Properly creative

The concept of creativity has been drained of all meaning. But it can give you an edge in academia, says David Gauntlett.

A colleague of mine recently attended a training event where the participants were asked to brainstorm around ‘creativity’ in relation to research and academic work. Some of the louder voices in the room decreed that ‘creativity’ was just a meaningless buzzword these days and essentially refused to complete the task, causing it to collapse. The organisers moved on to something else.

Knowing that I have ‘creativity’ in my job title, my colleague asked what I thought about the notion that the word had become so all-pervasive, being applied as a requirement for everything in university and corporate life, that it had become redundant.