Creativity is defined as the ability to generate ideas or products that are both original and in some way useful or adaptive (Barron, 1969). At the highest level, creative ideas, processes, and products have benefited humanity by helping us to survive and adapt to a changing environment (Richards, 1990). At a more personal level, creative work in the arts, music, literature, science, technology, and medicine has reduced suffering, improved daily living, and enriched our mental and physical experience of the world. Research demonstrates that simply engaging in creative activity can provide physical and mental health benefits as well (Cohen, 2006; Eschleman et al., 2014; Conner, DeYoung, and Silvia, 2016). Yet, despite these abundant benefits of creative work, the notion that there is a relationship between creativity and mental illness – the “mad genius” concept – is widespread. If creativity is so beneficial, can it also be related to increased risk for mental illness?

Social media and electronic communications dominate modern life. Workplaces have been transformed by email, teleconferencing and an array of new applications, along with our homes and social lives. Fewer people today, go to a travel agent to book flights, subscribe to newspaper delivery, or even watch free-to-air television. All of this can be done more conveniently and with greater individual choice and control online, often guided by social media applications to channel information, in ways not mediated or filtered as in the past. Social relationships have changed along the way, with many people now exchanging texts rather than speaking face-to-face or by phone.

Do schools support or suppress creativity? Almost everyone has an opinion about this question. These opinions are informed, in part, from our prior schooling experiences as well as representations of school in the media and internet. Consider Sir Ken Robinson’s wildly popular and influential TED talk, “Do schools kill creativity?” People who have watched this talk may come away with the impression that schools kill, or at least suppress, creativity. What do you think?

There has been long-standing interest in the biological bases of creativity and genius throughout history. Much of the earlier work in this area involved efforts to understand the genetic bases of creativity. More recently, however, and due in major part to technological advances in modern neuroimaging and theoretical advances in psychology, the focus has shifted to studying the relationship between creativity and brain structure and function – represented by a burgeoning discipline referred to as the neuroscience of creativity. Because it is always important to understand the historical roots of ideas, I will review some important early ideas introduced by Sir Francis Galton that were meant to measure the heritability of genius. I will argue that creativity is most likely an emergenic trait, meaning that it is expressed in a number of independent subtraits or abilities that are simultaneously present in a person. This idea holds also for the neurological bases of creativity, because at the level of the brain, it has also been shown that creativity emerges not as a function of a single brain region, process, or mechanism but rather as an emergent property of the dynamic interplay between spontaneous and controlled processes. In this sense, the neural bases of creativity also appear to be componential. In this chapter, I will conduct a selective review of some of the key empirical work from neuroimaging to highlight the contributions of this research to our understanding of creativity. Toward that end, I will review findings from early brain-mapping approaches and will end with presenting contemporary models based on network dynamics (i.e., interactions among networks).

Creativity appears to be an important part of cognitive capacities and problem solving. Creativity is one’s ability to generate ideas that are novel, surprising, and compelling (Kaufman and Sternberg, 2010). This chapter will focus on the creative-cognitive approach, which seeks to further understand how human minds produce creative ideas.

Creativity – the ability to generate original productions that are meaningful in their context – is a culturally embedded phenomenon. It may involve a person or a group of people who create. The cultural context in which the creative act occurs (with its physical and social facets) has many levels, ranging from the family, school, and work-organizational settings to local community, regional, national, or transnational ones. Culture, as a social environment, can be defined as “an historically transmitted pattern of meanings visible and tangible in symbols. A system of conceptions is inherited and expressed in symbolic forms. These forms are the means by which men and women (or human beings) communicate, continue their culture, and develop their knowledge about and attitudes toward life” (Geertz, 1973, p. 89). In the GLOBE international research program, House and Javidan (2004, p. 15) defined culture as “shared motives, values, beliefs, identities, and interpretations or meanings of significant events that result from common experiences of members of collectives and are transmitted across age generations.”

The internet, social media, smartphones and encryption have radically changed the way goods are bought, sold and advertised. In doing so, they have opened up new markets and increased economic opportunities, enabling advertising to reach a global and more targeted audience. Individuals can start an online business or take on a second job more easily than ever before. Technology has disrupted many areas of the economy. Digital currencies, such as Bitcoin, have facilitated encrypted online transactions without the need for processing by a third party such as a bank. Blockchain technology has enabled contracts to be executed online instead of requiring a hard copy to be signed by the parties as a means of verifying an agreement. Online businesses have emerged to disrupt traditional models in a range of sectors, including transportation, where ride- sharing apps have challenge taxis; accommodation, in the form of apps used to book private homes or rooms for short stays; and online clothing retailers that can offer substantially reduced prices with minimal rent and staffing costs. Developments such as these raise a number of legal and regulatory issues; for example, digital currencies may increase opportunities for fraud and create challenges for law enforcement agencies investigating online distributors of illegal drugs. In considering the issues associated with law, technology and commerce, this chapter begins with a discussion of digital currencies, and then proceeds to examine online markets and services, electronic contracting, and changes brought by new technology for professional services and other businesses. Emerging issues such as anti-competitive practices are also discussed.

Intellectual property involves the legal protection of inventions and other creative products. Its main categories are patents, copyright and trade marks, with related forms of protection also covering designs, circuit layouts, plant breeders’ rights, domain names and trade secrets. Some intellectual property rights attach automatically to a novel invention or creation, while others require registration in a publicly administered system, depending on the jurisdiction. Protection is typically limited to a specified time, with extension possible in some systems. What is offered to creators is an incentive to make potentially beneficial advances available to the public, rather than be kept secret or for private use only, by way of a limited monopoly.

The rapid growth of information and communications technology over the past two decades, including email, the internet, smartphones, social media, messaging applications and global positioning systems, has enhanced our ability to obtain and share information about the world. However, in the rush to secure the latest mass-produced technology device, many people give relatively less consideration to the implications for the security of the data that they produce and the consequential impact on individual privacy. That data is of great value in the corporate sector, to inform marketing strategies; and to governments to understand the behaviour of their citizens. As was noted in Chapter 1, developments in the past decade, such as the Snowden revelations, and the activities of the former political strategy firm Cambridge Analytica, have increased awareness of the implications of inadequate privacy protections. However, the convenience of new technologies may take precedence for many.