Developing Creativity

Creativity and innovation will improve your chances of success in business and in life. There are steps that can be taken to inspire you and to develop your creative mindset. By changing the way you think and by overcoming your fear of risk, you will improve you creativity. Implementing the guidelines in this module is the first step to forever changing your creative process.

What Is Creativity?

There are different types of creativity, which makes it difficult to define. People often limit their definitions of creativity to art, but this is too limiting. Creativity comes in the form of original thought, divergent thinking, problem solving, inspiration, and imagination. In order to improve creativity, it is essential that you understand the definition of creative thinking and what steps you can take to improve your own thought process.

Divergent Thinking

Divergent thinking moves away from the traditional, convergent thinking, which is linear and analytical. It is looking for the right answer. Divergent thinking, on the other hand, is nonlinear and spontaneous. Rather than finding a single correct answer, the divergent thinker discovers multiple options for addressing problems. Brainstorming, predicting, and imagination activities are all examples of divergent thinking. It is possible to increase divergent thinking by implementing open-ended questions when addressing problems rather than closed questions. We will discuss open-ended questons as well. Moving toward divergent thinking may not be comfortable for analytical thinkers, but practice will soon help creativity develop.

Problem Solving

It is possible to improve the problem-solving process by implementing creativity. This requires looking at each problem as a unique situation rather than applying the same principles to every similar problem.

Steps to Creative Problem Solving:

• View the problem in different ways.
• Do not make assumptions that all similar projects or problems are the same.
• Be open to different problem-solving options.
• Look at the big picture when addressing problems.
• Keep looking even when the solution is not easily found.

Course Objectives:

• Define creativity
• Act with confidence
• Engage in curiosity
• Stop acting out of fear
• Learn from introspection
• Take risks