Creativity became a reigning cultural ideal not because people only recently began inventing or making things, but because the idea expanded beyond art. It came to describe what workplaces, economies, schools, media, cities, and individuals should value: novelty, innovation, and self-expression. Andreas Reckwitz traces this wider expectation to late-modern society’s “culture of the new”; Samuel W. Franklin offers a complementary history of creativity’s rise as a subject of study and policy in postwar America.
What changed was creativity’s social role
Human beings have always made things, devised solutions, and created art. The historical change is that “creativity” became a broad social ideal: a quality to cultivate, a resource to use, and an expectation that applies well beyond artists.
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In The Invention of Creativity: Modern Society and the Culture of the New, sociologist Andreas Reckwitz argues that creativity shifted from an association with artistic subcultures toward a widely shared model and imperative. Wiley’s description of the book summarizes that movement as creativity becoming “a universal model for culture and an imperative in many parts of society.” That is publisher copy describing Reckwitz’s argument, not a direct quotation from the book’s main text. Wiley’s book description situates his account in developments from the 1970s onward.
How novelty became an imperative
Reckwitz’s account links creativity’s growing status to what he calls a late-modern “culture of the new.” In this view, novelty is not merely a feature of artistic work; it becomes a way of judging activity across society. New ideas, experiences, products, and identities acquire special value because they appear original or different.
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This helps explain why creativity can sound both liberating and demanding. It promises room for self-expression, experimentation, and individual distinction. But when the ideal spreads across work and personal life, people may also feel expected to be original, adaptable, and continually self-renewing. Reckwitz treats this tension as part of social aestheticization: the increased importance of style, experience, and novelty in how society organizes and evaluates life. It is his critical interpretation, not an uncontested consensus.
Where the ideal spread
Reckwitz follows creativity across several connected domains. The breadth matters: his subject is not only the art world or the growth of a particular industry, but the migration of an ideal through modern social life.
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- Art: avant-garde and postmodern movements helped make originality and disruption prominent cultural values.
- Work and the economy: creative industries and an innovation-focused economy treat novelty as a source of value.
- Psychology and self-development: creativity becomes associated with personal growth and the self as a resource to develop.
- Media: portrayals of creative stars give public visibility to the ideal of exceptional originality.
- Urban life: creative-city planning makes creativity part of how cities imagine their appeal and future.
These settings do not make identical demands. An artist’s search for a new form, a company’s pursuit of innovation, and a person’s effort at self-development are different activities. Reckwitz’s point is that they can nevertheless draw on a shared cultural model that prizes novelty and creative distinction. Suhrkamp’s description also presents the book as tracing creativity across these broad areas.
Why the 1950s matter—and what that date does not mean
Samuel W. Franklin’s The Cult of Creativity: A Surprisingly Recent History offers a different but complementary account. The University of Chicago Press describes his subject as postwar America, where creativity became a topic of academic study and debate, an official personality trait, an educational and economic policy goal, and an ideal of personal transformation. The book’s website frames its claim this way: “the idea that there is such a thing as ‘creativity’—and that it can be cultivated—is surprisingly recent, entering our everyday speech in the 1950s.” The University of Chicago Press and the book’s website describe that history.
Do these 3 things before closing this tab:
1Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errors2Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitches3Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problemsThe 1950s date belongs to Franklin’s account of the concept’s entry into everyday American speech and its cultivation as an explicit ideal. It is not a universal origin date for artistic creation, invention, or human making. Franklin is concerned with how creativity became a named, studied, and promoted capacity in a particular historical and national setting.
Three accounts, with different scopes
John Hope Mason’s The Value of Creativity: The Origins and Emergence of a Modern Belief adds a longer intellectual history. Routledge describes a discussion spanning thinkers including Adam Smith, Rousseau, Kant, Arnold, Marx, and Nietzsche. It says scientific, technological, economic, and political factors helped give rise to the modern value of creativity, while that value was applied almost exclusively to artistic and cultural activity. Routledge’s description therefore helps distinguish the emergence of creativity as a modern value from its later expansion across society.
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| Account | Scope and period | Main emphasis |
|---|---|---|
| John Hope Mason, The Value of Creativity | A longer intellectual history; the publisher description does not specify a single start date. | The emergence of creativity as a modern value, initially applied mainly to artistic and cultural activity. |
| Samuel W. Franklin, The Cult of Creativity | Postwar United States; the book’s website identifies the 1950s as the period when the idea entered everyday speech. | Creativity becoming an object of study and debate, a policy goal, and an ideal of personal transformation. |
| Andreas Reckwitz, The Invention of Creativity | Late-modern society, with the publisher describing developments from the 1970s onward. | Creativity’s spread across social domains and its connection to a culture that prizes novelty. |
These accounts answer related but distinct questions. Mason focuses on the formation of a modern belief; Franklin on the postwar American construction and promotion of creativity as a cultivable capacity; Reckwitz on how creativity became a wider social model in late modernity. Their different periods and geographical scopes are not competing dates for one universal origin.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.What “reigning value” means
Calling creativity a reigning value does not mean that everyone is creative in the same way, that every institution puts it first, or that society has stopped valuing stability, skill, or tradition. It means creativity has become a powerful standard by which many activities are described and assessed. The term can signal freedom and possibility, while also serving as an expectation attached to workers, organizations, and individuals.
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The central historical shift is therefore one of reach. Creativity moved from a value most closely associated with artistic and cultural work toward an ideal that also shapes economic life, public policy, personal development, media representation, and urban planning. Reckwitz explains that spread through late modernity’s emphasis on novelty; Franklin documents a key postwar American history of making creativity an explicit, cultivable quality.
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