is smart person is more creative than normal person .?

[Manar]

every one is an creative person .just there are some people cant see how to be creative .some people just need to start then they will move on and be more creative than many others could be smarter than them .

[Chris Barlow]

This is the issue of deliberate creativity versus natural creativity.

There are habits and attitudes and tools and techniques which help people perform more creatively than their natural life and situation have led them to be.

Your culture, education, and life experience have taught you certain thinking habits and beliefs. Creativity seeks the opportunities for success hidden by those beliefs.

[Robert "Alan" Black]

For many years I have accepted the premise that all human beings are born with capacities to be creative: able to generate new ideas and new combinations of old ideas yet cultures tend not to support and reward them as a general rule.

One philosopher/architect, while refering to architects made the following statement

5 to 10% of architects are creative

10 to 15% are innovative....they understand and apply the breakthru creative ideas and concepts of the "creatives"

75 to 85% are immitative of the "innovatives" and rarely understand the "creatives'" ideas and concepts

My working and educational experiences have shown that these numbers may very well apply to most occupations and professions.

All this said I strongly believe that all people can become more creative than they have been so far in their lives or are currently demonstrating through deliberate actions: using tools, techniques, processes and strategies.

We can all increase our level of creativeness by asking

What else might I/we do?
Where else might I/we...?
When else might I/we...?
How else might I/we...?
Why else might I/we...?
Who else might...?

and generate multiple possibilities before selecting which one to follow or apply.

[Say Keng LEE]

I would prefer to think in terms of a street-smart vs a book-smart.

Personally, I believe education is one contributing factor.

Singapore is a classic example. As a nation, we produce a lot of book smart people. Our students often top the international science & math contests every year.

Once, an INSEAD Business School professor in Singapore was asked about his opinion on Singapore's professional managers. He said our Singapore managers are great problems solvers, but lousy in finding problems to solve [read: "opportunities to exploit"].

This is also the expressed view of many Multi-National Company (MNC) & Small & Medium Enterprise (SME) employers as well as one retired Permanent Secretary. [Professionally, a Perm Sec is just one rank below a Minister in the cabinet.]

In fact, Singapore's Education Minister once said our students (& their parents) are risk-averse, especially in terms of choosing subjects to study & careers to pursue.

Frankly, I don't blame them.

So far, Singapore has produced only one Sim Wong Hoo of Creative Technology, now a billion-dollar global technology outfit, plus a few others on a smaller scale, like Ronald Sim, the man behind OSIM (health & wellness equipment). Both are street smarts, as they have not been to the university.

I would consider Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew & his earlier crew [unfortunately, many had already passed away] as the street smarts, because they had gone through the baptism of fire, so to speak, especially when Singapore was kicked out of Malaysia in 1965 & the Bristish forces withdrew their bases in the seventies.

During his reign as Singapore's Prime Minister for almost three decades, MM Lee Kuan Yew's principal critieria for selecting his Ministers was based on the Royal Dutch/Shell's HAIR model:

Helicopter ability: the ability to rise above the immediate scene & see it from a total & overall perspective;

Analytical prowess;

Imagination: the ability to see things from new & creative perspectives;

Realism: having one's feet firmly placed on the ground;

Singapore's real success today has been based on the hard work & sheer ingenuity of those earlier street smart people with & under & including MM Lee Kuan Yew.

I reckon a street smart person is forced by circumstances around him to use all of his brain's resources (& also, all other resources available at hand) since he has no other better alternatives. Einstein was right: from difficulty, comes opportunity!

Singapore's current education system is undergoing tremendous changes. I certainly want the changes to succeed, because Singapore has a marathon to run - with no end in sight, to paraphrase PM Lee Hsien Loong.

MM Lee Kuan Yew always seems to have something that often keeps him awake at night: Complacency.

He always thinks very far ahead & anticipates future trouble. That's another trait of a street smart person.

[Robert "Alan" Black]

Dr. Paul Torrance and others have done studies comparing creativity test scores and IQ test and found often that there was no direct correlation with very high IQ and high creativity scores. Beyond 1/2 to 1 standard deviation above norm on standardized IQ tests the correlation was less and less significant.

What I remember about such discussions always went back to the apparent truth about IQ tests...the measure a very limited number of mental skills and generally not those skills that creativity tests strive to measure.

Alan

[Say Keng LEE]

Interestingly, according to Dr Hans Eysenck, one of the world's leading experts on IQ testing, & writing in his classic 'Genius: The Natural History of Creativity', intelligence is a necessary, but not a sufficient condition for creativity.

He cited others that play decisive roles in creativity:

- focused hard work;
- persistence;
- originality;
- luck (I like that!);
- opportunity;

The foregoing citations reconciled with the conclusions of Michael Howe, who wrote 'Genius Explained':

- doggedness;
- persistence;
- the capacity for fierce & sustained concentration;
- intense curiosity;

My end analysis: creativity is hard work - we have to work at it!

No wonder Carl Jung liked to use the analogy of Genie & the Aladdin Lamp. Some of us have their flame flickering incessantly in the wind. Others have to keep rubbing like hell.

[Peter Lloyd]

Hold on! Are you suggesting that smart people are not normal?

[Peter Lloyd]

Stan,

I appreciate all the advice you give.

With regard to "Realism," I just posted "Persistence of Ignorance" on IdeaConnection. I try to explain how the desire to be right, to be in the know, to be the first to deliver interesting news can cause one to pass on bogus information, even stretch the truth. We expect this from politicians, but I also offer three tips for avoiding believing passing on bad data.

Let me know what you think.

Say Keng LEE said:

Interestingly, according to Dr Hans Eysenck, one of the world's leading experts on IQ testing, & writing in his classic 'Genius: The Natural History of Creativity', intelligence is a necessary, but not a sufficient condition for creativity.

He cited others that play decisive roles in creativity:

- focused hard work;
- persistence;
- originality;
- luck (I like that!);
- opportunity;

The foregoing citations reconciled with the conclusions of Michael Howe, who wrote 'Genius Explained':

- doggedness;
- persistence;
- the capacity for fierce & sustained concentration;
- intense curiosity;

My end analysis: creativity is hard work - we have to work at it!

No wonder Carl Jung liked to use the analogy of Genie & the Aladdin Lamp. Some of us have their flame flickering incessantly in the wind. Others have to keep rubbing like hell.

[Say Keng LEE]

Albert Einstein was right when he said:

"Great Spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds."

[Tony Wanless]

There have been several studies in the educational field that show that (traditional) intelligence is not the sole basis for creativity. Rather, it appears that personality and motivation are larger factors.

One can be an "intellectual" with a strong analytical ability, but not be very creative; similarly, one can be very creative but not be very productive because the ability to structure thinking is missing.

So, we're probably talking once again about a definition of creativity. Is the idea generator creative, and the person who applies that idea non-creative? I don't believe so. I think creativity, overall, is the building of an insight or idea into a concrete model. So the true creative would possess both abilities.
For example: Having an insight that love can hurt is not in itself creative. But composing a song (a concrete model) that makes the listener understand that love can hurt is creative.