Creativity is the ability to form novel and valuable ideas or works using one's imagination. Products of creativity may be intangible (e.g. an idea, scientific theory, literary work, musical composition, or joke), or a physical object (e.g. an invention, dish or meal, piece of jewelry, costume, a painting).

Creativity may also describe the ability to find new solutions to problems, or new methods to accomplish a goal. Therefore, creativity enables people to solve problems in new ways.

Most ancient cultures (including Ancient Greece, Ancient China, and Ancient India) lacked the concept of creativity, seeing art as a form of discovery rather than a form of creation. In the Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition, creativity is seen as the sole province of God, and human creativity was considered an expression of God's work; the modern conception of creativity came about during the Renaissance, influenced by humanist ideas.^{[citation needed][clarification needed]}

Scholarly interest in creativity is found in a number of disciplines, primarily psychology, business studies, and cognitive science. It is also present in education and the humanities (including philosophy and the arts).

The English word "creativity" comes from the Latin terms creare (meaning "to create"). Its derivational suffixes also come from Latin. The word "create" appeared in English as early as the 14th century—notably in Chaucer's The Parson's Tale to indicate divine creation. The modern meaning of creativity in reference to human creation did not emerge until after the Age of Enlightenment.^{[citation needed]}

In a summary of scientific research into creativity, psychology professor Michael Mumford wrote, "We seem to have reached a general agreement that creativity involves the production of novel, useful products." In psychologist Robert Sternberg's words, creativity produces "something original and worthwhile".

Authors have diverged dramatically in their precise definitions beyond these general commonalities: social geographer Peter Meusburger estimated that over a hundred different definitions can be found in literature. One definition given by Dr. E. Paul Torrance in the context of assessing an individual's creative ability is "a process of becoming sensitive to problems, deficiencies, gaps in knowledge, missing elements, disharmonies, and so on; identifying the difficulty; searching for solutions, making guesses, or formulating hypotheses about the deficiencies: testing and retesting these hypotheses and possibly modifying and retesting them; and finally communicating the results."

Philosophy professor Ignacio L. Götz, following the etymology of the word, argued that creativity is not necessarily "making". He confined it to the act of creating without thinking about the end product. While many definitions of creativity seem almost synonymous with originality, Götz also emphasized the difference between creativity and originality. Götz asserted that one can be creative without necessarily being original. When someone creates something, they are certainly creative at that point, but they may not be original in the sense that their creation is not something new. However, originality and creativity can go hand-in-hand.