Creativity as Recombination: What Would Be the Intangible Values?

Wanice Alfes
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Notes from a lifelong collector of intangible ideas

By Wanice ALFES · Bad Homburg

Charcoal study of Margot after Picasso by Wanice Alfes — creativity as recombination.

Margot, after Picasso — the study Drawing by Wanice Alfes

For many years, I assumed creativity was primarily associated with imagination, originality, artistic expression, or the ability to generate something new. The more I studied different disciplines—and perhaps more importantly, the more I observed human behavior across cultures—the less convinced I became that creativity is fundamentally about novelty.

Today, I suspect creativity may be much closer to recombination than invention.

This realization emerged from an apparently simple question: why do different societies appear creative in such different ways?

Why societies create differently

The common narrative often suggests that some cultures are more creative than others. Yet this seems increasingly insufficient. Perhaps the real difference is not the quantity of creativity but the preferred mode of recombination.

Germany, for example, appears particularly skilled at recombining structures. The United States often excels at recombining opportunities. Brazil frequently demonstrates an extraordinary ability to recombine contexts.

These are not merely cultural curiosities. They may represent distinct cognitive pathways through which new realities emerge.

Creativity as recombination, not invention

The idea reminded me of Picasso’s famous statement:

“Good artists copy. Great artists steal.”— often attributed to Picasso

The phrase is often interpreted as a provocation about originality. However, I increasingly suspect Picasso was describing something deeper. Great creators do not produce from emptiness. They reorganize existing elements so effectively that the resulting configuration feels entirely new.

A newborn child offers an interesting metaphor.

Nothing about a newborn is truly new. The biological mechanisms already existed. The genetic material already existed. The processes that produced the child are ancient.

Yet something undeniably new appears.

The novelty is not located in the components but in the configuration.

Perhaps creativity operates similarly.

What we often experience as a creative breakthrough may not be the emergence of a new idea, but the discovery of a new architecture connecting existing ideas.

The paradox of expertise

This perspective also changes how I think about knowledge itself.

As expertise grows, navigation becomes easier. We acquire maps. We recognize patterns. We learn where certain roads lead. Yet expertise may also create a paradox. The more maps we possess, the less frequently we travel into territories without maps.

This may explain why so many creators deliberately seek unfamiliar perspectives. Picasso admired children’s drawings. Modern innovators seek interdisciplinary collaborations. Scientists often report breakthroughs after exposure to fields outside their own.

The challenge is not acquiring more pieces.

The challenge is seeing different combinations of the same pieces.

Perhaps this is why creativity requires a particular relationship with uncertainty.

Risk is not merely a consequence of creativity. It may be one of its conditions.

To create is to tolerate the possibility that a new configuration may fail. It is to invest energy in relationships between ideas that cannot yet be fully justified by evidence. It is to navigate without complete certainty.

Interestingly, I do not experience this process as genius.

More often, it feels like a peculiar form of intellectual impatience.

A refusal to repeat inefficient patterns.

A suspicion that there must be a better arrangement.

A search for hidden bridges between concepts that already exist.

Creation as recognition

In this sense, creativity may not be an act of production.

It may be an act of recognition.

Not the invention of something from nothing, but the ability to perceive a structure that was already possible and make it visible.

If so, perhaps the most important intangible value behind creativity is not intelligence, originality, or talent.

Perhaps it is the willingness to remain sufficiently curious, sufficiently humble, and sufficiently courageous to reorganize what others assume is already understood.

And perhaps every meaningful act of creation begins with the same quiet thought:

“What if these pieces belong together

in a way nobody has noticed yet?”