Creativity: what it is and what it isn't

I've been reading about creativity studies and it's a hard discipline to define at first. Creativity is something talked about on a fairly regular basis – it is highly valued in society. But, creativity can have entirely different meanings given the context of the discussion. Many people have the notion that creativity has to do with great artistic or scientific inspiration and production. In the business or military world creativity is strongly associated with problem solving, or strategic planning. Dictionaries simply explain creativity as producing things, or bringing things into being. This idea of producing something can be taken to extremes - from God's creation of the world, all the way down to mundane, everyday products such as humming a tune, or even making a mess. Messes are not of value….so not everything created is of value. Productivity alone does not equal creativity either. I could make several batches of burned cookies and none of them would be good, right? (this excludes all you people who like burned cookies) Also originality doesn't necessarily mean creativity. Just because one has an original idea doesn't mean it's a good one. Leonardo da Vinci tried a new mixture of paint (a combination of water and oil based paint) on his Last Supper fresco and it started peeling off even during his lifetime - thus not all new ideas are good. According to Dr. Albert Rothenberg, M.D., "Creativity is, therefore, the production of something that is both new and truly valuable"(1990; 5) I suppose the moral here is to keep on trying and working.
I think the whole country would like to see some truly innovative creative thinking about our oil dependency problem (as well as a whole host of other national and world problems). There is an idea floating around out there that we should gather up some of the country's most creative thinkers and sequester them in a meeting place where they would work on the problem just like they did with the space program and with the atom bomb. That would be a great example of creativity that brings forth the production of an idea that is both new and valuable, eh?