Understanding Creativity

Creativity can generally be defined as the ability to generate or recognize ideas, alternatives, or possibilities that may be useful in solving problems, communicating with others, and entertaining ourselves and others

Three reasons why people are motivated to be creative:

1.    Need for novel, varied, and complex stimulation

2.    Need to communicate ideas and values

3.    Need to solve problems

Creativity and Innovation are inseparable even though the definition may largely differ. Innovation can never happen with out creativity. Usually, result of creative output leads to innovation.  In the recent past, we have seen organizations encouraging their employees to be creative and push for innovation anywhere it possible like processes, products, deliverables etc. While this push is good, until a favorable context which nurtures creativity is created these efforts will remain largely cosmetic.

There is a strong notion in the society that creative individuals are born with that ability. Contrary to this belief, research time and again shows that we are all born creative and the uncreative side of us is picked-up with age as we get engulfed by the rule driven, compliance seeking and output driven world. Based on research done by George Land, young children are creative geniuses, and become less creative as they age. His study took a group of 1,600 five-year-olds and tested to see how creative they were. Ninety-eight percent were deemed creative geniuses, thinking in novel ways similar to the likes of Picasso, Mozart, Einstein and other creative personalities. He tested them again at 10 years old. That number dropped to 30 percent. By 15 years of age, it had declined to 12 percent. He gave the same test to 280,000 adults and found that only 2 percent were creative geniuses. In our own lives we have seen kids asking so many “why” questions, that enthusiasm to finding out why things happen as they happen, or why things are done the way are done is stopped by the rules, compliance we put into their lives (which happened us when we were at that age).

The good news is: If you consider yourself uncreative as an adult, you can reteach yourself to have a whole new mind and get into the habit of practicing creativity and innovation once again.

John Cleese actor, comedian and speaker, gives us a great concept on creativity. According to him, people function at work in terms of two modes: open and closed. He says in “closed mode” is when we are at work. We have inside us a feeling that there's lots to be done and we have to get on with. It's an active and anxious mode. It’s a mode which we're probably a little impatient, if only with ourselves. It's a mode in which we're very purposeful, and it's a mode in which we can get very stressed but not creative.

By contrast, the open mode, is relaxed… expansive; a less purposeful mode… in which we're probably more contemplative, more inclined to humor (which always accompanies a wider perspective) and, consequently, more playful. This is when we are trying to play with ideas, think differently and critiquing current solutions. In this mode there is a chance of coming up with something unique and fresh.

But we need to be in the open mode when we're pondering a problem but once we come up with a solution, we must then switch to the closed mode to implement it. Because once we've decided, we are efficient only if we go through with it decisively, distracted by doubts about its correctness. (for more information please follow this Link).

There are a lot of literature available on creativity and after skimming through it, here are few tips I follow to boost my thinking :

1.   Please don’t go with maxim “Why do you want to reinvent the wheel?”. I would respond…when you can fly, why do you need a wheel in the first place? Most of us look at historical data and try to implement solutions from the past or get influenced by them. Thinking from the scratch without any baggage will help us coming up with something new and fresh.

2.   Create space for yourself where you can get out of the clutter of everyday activity. During this time, look at the problem you are trying to solve from a distance. Think of current solutions, actors, relationships, constrains and try being little crazy when designing a new solution. You will be pleasantly surprised to see the results.

3.   Design Thinking is a concept which is catching up these days. There are many concepts and methods around it. I suggest going through this literature.

4.   Creativity comes with lot of patience. Creative geniuses did not create a great product overnight. It involves toying with an idea relentlessly. Never drop your original idea no matter how ridiculous it may seem.

5.   Finally, don’t ever think you are any less creative than others. We are creative, but minds are conditioned. All you need to do is to nudge yourself a little to become a child and get back that curiosity.