Personal Experiences
Creativity was not a word that I came across much at all as I was growing up in India. The emphasis in educational institutions was on rote memory and acing standardized tests so that one could pepper ones resumes with academic degrees that were a prerequisite for a good job. It was believed that professions that required creative skills were related to art and there was no sustainable future in that field. In a country of a billion people, most of whom were struggling to make ends meet, success was defined by financial accomplishments rather than by job or life satisfaction.
Because of this background, I did not think of myself as a creative person at all. I enjoyed drawing as a past-time but I considered myself primarily an engineer that solved problems by applying knowledge gained from books or tasks. It was only after reading books and articles related to creativity in my late teens that I learned that there was so much more to creativity in all aspects of life. One book that influenced me early on on this topic was “How to think like Leonardo da Vinci: Seven Steps to Genius Every Day”. He was well known as a creative genius and reading the book made me realize that creativity is a skill that can be learned. So I became a student of creativity and consciously nurtured the spirit of curiosity in my life. I exposed myself to new ideas from different sources – books, movies, people. I solved lateral thinking puzzles to train my mind to generate fresh perspectives, even on the mundane.
I think that I feel the most creative when I am confident, energetic and optimistic. I tend to generate the best ideas in areas that I consider myself to be knowledgeable about. Perhaps my lack of ideas in areas that I am unfamiliar with may rise from my feeling of incompetence in the field and the fear of being wrong. Fear and ignorance has certainly been a barrier for me. I also feel less creative when I feel low in energy or distracted by hunger or passive entertainment such as watching some shows on TV. In terms of environment, I find that a hot shower, although clichéd, has often been the place I get my best ideas. I am an introvert by nature and I like to think about hard problems on my own, in a quiet space. I do find a lot of power in team work and bringing different perspectives to the table but I think that the best solutions are often arrived at when I have done in-depth research on my own, then discussed them in a team-setting to consider different perspectives.
Organizational creativity
At my previous company, one of the things that I felt fostered creativity was the diversity of the workspace. It was a very global and inclusive organization where I had at my disposal several collaboration tools available to interact with my colleagues near and far in different ways. The diverse background of team members brought out interesting new perspectives and ideas that I don’t believe could be solicited from a homogenous group. Periodically, there were Hackathon events where employees had autonomy and the time off to solve problems or implement new ideas that they were passionate about. Several innovative ideas were discovered at such events. I think that organizational culture plays a big part in nurturing creativity.
I have also found that open work environments are more conducive to creativity as it facilitates interactions among employees and more visibility of work that is being done. Creative ideas often come out of connecting the dots, so it is beneficial to the firm to have employees network with each other, collaborate and exchange knowledge. I think that it’s also important, for the same reason, to have less formal hierarchy in the structure so that people are more approachable for collaboration on new ideas.
If employees are encouraged to experiment and are rewarded based on their efforts, not on the failures, then I believe people would be more creative. At Facebook, they have a sign that says “What would you do if you were not afraid?”
Do you think you, as an individual, are even capable of being creative by yourself? And, better yet, do you think a group within an organization is capable of being creative?
Yes and yes – absolutely! I think that creativity is a skill that can be learned. Some people are fortunate in having grown up in an environment that was more conducive to learning these skills – where they had the freedom to explore, be curious, experiment and learn. But I believe that even individuals like me who did not have that privilege, can learn these skills if they put their mind to it.
Groups within organizations can certainly be creative. I have worked for managers both good and bad at encouraging creativity within the same organization and I have found that a manager’s actions and behavior can be a big influence on an individual or teams’ creativity output. Managers that penalized failures and discouraged experimentation created an environment that was especially bad for creativity.
What do you think about this article and the way this author describes different creative types of problems and, thus, different creative processes? Should we trust ourselves just to know or sense when we need one type of approach versus another?
I think that as with any skill, one gets better with practice. As each individual is unique, I don’t think that there will be a universal answer for what creative process is best for what kind of problem. But I do think that everyone can learn from what has been shown to have worked in the past and by exposing oneself to diverse experiences and practice connecting the dots, one can get better at the skill.
As we saw from the in-class exercise, a number of ideas can be generated from random connections between insights and patterns. For a difficult problem, one could try different approaches until they hit upon one that works.
