What is innovation and who is creative?

When I innovate by myself I occasionally come up with great ideas, but where do they come from? Of corse you’re always inspired and influenced by your surroundings, including both experiences and people. For example I feel the most creative when I surrond myself with inspiring people, but it can also be the other way around. When I see too many inspiring people I occasionally have a tendency to bring myself down, thinking that I could never accomplish what they’ve done.

My view is that no matter situation or mindset you can be creative, and as Denisse Ariana Pérez states in her book Democratize Creativity, everyone is creative!

But how do you actually innovate, is there a process or do the ideas just come to your mind?

My answer to myself is both! And also my experience is that creativity flourish when you do it with others. Combining your knowledge and insights with someone else gives you the opportunely to go a step further and create innovative ideas that you never could have come up with by yourself.

Stealing someone elses idea isn’t a crime!

Another thing is that no idea is entirely new, every new innovation is based or inspired by a old one. Thats also why stealing someone else idea isn’t a crime, as long as you tweak the idea to yours. Would Steve Jobs have come up with the iPhone if Nokia 3310 wouldn’t have made ten years earlier? And yes I had to do the obligatory mention of Steve Jobs in my Medium article.

Process of innovation:

Coming back to processes of innovations and co-creation, there’s many ways to do it. Set processes developing concepts or products, combining different tools and methods or no structure at all. No matter what its all about mindset, if you have a open mindset and welcome all ideas — even the most stupid one — you can come up with great ideas!

Creativity is for everyone!