4 - The Investment Theory of Creativity as a Decision
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 July 2009
Summary
What is creativity and how does it develop? Underlying this chapter is a single central notion – that, to a large extent, creativity is a decision. The chapter is divided into three parts: the decision to be creative, the decision of how to be creative, and implementation of these decisions.
Our investment theory (Sternberg & Lubart, 1991, 1995) concerns the decision to be creative. Called the investment theory, it is based on the notion that creative people decide to buy low and sell high in the world of ideas – that is, they generate ideas that tend to “defy the crowd” (buy low), and then, when they have persuaded many people, they sell high, meaning they move on to the next unpopular idea (see also Rubenson & Runco, 1992). I first describe the proposed theory. Then I describe empirical work supporting at least some aspects of the theory.
I consider creativity in both a minor (“little c”) and a major (“big C”) sense. The difference between the two often is whether a contribution is creative only with respect to myself or with respect to a field as well. Psychologically, however, the processes may be quite similar or the same. From the point of view of the field the contributions are quite different.
Research within the investment framework has yielded support for this model (Lubart & Sternberg, 1995).
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- Information
- Wisdom, Intelligence, and Creativity Synthesized , pp. 106 - 123Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2003