Why do You Care about Creativity?
What were your favourite activities when you were a child? Reading, drawing, Lego blocks building, collecting various things or wandering off outdoors? I enjoyed all of them and created imaginary characters and creatures. Then I stopped imagining and creating as I became older and sensible.
I felt odd when I began seeing the word “creativity” in the business world. Google seems to share my observations, as it showed the word usage is increasing steadily since 1950.
I wondered why creativity gained so much attention and crept into the rationalised world where seemingly opposite of the spectrum of creativity. Seeing the word “creativity” and its application in the rationalisation driven area reignited my creativity, which had been buried deep underneath of me.
“Creativity” appears from leadership, innovation to operations, and the motivations of applying creativity in business summarised in three reasons.
VUCA world
The management scholars and publications claim that we are in the VUCA world (it stands Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity). In this world, the existing or used-to-work winning formulae do not work. So, the senior management needs to find other breakthrough formulae to grow or remain in the business. It drives organisations to foster creativity to generate new ideas and develop new products and services to keep up with changing consumers values and preferences.
Shorter Product Life Cycle
The popularity of products and services do not stay on high for long these days. Think about the mobile phone if you are old enough to remember devices advancement over 20 years. How frequently do you change your mobile phone? Naturally, it forces the companies to develop new products and services more frequently than ever to retain us with their products and services. Consequently, many companies ask their employees to bring more ideas — come up with many new ideas, evaluate and test them and turn to new products and services quickly. So, business owners and employees try different approaches to see things differently and explore what and how we could enhance our creativity — the powerhouse of ideas.
Ease to create
We can connect with anywhere, anything and anyone in the world virtually and continuously stimulated by various information and images. The advancement of technology and tools makes it less time consuming and affordable for us to create something to test our ideas. You use Canva to design your website and social media post. Then, you write a story and compose music on your tablet. Developers develop AI and machine learning model on their personal computers. The act of creation became more manageable than ever — less cost, time and training. You can access a wider audience through the internet, so testing your ideas are easier than ever.
You see why creativity got attention in business, so now what? Your boss may tap on your shoulder and ask you to bring new ideas by next week. Or you may want to make an impact on issues like climate crisis and racial problems in society. How can you get ideas? You may question your creativity and lament your score in art class at school. Well, I wondered too. So I began searching for “creativity” and answers for questions like “What is creativity?”, “How can I apply creativity to non-artistic setup and get results?”, and most importantly, “How can I summon creativity when I need it?”.
I share my creative journey and findings in the following few articles hoping these make your creative journey less bumpy.
Key takeaways
The word “creativity” gained popularity as the solutions born in the highly rationalised environment became less applicable these days. We need to apply our creativity to find new approaches.
