Theories Of Creativity

Think tank: Crisp sarnies show the way to speak to customers

Convened no longer as a mere advertising festival and now trading under the broader banner of "inspiring creativity", Cannes is the undisputed global meeting place and melting pot for the world's communications professionals. It now hosts opinion and debate on all matters creative as well as lionising – quite literally, in the form of its Lions awards – the world's best work.

British agencies, whose advertising output was once commonly held to be the best in the world, cemented their bragging rights throughout the past decade. This year – as last – was different, with no British Film Golds, let alone the whiff of a Grand Prix, despite an entry count second only to that of the US. Sounding not unlike one of our domestic football managers retreating wounded from the fields of European competition, one British juror concluded we were simply "not good enough".

Here – unlike in the tightly patrolled film, press and outdoor categories – all ideas are born equal, "whether it's for a car or toothpaste, telecommunications or charity, big budget or low budget". And it's here that some of the world's most interesting and effective work has begun to bubble up: those campaigns that genuinely start life as an idea rather than a script or other executional element, and which proceed to dance across media.

If you are minded to break new ground as a marketer, this is where to look for inspiration: the winning ideas are all neatly sound-bitten, and freely available, at canneslions.com.

And so to Gisborne, home of "The Megane Experiment" conducted last year with tongue firmly in cheek by Renault and its agencies, and a Titanium Silver Lion winner.

Advancing from the admittedly oddball statistic that towns with the highest Megane count also boast the highest fertility rates, Renault's advertising conceit was to investigate "whether a car could change a town". Cut to a series of mini-documentaries deploring Gisborne's lack of joie de vivre , the inevitable media firestorm and a happy ending, it seems, in terms of both civic pride and market share (but, note well, no traditional advertising "film" in sight).

Several hundred miles to the south-east, meanwhile, the town of Sandwich provided the unlikely inspiration for the idea that secured a Grand Prix for Britain in the inaugural "Creative Effectiveness" category. A similarly arch, albeit more benign campaign was created on behalf of Walkers to "make top of mind the favourable but latent association between crisps and sandwiches at lunchtime". Crisps, so it went, could make any sandwich more exciting. What better way to demonstrate this than by making, well, Sandwich itself more exciting?

OCCULT WONDER: Creativity Is in The Center of Duality

We should not over-emphasize rationality, because in doing so we inhibit creativity. Creativity is the force that gave birth to the Universe. The Universe, at its source, is pure potentiality or creativity. The Universe is pure subjectivity when it is compared to the multiverse because there are a huge number of universes, each of them with its own different laws. These universes are supposed to have formed spontaneously from nothing. Therefore, the deepest level of Universe or the unified field is: the source of energy, subjectivity, pure potentiality and infinity, but not actuality. The Universe gives rise to creation; at this deepest level there is only unity, which then creates duality, followed by diversity. Humans as an individual expression of universe are also, at their core, pure potentiality and subjectivity, as well as potential creators. Only when humans access the source of the energy of the universe or experience pure potentiality do they unleash their creativity. And this universal force of creativity is only found in the center of duality.

From quantum physics we know that the potential electron, which exists as pure potentiality, becomes actuality when it is observed by scientific instruments or by the rational mind of the scientist, at which time it collapses from a wave-function to a physical particle. Every theory possesses duality: concretely, for instance, materialistic theories have their opposites in spiritual theories. Each of them describes the reality. But the reality is one and at the center of the duality. People must not get trapped in their creations, whether those are theories, interpretations or something else, because they themselves are the creators. People must stay balanced in the center of duality, which is pure potentiality and creativity, and which gives rise endlessly to new theories and interpretations.

Living at the extremes poles of a duality means that people become slaves of themselves or of their theories. They also become slaves of their mental conditioning, of the hard-wired networks of neurons formed in the brain. In the center of duality, there are only soft-wired patterns of neurons which may easily re-arrange and create new patterns. Soft-wired neural patterns are the source of creativity; they leave room for new ideas and for infinity.

The center of duality is the source of infinite questions that arise from pure potentiality. However, as the pure potentiality of the "nothingness" (materialistic view) or cosmic consciousness (spiritual view) is the source of energy and the primary force of the evolution of the universe, the questions are the primary force of the evolution of the human mind. The more creative people are, the more they supply themselves and the world with energy. But an over-emphasis on rationality and rules inhibits our ability to supply the world with energy.

Theories of creativity

Creativity, theories and themes : research, development, and practice

Theories of creativity, a review of certain literature with personal reactions

The Cambridge Handbook of Creativity

Creativity in the Classroom, Schools of Curious Delight