Abstract
In this chapter, Ghez provides a definition of creativity and discusses its implications for the knowledge economy that he renames the “creativity economy.” He argues that creativity requires three key ingredients: a solid understanding of facts, a good grasp of questions that remain open, and enough imagination about what can be invented. Creativity is what a strategy that carefully considers those three elements generates. This is important for architects of change who are also rule-breakers: they do not only prepare for the coming world but also shape it in a way that will make it easier for them to achieve their goals. This is their ultimate task as actors of change.
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As he pointed out then,
Ninety per cent of all scientists and technologists who ever lived are alive and at work today. In the first five hundred years since Gutenberg, from 1450 to 1950, some thirty million printed books were published in the world. In the last twenty-five years alone, an equal number has appeared. Thirty years ago, on the eve of World War II, semiskilled machine operators, the men on the assembly line, were the center of the American work force. Today the center is the knowledge worker, the man or woman who applies to productive work ideas, concepts, and information rather than manual skill or brawn. Our largest single occupation is teaching, that is, the systematic supply of knowledge and systematic training in applying it.
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“The Four Pillars of The Knowledge Economy,” The World Bank, accessed April 12, 2019, http://web.worldbank.org/archive/website01503/WEB/0__CO-10.HTM.
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Thomas Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict, Reprint edition (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981).
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Fareed Zakaria, “Gladwell: Why We’ve Got David and Goliath Wrong,” The Global Public Square (blog), October 27, 2013, http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/2013/10/27/gladwell-why-weve-got-david-and-goliath-wrong/.
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Ghez, J. (2019). The Meaning of Creativity. In: Architects of Change. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-20684-0_13
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-20684-0_13
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