What the heck is Creativity

Last night, I was lying in my bed and thinking about the principles that I feel my parents taught me to value. They are mostly pretty simple ideas: Honesty, Charity, Tolerance, Humor, Political Awareness, etc. But one principle made me think. That was the principle of CREATIVITY. What is creativity? Several years ago, my family and I got lost while hiking in the Sierra Nevada Mtns. I was carrying a rain poncho and my dad was able to fashion a makeshift shelter using the poncho and several pine bows which he cut from a tree. We rode out the night and all made it back to camp safely. Certainly that was creative. My dad was willing to think outside the box -- and, because we were in a Federal Wilderness Area, outside the law -- to protect his family. But simply "thinking outside the box" is not good enough, at least I don't think so. If thinking outside the box were enough, then we would have to call the 9/11 hijackers "creative," as their use of airplanes was certainly thinking outside the box (though one could argue that their use of violence was certainly NOT thinking outside the box.) A several months ago, my dad sent me to Home Depot to buy some rope. When I described how I intended to use the rope to a salesmen, he persuaded me to buy some nylon tie-downs. These tie-downs were much cheaper on a per foot basis than the rope and actually did what my dad and I wanted it to do BETTER than the rope would have done. Was I being creative by my willingness to try the tie-downs instead of the rope? it certainly wasn't my idea, and the salesman who helped me probably knew all along that they were better than the rope. So, what the heck is creativity? It is obviously important. I would argue that the world runs on creativity, but I am not sure exactly what it is? So here is what I am going to do. I am sending this email to almost everyone in my address book, some people I haven't heard from in YEARS. I'll keep everyone's email confidential, but I want some replies. PLEASE don't reply to me. I am going to post this letter on my blog, http://thesloop.blogspot.com/, it will be my first post up there in over a year. I invite, I encourage, I beg you to go up there and post a comment. Start a discussion, let's see where we end up.