http://www.npr.org/programs/ted-radio-hour/351538855/the-source-of-creativity
Basic summary: “everyone is and can be creative: you just have to be fearless about failing, and practice a bunch.”
Led to this understanding by my art-teacher mother, since early childhood I’ve been saying something pretty similar.
Creativity is wonderful, amazing, useful, freeing, and fun… but it’s not rare. Being creative is a skill, available to everyone. It doesn’t have to be “Art” (note the capital A) nor innovation. It doesn’t have to be shared. It doesn’t have to be serious, deep, fun, frivolous, important, or anything. Mostly, being creative is about allowing yourself to do something or think something or be something… Letting a wild idea flourish for a second and seeing what comes out of it.
The rest of Art and creativity and innovation is really about “skill” – developing ability and familiarity and a mental library of techniques through repetition and practice. That may sound like work (or worse yet, homework), and it certainly is… but it can be fun and fulfilling, productive work. You just have to have the freedom to fail horribly, and make monumental mistakes along the way. You have to be free to, and willing to, take risks.
Creativity, in the end, is the willingness to take a risk – coupled with the techniques and ability to take “good” risks and make something “good” out of them.