We Can All Be Creative
While creativity may seem like an intangible, undefinable quality, something some but not all of us are born with, the reality is rather different. Creativity is a skill, one that’s increasingly becoming an important metric in successful business. And like any other skill it can be learned, improved upon, and brought to bear in solving problems in our academic, personal, and professional lives.
If there’s any skepticism about how important creativity is in the business world, Forbes, for example, are in no doubt whatsoever. They have described creativity as “the number one tool that can allow you to adjust and conquer hardships.” Indeed, they went on to say, “If you can find a way to value creativity in your business model, you may just find yourself excelling, even in difficult times.”
The obvious interconnection between creativity and the development of emerging technology means that this skill—that may have otherwise been seen as somehow momentary—is now a critical part of a cutting-edge and attractive profile for recruiters. Even in our highly digitalized world, it’s creative thought that gives rise to innovation.
If you feel like creativity is a skill you lack, not to worry, psychologists have argued that creativity is like any other skill—it can be cultivated with practice, with neither age nor background a factor.
Sparking creativity
If creativity doesn’t feel quite natural to you, there are a number of ways to spark it. Freewriting in a quiet moment can provide an outlet for thoughts that had not necessarily made themselves known consciously. There are now free apps like Brainsparker, Word Palette, Paperblanks® Journal Prompts, and Call of Writing to provide prompts to get you started.
You can also spark creativity by spending time in nature. Researchers have found that walking boosts creativity. According to a Stanford study, creative output increased by 60% when participants were walking compared to when sitting. Boost your creativity with a bit of nature.
The proven link between physical and mental well-being can be used as a cognitive training tool, too. A study in the Netherlands showed that exercise influenced participants’ performance on certain thinking tasks, so letting the mind wander while running, for example, could provide another source of creative thought.
If you feel like staying indoors, grab a pen and paper and do some doodling. We usually leave behind doodling as we grow up, but we should pick it back up. Doodling can help us tap into a creative side of us that hasn’t been sparked in a while. If you’re an avid doodler, switch to your nondominant hand to engage your brain even more.
You can also spark your creativity by working with word associations or games like Connections, Wordle, or The Crossword, all available daily online from the New York Times. These puzzles keep your mind sharp and push you to think outside of the box.
Another key factor is diversity of influence. A homogenous background, lifestyle, and circle of friends will likely only encourage thinking within the straitened limits of those similar experiences. So that’s yet another reason why travel, exposure to other cultures and ways of thinking, and interaction with people from different backgrounds, experiences, and worldviews to your own, is so important. Diversity is a core value at IE University and its importance in developing critical-thinking and innovation skills cannot be overstated.
Applying creativity
To use creativity as a tool for success in your professional life, you’ll need to apply and demonstrate it in your academic career first. Author and professor of political science Patrick Dunleavy has written advice on how to apply creativity in academia, urging academics not to become “social media hermits,” for example.
He recommends constructive self-criticism, regular assessment of your own academic practices, looking to broad influences (and looking hard within apparent anomalies and paradoxes for possible inspiration for new ideas), and being unafraid of risk-taking. Importantly, he stresses that innovation is an inherently “up and down” process. Echoing the similarities between physical and mental exercise and well-being, “you have to tear the creative muscle a little to make it stronger,” he explained.
Furthermore, while the idea of learning from failure may sound like a cliché, that doesn’t mean it’s any less true. The history of human discovery and invention is littered with examples. Everything from the Slinky toy, the discovery of penicillin, the invention of the pacemaker, and the synthesis of saccharine happened because somebody made a mistake. Creativity can come out of work that appears to have little chance of success, or an approach that simply hasn’t been tried before, or even, as those examples above demonstrate, of doing something you hadn’t intended to.
Find your passion, find your creativity
Perhaps most importantly of all, creativity is very unlikely to flow if you’re not engaged with and passionate about what you’re doing. Your purpose is a key motivator; heightened engagement can lead to imaginative solutions, provoking innovative approaches to everything from research to problem-solving.
The “lightbulb moment” is much more likely to happen during a time of complete immersion in a subject, especially if that passion is aligned with your own personal goals. So the single most important piece of advice we can offer in developing your creativity is to find the area that you’re most passionate about, whether that’s law, finance, architecture, people, business, sales, tech, or anything else, and pursue your path there.
From visual arts to STEM
The value of creativity in certain career paths may be obvious. You would expect, for example, to find naturally creative students in a program like IE University’s Master in Creative Direction, Content & Branding. However, if your passion is for STEM subjects, and you don’t think of creativity as particularly vital, you’d be mistaken.
In fact, creativity is as important in STEM as it is in the arts, having been identified as “a core competency across all disciplines.” The content of programs like the Master in Digital Business and Innovation reflect that reality, delivering creative-thinking and so-called “soft” skills as well as the digital fluency required for a successful career in STEM.
An important life skill
It’s true that some people are born with a greater natural propensity to creativity than others. But it’s not true that we can’t all find, channel, develop, and leverage our own creativity. Find something you’re passionate about and interested in, understand that the development of creativity is not a simple, linear, and upward learning curve, and you’ll gain an important new life skill.