creativity

Creativity is one of the sources of >novelty in economic systems. Creativity as a possibility results from the fundamental >impossibility theorems to which EE refers. Creativity is possible just because the limits to logic and computability leave room for fiat action.
In more practical terms, creativity is a property of actors which enables them to create new >knowledge spontaneously. This is possible because any existing knowledge allows endless permutations and combinations into new structures which can become the object of knowledge in turn and hence, emerge as new knowledge. Hence, reflexivity, which is just the reason for logical incompleteness, is the condition for novelty. According to the most recent advances in cognitive sciences, mind is a process of continuous creativity, which is based on the fundamental mechanism of conceptual blending. In conceptual blending, our thinking continuously creates new integrated elements of available concepts and thoughts, such that existing thoughts and ideas are transferred into other contexts and given new meanings.

More exactly, creativity occurs when existing entities are put into a relation to each other, and when, as a result, at least one actor recognizes a new property of this assembly of units which has not been known before. The first step of reassembling existing units is a necessary but not sufficient condition for creativity. Reassembling behavior is one expression of one behavioral universal in evolution, namely play. The process of reassembling can take place in different media, i.e. as >cognitive process, as group dynamics in >communication, or as simple rearrangement of networks in >space, for example. This demonstrates that creativity, though being related to actors in the first place, is not necessarily linked with their >cognition in an exclusive way. Creativity may occur via the reassembly of any elements in a network.
In technological creativity, for example, >innovations can mostly explained as recombinations of existing building blocks into new structures. This example shows that creativity can only result into knowledge in the context of a VSR mechanism, during which new combinations are related to certain system functions. Creativity has its source in the individual, but is fixed in the system context. The distinguishing feature to novelty in general is that in creativity there is always at least an intermediating role of cognition in terms of discovering the meaning that is bimodally related to function.

In economic systems, a special class of creative actors are >entrepreneurs. Creativity is the necessary condition for the increasing productivity of production. Conventionally reflected in measures like total factor productivity, EE relates the concept of productivity to the increase of forms and combinations of products in the economy, which is the result of creative action.

Basic References
This is a breakthrough volume for our understanding of creativity in cognition, which analyzes the mind’s power to conceptual blending:
Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner, The Way We Think. Conceptual Blending and the Mind’s Hidden Complexities, New York: Basic Books, 2002.
For some information on Fauconnnier’s and Turner’s work, go to:
Turner's website

Semantic Field
singularity   impossibility theorems
creativity   novelty
entrepreneurship