"Creativity is a mantra used by people who can't define creativity and can't explain what they do or make to people who are becoming suspicious of anything branded (!) 'creative'."

I agree totally. What happens when someone genuinely comes up with a creative idea that is successful, is that an ecosystem of parasites tags along, because they can't afford not to. Their main stock in trade is a few jargon terms that have no resonance.

I work in the public service and have seen bucketloads of managerialist jargon being trucked out to staff that is 100% meaningless dribble. After a while everyone just switches off. However it doesn't stop the professional dribblers getting away with it (and making a lot of money in the process).

Another manifestation of the all-talk-and-no-substance attitude is the commentariat's fixation over the past 30 to 40 years or so with idealism as opposed specific ideas. The idealism industry keeps bombarding us with fell-goodisms, platitudes, cant, etc, but for some reason specific ideas keep getting murdered one way or another by the media. If we're ever going to be successful as a country we need to ditch the idealism and replace it with specific ideas that we can debate, research, analyse, implement and measure against a benchmark. These are much more productive activities than just telling all and sundry that things need to improve.

Let's face it, it's easy to talk - and it's happening everywhere. Much better to actively do things. We'd all be better off if we did.

I currently teach at a University in China so am encountering firsthand what it is to live in a society purged of creativity or imagination since the Cultural Revolution.

Education here has traditionally been based on the Scholastic method which, in the West was ditched after The Enlightenment. Students learn by spewing forth large chunks of parroted material. Questioning or debating this material has not been allowed and so much of it has been stripped of actual meaning. The Sciences, Mathematics and History lend themselves well to this system (I can almost hear indignation rising at this statement but no, this is not a Paper either so am constrained from justification)but the Humanities do not, - which was why the Cultural Revolution was able to be so successful.

As you agreed, Malcolm, creativity cannot be taught. It can only be defined with difficulty: trying then to foster and encourage such an intangible force is immensely difficult. This is compounded by the fact that the imaginative capacities of the majority of my students have been stifled almost to the point of atrophy.

As China emerges into the global economy I consider the need for creativity emerges as a limiting factor. China is set to be the largest manufacturer of other countries technologies and ideas until such time as it is able to diversify from within.

The outlook for my students is grim with competition for jobs all placed within a single sphere intense. This is a country where I consider that the ancient argument revolving around the value of the Humanities to a society is unaruably illustrated.

Yes, I too agree we should do away with cant, jargon, and big business appropriation of the creative process. But from where I am sitting right now the value of true creativity is above rubies

I think one of the reasons we have so much trouble defining, using or harnessing creativity is that our thinking begins with managerialism and attempts to move outwards from there.

What can you do with creativity that strikes at 2am, out of office hours? How can you quantify it? Do you pay it an hourly rate? Can you realistically anticipate that someone who did something creative will ever do anything creative ever again?

You can't invest in it until after the fact, so as long as we're obsessed with management and a big return on investment we're stuffed. As a society we're just not geared for anything without ownership attached to it and we can't tell the difference between quality and quantity.

Romany, I've noticed that parroting myself when I taught international students. I thought it was an Confuscian obedience to authority but I think you're right.

I started this article after re-reading Orwell's essay 'Politics and the English Language' and it made me realise that while there is some relativity in language, governments and business have certainly over the last 30 years appropriated it for their own ends - almost unchecked.

I chose 'creativity' because it is so hard to define and as such has been co-opted by almost everyone and homogenised to fit every marketing occassion. If everything is creative, then nothing is not (sic) creative. Then what value is creativity?

I suggest that just 60 years ago creativity was associated with a complex mode of thinking. Now I believe it is tied to technics. That is, creativity and innovation are synonyms.

I'm starting to sound like one of those old Frankfurt School Marxists but if governments and business can manipulate our conception of terms such as 'creativity' then they are well and truly on their way to creating a new psychic reality for us.

Maybe I've read too much Orwell.

Chainsmoker, I'm afraid I was a part of the problem. Without shouldering the cross too much, I was one of those managers who spun and spun. I had to earn the dollars. Isn't it amazing how little of real productive worth managerialist philosophies have gained us?

Yeah but Malcom, the most governments and slick marketeers can do is to try to market and sell the IDEA of creativity. The creative force as I think we have established, is an intangible.

Therein lies its protection: it is incapable of being harnessed, packaged or sold on. While attempting to do so may appear to be an excerable diminishment it does nothing actually to tarnish or demean the genuine article. After all, no truly creative persons work either in Government or marketing.

It is only those who have no grasp of individuality who entertain the idea that it could be commodified. If they want to part with big bucks which they consider entitle them to write dodgy "pieces" with no punctuation, or stick shells on photo-frames well, as the old saw goes: there's one born every minute.

Businesses may dump truckloads of jargonised drivel on their hapless employees and Governments blather about creative solutions till they're blue in the face: most creative spirits eschew the mainstream anyway.

And ah...Orwell. That explains it. Yep. No matter what stage of our lives we're at when we discover or re-discover him the man truly does yer head in, doesn't he?

I guess that's because he is truly a creative individual?

Romany, if I may nitpick?

There are probably quite a lot of creative people working in government and marketing, it's just that Taylorism isn't the most salubrious environment creativity could hope for.

We've made a society that dictates that creativity is something you do in your spare time - valueless time.

Creativity is also non-conformist which is anathema to both governing and mass marketing, contrary to what Richard Florida would have us believe. Bicycle tracks and bohemians indeed. What was he thinking?