I constantly yearn for increased creativity. I look at people I consider creative and stand in awe of what they can do. I’ve known people who first take piano lessons and then once that is relatively mastered decide they will pick up the cello. From there they can transfer their skills to the violin. They are not satisfied playing other people’s music so they create their own. Music is a foreign language to me. I don’t have words to describe it let alone the ability to make it. I consider people who play instruments and write music to be one example of adaptive learners. They begin as novices and as skills and competency increase they are able to innovate to create something that didn’t exist before.
Many of our great inventions can probably be traced back to adaptive experts. We all learn about George Washington Carver in grade school. He of course was a famous agriculturist who was able to use what he learned to create hundreds of new products and revolutionize farming as many people knew it.
Unfortunately I can’t think of many things for which I have enough expertise that I can transfer to another setting and/or innovate within that setting. I suppose using a computer could fall in that category to some degree. I have enough knowledge that I can move from software program to software program without much trouble. That ability may be attributable to the fact that software is designed similarly, but I’ll ignore that point for the moment and claim to be an adaptive expert in that field.
In addition to music I also wish I was an adaptive expert mechanically. I have a friend who can fix almost anything. This to me is the height of creativity. Not only can he transfer his skills across different types of machinery, but he can innovate and find solutions that may not be typical. Again, I find myself highly covetous of such knowledge and skill.
We should probably keep in mind that adaptive experts are not always geniuses nor particularly creative. The line is sometimes thin between adaptive and routine expertise. Here are two good examples of that:
