Sometimes I wonder if the reason "we" are creative is not that we're blessed with preternatural creativity, but that we don't lose it in adolescence. Children are unskilled, but creative. Most adults are skilled but not creative. They learn that it's better for their jobs and social status and peaceful way of life to sacrifice that creativity and conform.
We don't become conventional, boring, and uncreative because that life isn't an option. (Some mentally ill people destroy their creativity in other ways, but that's another story.)
It's those of us who have absolutely no hope of winning the compete-to-conform game (we're going to lose if we play, so why try?) that keep our creativity intact. We need it if we're going to have a chance.
But note that conforming itself requires creativity. One has to (consciously or no) conjecture what is the appropriate, conformist thing to do in any situation. There's no easy way around this since most of the rules are unwritten.
What really gets society's goat is innovation, most of which fails, and all of which encounters resistance. And I think the reason for that resistance, ironically, is that new ideas and new things require other people to re-direct their own dwindling creativity into understanding or at least coping with them.
We don't become conventional, boring, and uncreative because that life isn't an option. (Some mentally ill people destroy their creativity in other ways, but that's another story.)
It's those of us who have absolutely no hope of winning the compete-to-conform game (we're going to lose if we play, so why try?) that keep our creativity intact. We need it if we're going to have a chance.