Creating

Creating is making new things that have not existed before, usually by combining two or three things that existed. Art is almost always called creative, but so are other activities like music, mathematics, technology, business, craft, building, gardening and forestry, if they combine things to get new things.

When several people cooperate in more than one process of creating, that is a creative network. This cuts risk since anything creative involves some chance that it will simply not work.

What is "not creative" is usually called imitative, and includes anything that is mostly trying not to do what has never been done – like law, sports, science, war, and especially education. These involve more direct competition, so risk comes from the competitor who may do it better. The word team is used for such groups.

Most people fear change and new things, and so what is most stable and considered important by society tends to be imitative and done in teams. But unless society encourages creating it loses out to others by competition in business or technology, so there must be some creative networks, somewhere, in labs or art studios.

Views of control of creative work also depend very much on religious and spiritual views of nature (or a creator) creating Man, according to economist Lester Thurow. Those ethical traditions that see "Man in the image of God" have created legal codes (see guild, intellectual right, intellectual interest, intellectual property) to tightly control what they are creating or have created. These are now the basis of organizations such as WIPO or ICANN. Often, such laws also create control over things which are merely found, not created.

Many people give away what they have created and never think about it as property – other people try to control it and get paid every time anyone sees it – or even every time they just talk about it.

Wikipedia uses the GNU FDL which is a content license that tries to get people to combine what they are creating, with no one clearly in control. This is considered strange by many people, who are uncomfortable with that idea, or seek to control some aspect of it themselves.