Creativity

Source: https://businessesgrow.com/2018/01/30/increase-creativity/

“Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life’s coming attractions.”
― Albert Einstein

What is Creativity?

Process:

Creative people work hard to improve ideas and solutions by refining their work, making alterations to their creations. The creative person thinks that there is always room for improvement. Contrary to the mythology surrounding creativity, very few works of creative excellence are produced with a single stroke of brilliance or in a frenzy of rapid activity.

Attitude:

Creativity is also interlinked with attitude.
1. The mindset to accept new things and changes.
2. The willingness to play with new ideas, the habit of enjoying the good.
3. A creative person always views things from different angles and identifies other possible ways of doing things.

Ability:

‘Creativity’ in simple words means, the ability to imagine or do something new. It is the ability to generate ideas by combining, changing and reapplying existing ideas. Some creative ideas are brilliant and amazing while some creative ideas are simple and good. Everyone has good creative ability. Children are very creative and the creativity of the adults are suppressed due to education but can be still reawakened.

Three Types of Creativity:
1. Expertise, in other words, is Knowledge, technical skills, procedural and intellectual
2. An inner passion to solve the problem at hand leads to solutions which are creative
3. How flexible and imaginative one is to approach problems is defined as Creative Thinking.

Four Stages of Creativity:

1.Copying: Our first skills will start by copying those around us. Copying itself allows us to reverse engineer the creative process. Though we know the solution we are copying, the approach with which we arrive at a solution is definitely described our personal style.
2.Mixing: Once we have copied from the sources, we begin to put the key elements together. Mixing is done in a raw state and elements that are copied are easily identified.
3.Amalgamation: The difference between mixing and amalgamation is the easy recognition of the underlying parts. Mixed copied styles are easy to sort out, but amalgamated styles are subtle. It is likely that only experts could tease out the components beneath and this is not a true creation and original work is faded.
4.Creation: The concrete argument and true creation develop when an artist develops something new and novel. It is not just mixing and rearranging things but developing a new form that has not seen before. Previous 3 stages trigger an individual to be creative on his own in this stage.

Ten tips to Creative thinking:

1. Challenge current approaches to your work. Think new unimaginable possibilities
2. Challenge existing beliefs and assumptions. Ask yourself, your friends and your direct reports whether your current views about how things are done in your company are correct.
3. Be educated. Take a course on a subject like creative thinking, creative writing or update your current skills
4. Use Mind-Maps. On a paper sketch out your ideas and the way in which they can be connected. You can have more connections just by listing on a piece of paper.
5. Be positive. See problems as challenges and opportunities. Open your mind to new ideas, even if they look as difficult task at the beginning
6. Look for creative ideas: Identify the creative people in your field. Call on them to get involved in brainstorming sessions and evaluate all ideas for a creative solution
7. Change your routine. Make small changes in your daily routines and physical environment to help you see that things can be done in different ways.
8. Listen for change resistance. Look out how people have done in the past and what people have not done . . . Improve and be creative at this point and try to do new things which are not done before
9. Book time to be creative. Block some time for ideas to wander over. Have an informal meeting with your colleagues and you can able to solve even old problems
10.Role model. By being yourself a creative model in an organization, it inspires others and creativity is spread across the team and gives the energy to develop creative thinking

Summary:
a. Creative Thinking lets you explore new avenues of thought.
b. Creative Thinking draws on the diversity of a team.
c. It investigates a wider range of solutions to the problem.
d. Creative Thinking makes everybody in your team contribute ideas.
e. It can lead to ground-breaking achievements or rewards.
f. Creative Thinking makes the team focused with good results.
f. Creative Thinking sees problems as opportunities.

Source: https://vb1a.wordpress.com/2015/08/03/creativity-corporation/