This document discusses creativity and how it is created. It provides 3 models for understanding creativity: [1] A general model that shows how culture, domains, fields, and individuals interact to produce novelty; [2] An organizational model that shows how an organization's culture, knowledge, procedures, and individual workers can produce novelty; [3] A model of the creative person that shows how domains, knowledge, cognition, motivation, personality, and innovation interact within an individual. The document also provides descriptions from creative individuals about how it feels when their work is going well and discusses recent neuropsychological work on creativity.

1. How Creativity is
Created
Moscow
June 25, 2012
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Ph.D.
Quality of Life Research Center
Claremont Graduate University
Claremont, CA COPYRIGHT © 2004 BY MIHALY
CSIKSZENTMIHALYI. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

2. 1. Small “c” or private creativity,
which enriches one’s life without
necessarily being recognized
2. Big “C” or public creativity, which
changes the way a culture sees the
world, understands how it works, or
goes about living.
©Csikszentmihalyi 2004

3. • Is rare
• Is socially valued
• Is pursued to completion
©Csikszentmihalyi 2004

4. 1.General Model
Culture
Tra
Inf nsm
C F orm its
ts
D at i
lec
B E on
Se
Domains
A
E B C
Genetics &
Fields Persons
Society
Environment
A A
Produces
C B Novelty

5. 2.The Organization
Organizational Tr
an
sm
Culture
d
itte
cte
d
le
Se
Knowledge
Procedure
Traditions
Individual Labor
Management Pool
Market Worker
Novelty

6. 3.The Person
Le
Domain a rn i
n
tio
ng
ten
Re
Knowledge
Cognition
Standards Motivation
Field Expectations
Innovation
Personality

7. DESCRIPTION OF HOW IT FEELS
WHEN WRITING POETRY GOES WELL
“You're right in the work, you
lose your sense of time, you're
completely enraptured, you're
completely caught up in what
you're doing…. there's no
future or past, it's just an
extended present in which
you're making meaning…”
Poet Mark Strand, 1991

8. DESCRIPTION OF HOW IT FEELS
WHEN DOING RESEARCH GOES WELL
“To go into a dark room and look
through the microscope and see these
glowing objects which may be moving
around or may be stationary, and in
different colors – it's a video game, if
you will. It's just beautiful…I can sit in
front of a microscope for three or four
Cell biologist hours at a time, just looking at the
Joseph G. Gall (1991) material and analyzing it….I can be
very disconcerting to other people in
the degree to which I can concentrate
on something and not pay too much
attention to what's going on around
me.”

9. Recent work on the
Neuropsychology of Creativity:
• Bengsten, S.L., Csikszentmihalyi,M. and Fredrik
Ullen. (2007) Regions involved in the generation
of musical structures during improvisation in
pianists. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 19:5,
pp. 1-13..

13. Personality Characteristics Of Creative Individuals
“Complexity”
1. Great energy, vitality, “bounce” ---- Ability to rest, sleep at will.
2. Smartness, convergent thinking ---- Naiveté, childishness, divergent
thinking.
3. Playfulness, openness to experience ---- Discipline, responsibility.
4. Imagination, fantasy ---- Reality oriented.
5. Extroverted, sociable ---- Introverted, solitary.
6. Ambitious, proud, competitive ---- Humble, selfless, cooperative.
7. Sensitive, feminine ---- Adventurous, masculine.
8. Traditional, conservative ---- Rebellious, iconoclastic.