The amount of creativity in daily life is staggering - just look around.
According to Nate Leonard - chair of the English department at Westminster College and an organizer of the 2018 Hancock Symposium - creativity often gets the bum's rush in today's society.
At the symposium's opening event this last week, he tried to explain why Americans will always need creative people.
"Why creativity? It's for the human good," he said to the gathering at Champ Auditorium. "Why do we ask why? And why do we assume creativity is good?"
Oftentimes, people think of creativity as art, and writing and music.
"People now see creativity as a luxury. We see it for fun, as opposed to being practical," Leonard said. "It's nice, but it doesn't really do anything."
But then he brought the point home.
"Creativity is the engine of our economy," he said.
Leonard back this up with statistics.
"The arts are 4.2 percent of the USA's GDP (gross domestic product) - about a 24th of our entire economy," he added. "And 673,656 businesses are involved in not just creation and distribution of art, they have 3.48 million employees."
Leonard said $102.5 billion is generated by events held by nonprofit arts organizations in related expenditures: Caterers, marketing and the like.
"Creativity is increasingly being seen as a catalyst for innovation," he added.
Look at your coffee cup. Is there a design on there? Look at your cellphone screen. That piece of art was created not just by a photographer but by graphic artists and editors. Then it was marketed.
Hancock Symposium lecturers also drove home the point that creativity is innovation. It got humans to the moon and machines to Mars. Creativity created electric cars and tractors and better food. Creativity heals illnesses and helps us understand each other as human brings.
Yes, it is art, but it's so much more, according to David Jones, professor of psychology at Westminster College, who also spoke.
"Creativity is important in our development as a species," he said.