, 60 is a remarkable number: it can be divided by 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12, 15, 20, and 30. This divisibility made calculations and conversions between different units of time significantly easier. Almost 4,000 years later, 60 remains the base unit for many calculations, including aeronautical measurements. Was this a product of creativity or genius?
Illustration: Nishant Choksi for The New Yorker
The post-war American obsession with “creativity” has a different story. When psychologists like Joy Paul Guilford began exploring creativity, it was an act of rebellion against the dominant study of behaviorism, which was seen as reductive and overly mechanistic.
While psychologists grappled with defining creativity, people like Alexander Osborn—an advertising executive from Madison Avenue—seized the term and twisted it to suit capitalist goals. He used the concept to suggest that people needed to be better, smarter, and more innovative to succeed, framing creativity as an aspirational trait that everyone should strive for.
Osborn turned a universal human ability into something people felt they needed to access—because, supposedly, they weren’t good enough as they were. He capitalized on this insecurity by positioning himself as someone who could teach them to unlock their latent potential. The “creative industry” quickly latched onto this notion, making creativity a skill that could be packaged, sold, and commodified.
Image Source: The Cult of Creativity
One byproduct of this commercialization was the brainstorm—originally conceived as a way for employees to share their ideas in suggestion boxes. These ideas, once gathered, were used to speed up production and increase profits, but not for those contributing the ideas. The profits were reserved for those at the top. Literary scholar Mikhail Bakhtin referred to this process as “carnivalesque,” a situation in which the traditional order is temporarily upended, allowing those at the bottom to voice their ideas and frustrations before the hierarchy is swiftly restored.
For Osborn, brainstorming was more than a tool—it was the tool. He believed it held the power to solve any problem, from production efficiency to world peace. But his obsession with brainstorming often led to shallow solutions. When brainstorming was applied to address juvenile delinquency, participants generated 125 ideas in just 24 minutes.
However, most of these solutions were superficial, focusing on tackling symptoms rather than identifying root causes. This highlighted a fundamental flaw: brainstorming, although useful in certain contexts, was often misapplied to situations requiring deeper analysis and systemic thinking.
Osborn went so far as to claim that creativity could bring “permanent peace to our world.” Yet, despite millions of “creative” people around the globe, we still have no lasting peace.
This is because most of our creative energy is funneled into perpetuating capitalism. Those in the so-called creative industries are rewarded if they can demonstrate how their imagination can generate profits. This underscores the reality that our society’s definition of creativity is not neutral—it’s shaped by the demands of the market.
Abraham Maslow, the psychologist best known for his hierarchy of human needs, offered a slightly different perspective on creativity. He argued that creativity couldn’t be switched on and off at will but should be nurtured by creating better societal conditions. Ironically, this idea echoed the behaviorist ideals other creative researchers sought to distance from—suggesting that even those opposing behaviorism couldn’t fully escape its influence.
Maslow went on to associate creativity with traits such as childishness, unconventionality, and even irresponsibility. He contrasted these attributes with those of “non-creative” people, who he described as rigid and orderly. This kind of binary thinking created a false dichotomy, separating people into distinct categories that fostered division. In contrast, Frank Barron, another creativity researcher, rejected this dichotomy. He found that creative individuals, rather than being chaotic or impulsive, were often deliberate, thorough, and reserved.
Today, the term “creativity” has become a buzzword, used to add flair to nearly any activity: “creative problem-solving,” “creative thinking,” “creative solutions.”
But what truly distinguishes “creative problem-solving” from problem-solving itself? At its core, both seek solutions.
Carl Rogers, a humanistic psychologist, offered a more egalitarian view: “Creativity exists in every individual and awaits only the proper conditions to be released and expressed.” If creativity is inherent, as Rogers believed, then it isn’t something that can be confined to boardrooms or brainstorming sessions.
It’s worth reflecting on what the Sumerians or Babylonians would think of this modern obsession with creativity. Their inventions—writing, numbers, and the sexagesimal system—shaped civilization. They didn’t need labels like “creative” or “genius.” Their contributions arose from necessity, observation, and a deep understanding of the world around them.
In the end, the post-war psychologists’ struggle to define creativity stemmed from their discomfort with the idea that everyone could be intelligent or a genius. Thus, they adopted “creative” as a seemingly democratic option—a term to describe those who excelled at unconventional problem-solving.