Creativity

I've had some thoughts about creativity. I'll start by explaining the things that got me going thinking about it:

1. My oral exam grades. I had 3 oral exams this spring. On two of them I earned the top grade, what got me all the way was my ability to pull other things than what was written in the books into my answer and for my ability to draw paralells between situations and compare things. Think, perceive, consider, evaluate and other fancy things.

2. I read an interview with a Blizzard employee. From his point of view, what one would consider one's own creative ideas are usually a blend of impressions and ideas other people have given you. In other words, you very rarely come up with something new that is truly of your own. Businessmen calls it stealing, culture calls it inspiration.

So, what am I getting at? I'm cool and everyone steals in the name of culture?

There's nothing wrong in letting creativity benefit from other people's creativity, I think it's a good thing. And very often these new ideas are a blend of so many ideas they really are new.

I'm thinking this: Creativity is not about creating something new. It's more about putting what you already know together in a new way.

I got my exam grades by putting together old facts about the Second World War together in a new and interesting way.
An artist is artistic when she blends old ideas and makes a new one. She doesn't really have to add something of her own, the blending is enough.
This would also mean that unconventional people are more creative, as they are not "afraid" of having a different look at things.
A nice example from video games: Everyone "knew" that orcs were evil because Tolkien had said so, until someone in Blizzard suggested that maybe they were just possessed and weren't that evil after all.
Tolkien created something new and exciting, and then many years later Blizzard took that idea and reshaped into some new again.

So how many genuinely new thoughts are there?
I'm not sure. Does it matter?