Solitude is out. Collaboration is in. In her recent article “The rise of the new groupthink” Susan Cain challenges the received idea  “to which our companies, our schools and our culture are in thrall”, that “creativity and achievement come from an oddly gregarious place”. When the zeitgeist resonates with “teams”, “crowds” and “collaboration”, Susan draws our attention to how important privacy and freedom are to those creative minds that are introverted… And she came to the hypothesis that solitude, not collaboration could be a catalyst for innovation and creation.

This premise seems to be also supported by Steve Wozniak, quoted as saying: “Most inventors and engineers I’ve met are like me … they live in their heads. They’re almost like artists. In fact, the very best of them are artists. And artists work best alone…. I’m going to give you some advice that might be hard to take. That advice is: Work alone… Not on a committee. Not on a team.”

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Vika Shah’s thought economics blog carries an interview with Philippe Starck, one of the most prolific designers of the last half-century. In this interview, Stark explains his passion and motivation for design.

He said: “Design is just an application of the mental sickness called creativity. You create to have the feeling of existing”.

I guess most people would respond to such striking statement by saying: “This is too far-fetched”. But I kind of believe that “creating to bring meaning to one’s own existence” must be a strong motivator, probably subconscious for many creative minds out there.. Such motivation equals creativity with a basic human instinct rather than something we thought requires high qualifications, complex techniques, or simply say “some gifts”.

Is creativity a gift or something we are born with?

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