Creativity in Business – Part 2

by ramneek singh | May 2, 2015 | Blog

Part 2: How to become a creative thinker

In part one we discussed creativity as a concept and why it is vital for businesses to be creative. This time, we’ll explore the 5 elements of creativity and will give you 4 simple exercises that will allow you to think more creatively.

How can you become more creative?

Creativity can be broken down into 5 elements:

1. Associating

This is the practice of connecting the dots between seemingly unrelated ideas. It’s the art of pulling inspiration and insight from one area and applying it to something completely different.

2. Questioning

Curiosity is a deeply ingrained tenant in all creative professions. Highly creative and innovative individuals are always asking for the whys and whats, they rarely accept the world as it is.

3. Observing

In her book Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes, Maria Konnikova emphasizes the importance of observing our surroundings on a deeper level.

4. Networking

This isn’t just about expanding your LinkedIn connections or the rolodex of business cards on your desk. Networking involves expanding your bubble to involve individuals and ideas from all walks of life. Creative individuals don’t stick to just their area of expertise. They’re constantly trying new things.

5. Experimenting

In order to drum up unique ideas, you have to venture outside of your comfort zone and experiment with new ideas and ways of working. Google pioneered a concept of “80/20 time” that allowed engineers to tinker for 20% of their work time. The concept has since spread to other companies like LinkedIn and Apple. These companies understand that creativity doesn’t just happen. It takes work.

Creative exercises

1. Be distracted often

When we’re distracted, we’re not thinking about a solution to a particular problem or wondering what our next great article idea could be. A distraction may provide the break you need to disengage from a fixation on the ineffective solution.

Focusing too intently on a problem basically uses up all of your cognitive resources. When you step back and do something mundane or repetitive you lighten your cognitive load which can help you find the solution you were looking for in the first place. You have to give your brain the space to be creative.

2. Change your environment

Getting out of your normal environment could be just the thing you need to spark your creative thinking. Research on living abroad demonstrated that immersing yourself in a different culture can make you more creative. Why is that? It could be due to the way the brain must adapt to living in a totally different country. Your brain is forced to make new connections and see things from a different perspective which can enhance creativity.

3. Adjust your schedule

You don’t have to switch your entire schedule around to force yourself into being a night owl or rising at the crack of dawn. But, occasionally breaking out of your routine might just be the switch you need to set your mind buzzing with a handful of great ideas.

4. Become a beginner

In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few
— Zen Master Shunryo Suzuki
If you’ve been practicing your craft for any length of time, you probably wouldn’t consider yourself a beginner. Beginners lack understanding, they don’t know exactly what they’re doing or what they’re truly capable of. This type of mindset, however, may be exactly what you need.

Creativity in Business – Part 1

by ramneek singh | Mar 23, 2015 | Blog

Part 1: Creativity in business

In the coming weeks, YSPN will explore creativity in two facets, first we will take a macro approach, explaining what creativity is and why it is important for businesses. In the second part we will look at how any individual can become a creative thinker.

What is Creativity?

Creativity is a concept we often come across in daily conversation. We hear of creative people, admire creative pieces of art, and listen to creative music. Yet, in spite of our almost innate understanding of what it means to be creative there is a lot of confusion about the nature of creativity.

Wertheimer suggested that creative thinking involved breaking down and restructuring our knowledge about something in order to gain new insights into its nature.

Another definition suggests that creativity is something, which occurs when we are able to organise our thoughts in such a way that it leads to a different and even better understanding of the subject or situation we are considering.

Yet another comes from Aichel Mangelo on the Internet, who along with many others suggests that ‘Being creative is seeing the same thing as everyone else but thinking of something different’.

So, why is creativity important in Business: 

As different or new situations present themselves in business, problems tend to arise also; these problems often require novel solutions. Many times, it is difficult to see solutions to problems by thinking in a conventional fashion. Logical thinking takes our existing knowledge and uses rules of inference to produce new knowledge. However, because logical thinking progresses in a series of steps, each one dependent on the last, this new knowledge is merely an extension of what we know already.

The need for creative problem solving has arisen as a result of the inadequacies of logical thinking. It is a method of using imagination along with techniques which use analogies, associations and other mechanisms to help produce insights
into problems.

The majority of organisations are fully aware of just how vital creativity is to their prosperity and invest considerable sums in looking for people who are able to deliver creative solutions to difficult business problems.

In part 2 we will explore the steps that can be applied in order for anyone to think more creatively.