In March 1989, at CERN, Sir Tim Berners-Lee handed his supervisor, Mike Sendall, a document titled Information Management: A Proposal. It did not describe a revolutionary machine or a dazzling physical discovery. It was an idea to connect information scattered across different computer systems. On the cover, Sendall wrote by hand a short and ambiguous sentence: “Vague, but exciting.”
He did not reject it. Nor did he approve it with blind enthusiasm. He acknowledged the imprecision and, at the same time, the possibility. That proposal would eventually become the architecture that sustains today’s global flow of knowledge: the World Wide Web.
Creativity often begins precisely there, in an uncomfortable territory where something is not yet well defined, but cannot be ignored. Before becoming evident, an idea is diffuse. Before seeming inevitable, it appears fragile. And many systems do not tolerate that initial fragility.
For decades we have associated creativity with spontaneous genius or spectacular disruption. Yet psychology has long dismantled that myth. Creativity is not a mystical outburst; it is a particular way of processing, combining, and transforming information. J. P. Guilford spoke of divergent thinking to describe the ability to generate multiple responses to the same problem. E. Paul Torrance developed indicators of fluency, flexibility, and originality. Robert Sternbergshowed that creativity is a specific mode of intelligence, distinct yet complementary to analytical intelligence. It is not the absence of logic; it is logic applied to territories not yet structured.
Even within creativity there are styles. Michael Kirton proposed a distinction that challenges another stereotype. Not all creative individuals are revolutionaries. Some are adaptors; others are radical innovators. The former improve existing systems, refine processes, and optimize structures. The latter challenge them from the outside. Both are creative, but they operate with different degrees of rupture. Confusing creativity with permanent disruption is a dangerous simplification. Many meaningful transformations have been cumulative, quiet, and persistent.
Research also shows that ideas are not born complete. Graham Wallas described the creative process as a sequence that includes preparation, incubation, illumination, and verification. The phase that causes the most discomfort is incubation. During this stage, the problem remains active without a clear solution. It is the “vague” moment. The mind works without displaying immediate results. Yet this stage is not a failure of the process; it is constitutive of it. David Perkins put it precisely. Creativity is not just spark; it is disciplined construction. Illumination does not arise from nothing; it emerges after periods of exploration, accumulation, and trial.
Contemporary neuroscience has added another decisive layer. Far from being a chaotic explosion, creative thinking involves the coordinated interaction of brain networks that do not usually operate together. Circuits associated with imagination and free association cooperate with those linked to control and evaluation. Creativity is not the absence of judgment; it is the alternation between openness and selection. Generating possibilities and then filtering them. Exploring and then structuring. It is not disorder; it is sophisticated integration.
Emotional state also matters. For years, suffering was romanticized as the primary fuel of creativity. However, recent research, discussed even in venues such as Harvard Business Review by authors like Emma Seppälä, shows that positive emotional states broaden cognitive repertoire and enable wider connections. Creativity does not flourish under constant threat or chronic exhaustion. It requires available psychological energy and enough safety to explore without immediate fear of punishment.
Yet no creative capacity unfolds in a vacuum. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi proposed a systemic model that shifts the focus away from the isolated individual. Creativity emerges from the interaction between person, domain, and social field. It is not enough to have an idea; that idea must engage with a body of knowledge and be recognized by a community. The so-called “Medici effect” describes historical moments when different disciplines intersect and generate mutual fertilization. Renaissance Florence did not produce creativity by accident; it produced intersections.
Within that context emerges Leonardo da Vinci, not as a romantic myth, but as a structural example. His curiosity was not whimsical; it was systematic. He observed anatomy, hydraulics, painting, mechanics. He searched for common patterns across different domains. What we now call polymathy was not scattered accumulation, but transversal exploration.
Centuries later, Hildegard of Bingen integrated music, medicine, theology, and cosmology into a synthesis that exceeded the categories of her time. Hedy Lamarr, publicly known as an actress, developed with composer George Antheil a frequency-hopping system that laid technical foundations for modern wireless communications. Creativity did not respect the labels society assigned to them; it moved at the intersection.
In the contemporary world, Steve Jobs insisted that creativity consists of connecting things, not inventing from scratch, but recombining meaningfully. What appeared to be visionary intuition was, in fact, a trained sensitivity to perceive invisible relationships between technology, design, and human experience.
What emerges is not an isolated line of genius, but a recurring pattern. Cross-domain integration, tolerance for initial ambiguity, and persistence sufficient to shape what is still undefined. Creativity is not explosion; it is architecture.
The problem is that many organizations operate under logics that privilege exploitation over exploration. James Marchdescribed this tension clearly. Exploitation generates immediate efficiency; exploration generates future possibility. When short-term performance pressure dominates, exploration appears irresponsible. Disruptive ideas seem imprudent before they seem inevitable.
Teresa Amabile showed how excessively controlling environments, focused on rigid metrics and external rewards, erode intrinsic motivation, one of the central drivers of creativity. If every proposal must justify its full viability from the outset, the imprecise phase disappears, and with it many transformative possibilities.
This is not about idealizing ambiguity. Not all vague ideas are valuable. Many will vanish under scrutiny. But systematically eliminating what is imprecise prevents some ideas from passing through the maturation process they require. Creativity demands a space between chaos and absolute certainty.
Creativity is not a privilege reserved for a few. It is a distributed human capacity, shaped by practice, environment, and the decision not to abandon too early what we cannot yet fully explain.
For that reason, the invitation is clear and concrete, and it calls for more than momentary inspiration: NOURISH your creativity by deliberately creating the conditions in which it can grow. Cultivating it means exposing yourself to different perspectives, allowing questions without immediate answers, connecting domains you normally keep separate, and reserving time to explore before closing.
It also implies something many people have never done consciously: training how they think. Creativity can be nourished through lateral thinking, through holistic approaches that integrate seemingly unrelated variables, and through systematic methods that deconstruct and reconstruct problems from different angles. Frameworks, tools, and exercises exist precisely to expand the capacity to generate alternatives, yet most people have never engaged with them.
Not because they are not useful, but because they do not appear urgent, and what is not urgent is often postponed indefinitely. Creativity is not only inspiration; it is cognitive training. It is expanding mental repertoire beyond habitual responses. It is exposing oneself to unfamiliar disciplines, questioning personal assumptions, and deliberately practicing the generation of alternatives before evaluating them.
Not every vague idea will change the world. But none that did began fully formed. To create is not to begin with certainty; it is to accept that every meaningful architecture was, at some point, merely a possibility scribbled in the margin of a page, vague, but exciting.
