I would argue that creativity is a tendency and fundamental property of an individual’s brain, rather than a skill that can be taught or learned. Creativity do

I would argue that creativity is a tendency and fundamental property of an individual’s brain, rather than a skill that can be taught or learned. Creativity does require a context, such as creating a piece of art, music or solving a problem, and then in order to make any meaningful contribution to that problem or piece of art, one needs to have enough knowledge to draw from. This knowledge can be 1) exact, such as specific rendering techniques in the context of building a 3D renderer or scales for improvisation on piano. Or it can be 2) informal, increasingly rich mental models. For example, I have been improvising on piano for a long time, and I have a largely informal mental model of music theory that I draw from during improvisation of what would sound good and interesting and what wouldn’t. In another instance, I’m building software, and I have a growing mental model of how computers work, from the hardware (CPU, GPU, instruction sets) to the software (drivers, operating systems, networking), and how specific programs have been written (web browsers, game engines, databases, certain libraries). The same goes for specific domains I wish to build software for (e.g. AEC / architecture industry), for which I am also forming a well of knowledge of what kind of companies, organizations and individuals collaborate and how information flows between them, e.g. via specific file formats, standards or protocols. These mental models and exact knowledge, are a prerequisite for creativity. But the creativity itself is the tendency of my brain to then, in a specific context, associate and draw from these different mental models and this breadth of knowledge to come up with a piece of output. This can be building a specific feature in software, or coming up with a novel chord progression and melody. So creativity is not about knowledge, but about creating. Creating is inherently hard to formalize, as one has to have a mental model far larger and deeper than what can be written down or communicated via text. In addition, by attempting to formalize the mental model, one loses the impreciseness, fluidity and depth that enables venturing beyond reproduction. This mental model of how to create is what comes from practicing. By playing the piano year in year out and trying out different things, one learns to create good music. By programming for years, one learns to write beautiful software. What defines good or beautiful, and how one achieves that is what creativity is. It is a taste. It is exactly that what goes beyond memorization and mere knowledge. It is not taught, it is learned by doing. It is the application of knowledge, and the internalization of years of practice. TLDR: Creativity is a tendency of an individual. Knowledge is a prerequisite, but creativity is about applying it. This requires a mental model that comes from years of practice.