Sometimes, as we go about our daily routines of “creating,” managing others who create, or just plain keeping the doors open and the lights on, it’s easy to forget why we do what we’re doing.

With all the pressure to be responsible, practical, and task-oriented — in other words, to act grown-up — we can lose track of what fiddling with a piece of string (or a molecular string) is all about — and why we were attracted to it in the first place: Because, at its simplest and purest, creativity is fun.

Perhaps we discovered this when, as children, we first decided to make a page in a colouring book look, not like the tree it was supposed to be, but like abstract art.

Wasn’t it fun to ignore the printed lines? Wasn’t it a delight to find out what would happen if we held not one, but four crayons, in one hand? Who could resist the allure of actually creating something new, instead of copying something old?

We, as a culture (and particularly the scientific and academic subcultures) have become fixated on specifying the origin of creativity. If we were to accomplish that, supposedly, we could “harness” creativity, and put it at our beck and call.

We would be able to apply it constructively whenever and wherever we choose. We could also manage it better in others, particularly those who work with us and for us in “creative endeavours.” But creativity is a pesky little devil, which won’t be pinned down, won’t sit still under a microscope while we examine it.

As our desperate urge to measure creativity is frustrated by its rascally unwillingness

to oblige, we turn to creativity’s footprints — its results. This reminds me of particle

physics: since particles are hard to study, we study their effects. Similarly, we call on the “effects” of creativity to give us a sign — the Big Discovery.

If you manage creativity in others, this is my challenge: How can you, as an adult and

a professional, create those same feelings now that you’ve identified from your past?

I absolutely believe this is possible, as long as you keep things simple and playful. Creativity and complexity are also antithetical.

We aren’t ‘Creativity Victims’. No one is.

Because we — each of us — did our own locking up. Sure, we felt (consciously or unconsciously) we had a good reason. But we locked it up, not some outside force. And there’s no particular neurological or genetic proclivity inhibiting our active creativity today. It’s us and our fear of emotional risk.

How to be creative? How to manage creative people? All it requires, really, is letting go — then we’ll clearly see how to help others reclaim the use of as much of their own

creativity as they wish.

Let’s start with a break from the office or lab, and have a little fun. Invite the children you work with — including yourself — out to play.