Taking the U.S. Patent Office Criteria Seriously: A Quantitative Three-Criterion Creativity Definition and Its Implications

Abstract Although creativity has recently attracted considerable theoretical and empirical research, researchers have yet to reach a consensus on how best to define the phenomenon. To help establish a consensus, a definition is proposed that is based on the three criteria used by the United States Patent Office to evaluate applications for patent protection. The modified version uses the criteria of novelty, utility, and surprise. Moreover, creativity assessments based on these three criteria are quantitative and multiplicative rather than qualitative or additive. This three-criterion definition then leads to four implications regarding (a) the limitations to domain-specific expertise, (b) the varieties of comparable creativities, (c) the contrast between subjective and objective evaluations, and (d) the place of blind variation and selective retention in the creative process. These implications prove that adding the third criterion has critical consequences for understanding the phenomenon. Creativity is not only treated with superior sophistication, but also paradoxes that appear using the most common two-criterion definition readily disappear when the third criterion is included in the analysis. Hence, the conceptual differences between two- and three-criterion definitions are not trivial. Notes 1Huber (2000) pointed out that the Patent Office definition has been used by previous researchers, including de Bono in 1992 and Torrance in 1988. Few have followed their example. 2Galileo provides an even more striking example: His discovery of the lunar mountains was largely contingent on his prior artistic training in chiaroscuro (Simonton, Citationin press). 3Although most "creativity tests" rely on social rather personal judgments—in the sense that someone else calculates a creativity score based on objective performance—sometimes a measure depends on self-assessments (e.g., Richards, Kinney, Lunde, Benet, Sawyer, Citation2011). Although the empirical findings are so far somewhat mixed, it might facilitate inquiries when the phenomenon is more precisely defined. Of special importance is explicitly making surprise an essential component (see, e.g., Bowden & Jung-Beeman, Citation2003).