Why Do We Need a Newer Vocabulary for Creativity?

It is both an exciting and daunting task to revisit work done years prior, especially when the book in question concerns creativity. As a forward looking and, most of all, forward driving phenomenon, creativity seems to be all about the future. This makes it even more bold of us to have used the word ‘new’ in the title of our book. Novelty is subject to the passing of time and what was a new vocabulary in the middle of the 2010s might seem slightly out of date close to ten years later. And yet, we can proudly say that this book stood the test of time. Its novelty is not as much temporal as it is conceptual. The vocabulary proposed then remains important today because the work needed to reframe how we think about creativity (and, alongside it, imagination, innovation, invention, human possibility; Glăveanu, 2023) is ongoing. The ‘new vocabulary’ proposed years ago is worth revisiting precisely because revisions are needed to stand as a still relevant contribution, and there is more to learn from it, more to do, more to challenge. Including the association between creativity and the future. Yes, creative processes are future-oriented, but they are also firmly rooted in the past, in lived experience, in the world as is and was. Similarly, this second edition is not merely a ‘newer’ vocabulary but a revisiting of past ideas in a changed—some might say radically changed—present, for the purposes of open-ended and yet-to-be written futures.