Why the Standard Definition of Creativity Fails to Capture the Creative Act

The standard definition of creativity holds that a creative idea is one that is novel and useful. Studies that follow from the standard definition and its derivatives tend to adopt an external frame of reference when estimating the level of creativity of an idea. It is not the person who has in fact generated the idea (the creator) who reports on whether they have come up with an idea that they themselves deem to be novel and useful - this would be a judgement from an internal frame of reference. Instead, this judgement is based on an external frame of reference as it is passed by people who are receiving the idea (the recipient). I make two cases in this paper. First, that employing external frames of reference when assessing the creative product has been erroneously applied to understand the creative mind. This is because making any claims of the inner experiences or mental life of the creator (or maker or explorer) necessarily involves examining creativity from an internal frame of reference. Second, any definition of creativity needs to be one that can be reasonably applied whether following an internal frame of reference of the creative experience or an external frame of reference of the creative product. With these aims in mind, I propose the following amendment to the definition of creativity which can be applied across fields of human enterprise that span artistic and scientific creativities – a creative idea is one that is both novel and satisfying.