Archivi dei tag: innovation

Nurturing Creativity: Unleashing the Vital Skill for the Future

In the fast-paced world of tomorrow, creativity stands tall as one of the essential skills. In this article, I aim to demystify the concept of creativity and provide you with valuable resources to delve deeper into this skill.

Beyond the conventional perception of creativity being limited to artists and innovators, I explore its universal relevance, the process it entails, and how anyone can harness and enhance their creative capabilities.

Unveiling the Real Essence of Creativity

Commonly, creativity is associated with individuals possessing extraordinary artistic or inventive talents. However, this narrow view is debunked by creativity expert Sir Ken Robinson. In his immensely popular TED talk, Robinson reshapes our understanding of creativity, emphasizing:i

  • Creativity’s significance across all spheres of life and work.
  • The inherent creativity we are born with but tend to outgrow.
  • The misconception that creativity thrives only when boundaries are absent; in reality, it often thrives within constraints.
  • Viewing creativity as an ongoing process, not a singular event, and thus, acquirable by all.

Creativity, Imagination, and Innovation Distilled

Distinguishing creativity from imagination and innovation is crucial. The following definition outlines the two fundamental phases of the creative process:

  • Generating ideas.
  • Making judgments to evaluate the value of those ideas.

This dual-phase approach sheds light on the myriad factors that foster creativity, including cognitive abilities, knowledge, thinking styles, motivation, personality traits, and environment.

Fostering Creativity: Techniques and Strategies

While no foolproof formula exists to boost creativity, several techniques can be beneficial:

Empowering Resources for Unleashing Creativity

A wealth of online resources awaits those seeking to enhance their creative prowess:

Embrace the exciting journey of nurturing your creativity, a skill pivotal for the future. Shedding the misconception of creativity being exclusive, the universal relevance is unveiled and the process demystified. With an array of techniques and resources at your disposal, you’re empowered to unlock your creative potential and contribute meaningfully to the ever-evolving world. So, dive in, explore, and enjoy the transformative power of creativity!

Daring But Not Too Much

1970: NASA, the American space agency, completes the “Skylab“: a space station designed to accommodate 3 people for a period of three months. But, while the technology is advanced, the interior decoration looks sad: the cockpit is cold, and austere … the astronauts deserve better!

NASA then asks for help to a professional designer, Raymond Loewy, who works in the field of aesthetics applied to industrial objects. He conceived and designed, for example, several logos of famous brands, car and locomotive lines and even the Air Force One, the aircraft of the President of the United States.

Arriving at NASA, Raymond is amazed but speechless. The decoration of the Skylab? Too blue that diffuses a pale color. The lighting? It comes from above and creates distressing shadows. He therefore proposes to install portholes to look outside.

Photo by Arnaud Devautour on Unsplash

Raymond follows the M.A.Y.A. (Most Advanced Yet Acceptable) principle, which in practice means: dare but not too much. If an invention or design is too revolutionary, the consumer is frightened.

This idea takes into account the “cognitive bias“, that is a very common deformation of our way of thinking, of familiarity. We tend to prefer what we know, because it reassures us rather than what we don’t know. For this reason, for example, producers use advertising to make their products familiar to consumers.

According to Raymond, an important innovation must contain elements that users would be able to accept and embrace.

With the portholes, the brave occupants of the Skylab could admire a familiar sight: our dear old planet Earth!

Photo by The New York Public Library on Unsplash

Creativity: the skill of the future

Creativity is among the top three skills of the future.  I try to clarify this concept and give you more resources to explore it further.

We often associate creativity with artistic or innovational abilities, that only certain special people have. Those people are supposed to live a life of free expression and to produce ingenious works of arts or invent something useful for the human kind.

However, according to creativity expert, Sir Ken Robinson, this view of creativity is erroneous. Robinson, whose talk on this subject remains the most viewed video on Ted.com, states that:

  • creativity is essential for all spheres of work and life, not just the arts,
  • we are all born creative, but grow out of it,
  • creativity does not require freedom from boundaries and usually takes place within a given framework,
  • creativity is a process, rather than an event, and consequently,
  • it can be learned by all.

Creativity is closely linked to, but different from imagination and innovation. This definition of the concept identifies two phases of the creative process:

  1. generating ideas,
  2. making judgements (evaluating the value of those ideas).

This helps explain why so many different factors may be conducive to creativity, such as intellectual abilities, knowledge, styles of thinking, motivation, certain personality traits and environment.

Even though there is limited scientifically sound conclusions on how to become more creative, a number of techniques may help:

There are a lot of resources available on the Internet that will help you boosting your capacity to create original and useful work:

Have fun!