When the human mind searches concept space for solutions to a given condition we have a choice between conventional and creative thinking. But what are the probabilities of improving a given situation using creative thinking compared with conventional thinking? To answer this question we are extending the meaning of creativity beyond human creativity. We view creativity as an optimised search strategy applicable to the larger set of all teleonomic systems and term this creativity teleonomic creativity. We argue that an analog process is common to all manifestations of creativity within teleonomic systems and describe this process and its cause. In order to show this process and to make quantitative comparisons, we utilise the metaphor of an adaptive fitness landscape and simple statistical techniques. The term fitness in our case describes the condition of a well-defined property being suitable for a purpose, rather than an overall evaluation of many complex interactions measuring reproductive success. We define creativity as the successful attempt of either individuals or populations to gain higher fitness via exploration of global fitness peaks as opposed to the exploitation of a currently occupied local peak. We then show mathematically how the inclusion of creativity in a search can dramatically increase the chances of finding appropriate solutions. We also recognise that creative behaviour is most successful when the environmentis unstable. We note the existence of a strategic meta-parameter that allows self-adaptation when tuned via a feedback loop from the environment. We show that creativity can be understood as a random process with an optimal setting for the standard deviation that maximises the probability of hitting a target of higher fitness. We support our claims with computer simulations and observe several occurrences of teleonomic creativity in nature. In addition we measure the entropy of a teleonomic system via the phase-space of internal variables and observe a sudden entropy increase during the onset of creative behaviour in a teleonomic system. Our investigations also enable us to rationalise the processes, conditions and phenomena surrounding human creativity such as mistakes, madness, serendipity, humor, analogy making and interpret the function of creativity promoters and inhibitors. Our findings may also allow us to incorporate creativity into artificial computer models. We speculate that creativity is an emerging property of any teleonomic system and as such ubiquitous in nature.

Diss. Umeå : Umeå universitet, 2007.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 1992. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves [191]-195).

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Texas at Dallas, 2008. / Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 259-285)

In this narrative study, I explored the creative process of songwriting from learners’ perspectives. Much literature regarding the creative process in songwriting is taken from the perspective of the instructor. In this study I have focused primarily on how the participants experienced songwriting from their perspective. I examined whether the participants’ backgrounds impacted their perceptions of songwriting, whether participants valued songwriting, whether meanings emerged from the songwriting process, and what strategies emerged through the process. Qualitative methods were used in gathering data, which included interviews, journals, conversations, observation field notes, e-mails, and songwriting artifacts. The data were coded through a cyclical series of transcription and analysis and slowly a research story began to emerge (Saldaña, 2009). The seven participants were worship and music majors at a southern Christian University in an undergraduate songwriting survey class. Through narrative I endeavored to restory their songwriting experiences based on the themes that emerged through the codifying process. Narrative analysis revealed that participants constructed meaning through the process of songwriting. The backgrounds of the participants helped in shaping the subjects of their songs often involving hardships. Participants storied the tension between the initial stage of songwriting and the revisions to follow. Songwriting became a narrative expression of their experience of spiritual awakening. Through reflection during the songwriting process they found greater connection with God. In the process the participants constructed their songs using tone painting to shape their melodies to express their lyrics and metaphors to enliven their lyrics. Participants made use of various recording devices to capture initial ideas before they forgot them, and noted a preference for working with pen and paper in the songwriting process. Where much of previous research focused on songwriting approaches and methods of instruction, this study found that participants enjoyed the meaning making aspects of songwriting and the spiritual connection with God that it brought them.

Cette thèse en trois essais s’appuie sur la recherche en cognition créatrice (« creative cognition ») (e.g., Finke, Ward, et Smith, 1992; Ward, 1998), avec pour objectif d’étudier la possibilité pour les entreprises d’engendrer plus efficacement de nouvelles idées créatives en s’appropriant les (nouveaux) outils et stratégies de marketing. Le premier essai résume les nombreuses études ayant trait à la créativité et propose un nouveau cadre, basé sur l’offre et la demande en matière de créativité dans le marketing, qui se veut un support pratique à la prise de décisions. Les essais 2 et 3 se penchent sur les études empiriques touchant à l’efficacité de deux types de modèles participatifs (« crowdsourcing »), dont le but est de solliciter un apport créatif de la part des consommateurs. Le second essai s’intéresse aux effets de la présentation d’un prototype de produit à un panel d’individus, en combinaison avec l’objectif du concept, sur les processus de génération d’idées et les résultats qui en découlent. Le troisième essai offre une perspective socio-cognitive des initiatives participatives, en examinant les effets conjoints du caractère novateur et de la notation d’idées soumises par d’autres communautés participatives sur la capacité subséquente d’une personne à générer de nouvelles idées. / Creativity is one of the cornerstones of marketing. Due to technological advances, companies have more tools and resources at their disposal for enhancing creativity. Drawing on creative cognition research, this dissertation aims to investigate how companies can maximize creativity with (new) marketing tools, techniques, and strategies. Essay 1 summarizes the vast body of research on creativity and proposes a novel framework that aims to guide managerial decision-making in practice by linking the demand and supply of creativity in marketing. Essay 2 and Essay 3 concern empirical studies on the effectiveness of two types of crowdsourcing practices that aim to solicit creative input from consumers. Essay 2 investigates the effects of the provision of a product prototype to individuals, in combination with the design goal, on idea generation processes and outcomes. Essay 3 proposes a socio-cognitive perspective on crowdsourcing initiatives by examining the joint effects of the novelty and ratings of ideas posted by others in crowdsourcing communities on a person’s subsequent idea generation performance.

The capacity for creative thought is of utmost importance for the survival and furtherance of humanity. Luckily, creative thought is the most essential aspect of humanity; it is what defines us. Unfortunately, we have created a society that tries to make us forget that. I am building a body of work that encourages mindfulness and heightens awareness. Awareness of self and mindfulness in everyday activities are prerequisites to social and spiritual evolution. I want nothing less than to expand human consciousness. 108 Kōans occurred over a period of time that I devoted to maintaining a "beginner's mind." During that time, 108 evidences of this practice were produced. These are my kōans. They are events, observations, sounds, interventions, texts, images, scripts, objects, rearrangements, etc.--experiments in recontextualization that attempt to remind people of the ability they have to recontextualize their everyday. If we can become aware of our everyday habits and assumptions and experiences--the mundane thoughts and actions that make up the bulk of who we are--then we will realize that there are other ways of being that are available to us. This awareness will then extend to examinations of cultural, social, and institutional habits. People cannot imagine another way of existence for society until they can imagine another way of being themselves. We must become literate in the language of creativity. We must celebrate our self as one with the Universe and realize that the nature of the Universe is change.

Play is a universal activity among children that can be indicative of a child’s developmental level. Additionally, play provides an avenue for children to practice certain skills and can be a causal agent in developmental change. Pretend play is especially important given the underlying cognitive and affective processes that are involved in pretense. Play is also strongly linked with creativity and psychosocial adjustment. Children with better play skills also demonstrate higher levels of creativity, emotion knowledge, social adjustment, and problem-solving abilities. Research suggests that culture and language also play an important role in child play development. Furthermore, parent play beliefs can impact how children develop play skills. Understanding differences in play development and related factors can inform interventions to improve play skills in this population. Additionally, research indicates a relationship between language and play and creativity. Learning more than one language may be related to children’s play skills and creative capacities. Thus, one aim was to investigate differences in play, creativity, and psychosocial adjustment between children in general education classrooms and children in an immersive bilingual education program (TWI program). A total of 117 child participants ages 5-10 years in kindergarten through 5th grade were recruited for this study. Participants completed tasks related to play and creativity and their parents completed questionnaires regarding parent play beliefs and child psychosocial adjustment. Results regarding play, creativity, and psychosocial adjustment indicated a strong relationship between play and creativity, consistent with prior research; however, no significant relationship was found between play and psychosocial adjustment. The TWI group demonstrated more imagination in their play and obtained higher scores on divergent thinking and fluency, which are measures of creativity, compared to those in the general education group. In the overall sample, parent play beliefs were not significantly related to pretend play skills. Overall, the results from the current study indicate that learning a second language in an immersive bilingual setting, play, and creativity are positively related to one another. These findings can inform future interventions. For example, incorporating play into language learning interventions may further enhance or improve language acquisition. Further exploration of the relationships between each of these variables is needed. Additionally, research regarding play, creativity, and parent beliefs in diverse populations is still necessary to understand the underlying cognitive processes that may be shared among these factors.

Calls for more creative teaching and learning in classrooms are often matched by increasingly stringent accountability measures. Negotiating the creativity/accountability paradox is difficult for teachers, who are often isolated as they interpret, design, and deliver curriculum in their classrooms. This dissertation introduces and refines a 7-stage process called the Community Creative Collective (3-C) designed to generate solutions to three problems that derive from this paradox. First, narrowing of curriculum inhibits the ability of teachers to generate creative teaching and learning. Second, factors, including time constraints and teacher training, limit teachers' ability to develop the creative habit. Third, inclusion of family and community members as co-creators of curriculum provides a potential source of creative curriculum development. Three research questions guide the exploration of the process: 1. How does the 3-C process allow teachers and community members to collaboratively generate creative teaching and learning opportunities for their students? 2. What are the distinguishing features of this collaborative curricular process? 3. How does such a process impact teachers' interpretations of their role as interpreters, designers and deliverers of curriculum? Using a Design Based approach, these questions investigate the process as it was implemented in a 5th-grade classroom. The first question uses a case study methodology to trace the development of the 3-C process as it was developed and implemented. Findings demonstrated that communication at multiple stages impacted the generation of creative ideas. The second question uses qualitative data from documents, interviews, audio and video recordings and observations to extrapolate some of the distinguishing feature of the process. Key features included the Ideational Speed Dating (ISD) process for idea-generation, the 3-C process as a peak flow experience and the impact of parent and community expertise to generate creative classroom content. The third question uses interviews with the participating teacher to examine the impact of the 3-C process on her interpretation of her role in the classroom. The process influenced her view on family and community involvement, providing space through which tensions can be resolved and creative engagement can flourish. Finally refinements for future iterations are discussed in addition to implications for future research.

This thesis explores how women form, perceive and communicate their sense of identity by hand knitting for leisure. Leisure, defined here as time outside of work or caring responsibilities, was selected as the focus of this research because women have some choice over how they spend this time and express themselves. Writing on contemporary knitting has tended to frame knitting within political, artistic or commercial contexts (such as Black, 2005, 2012 and Elliot, 2015). This leaves a gap in our understanding of why women who knit for leisure do so. This is partially addressed by recent empirical research (for example Fields, 2014) that has studied social processes within knitting groups. However, research has devoted less attention to the wider motivations of women who knit alone or in groups. This is important if we consider that identity formation happens in a broader context, and may involve a constant interaction with people (Jenkins, 2004), objects and ideas, as is suggested by the findings of this study. The research employs a qualitative approach based on Charmaz’s (2006) grounded theory by way of a staged design which aims to respond to the data and minimise the influence of preconceived ideas. This aim is particularly important given the historical and contemporary stereotypes associated with knitting, and my own background as a textile historian and maker. Application of social research methods also aims to further develop the role played by empirical research in the area of textile scholarship. Data was collected in three stages; a pilot study, questionnaires with women textile bloggers and the main research stage which consisted of semi-structured interviews with knitters living in Edinburgh. Interviewees were contacted by volunteer and snowball sampling. Content analysis was supported by QSR*NVivo and involved descriptive and theoretical coding in order to identify themes in the data. Analysis suggests knitting provides immediate social interaction and support. This could be associated with Jenkins’ (2004) proposition that identity is formed by ongoing social interaction. However, there is another dimension here as knitting also enables the solitary knitter to access interactions with ideas and other people through objects and the personal memories held within them as well as through online communities. Three key findings are that knitting presents a way to be creative, productive and social. Firstly, respondents describe knitting as a balance between challenge and perceived ability, as might be described as ‘flow’ (Csikszentmihalyi, 2002 [1992]). Secondly, this meets a need for a leisure activity that produces a tangible manifestation of effort and skill. However, the process of knitting is also seen to be as important, if not more so, than the final product. This insight reinforces the usefulness of empirical study of the experience of making textiles, and reveals additional data than studying only the final object. Thirdly, knitting is presented as a means to access meaningful social interactions and a sense of belonging to a community whether or not the knitter is a member of a knitting group. Such interactions might be online or provide a sense of continuity with previous generations of knitters in their families or women in general. Knitters see this as a way of building social capital and support. Overall, findings suggest that identity formation and communication should be seen as a complex process that does not only involve direct social interactions but interaction with the idea of other knitters, past and present, and the practical experience of making.