A PAPER EXPLAINING THE NATURE OF CREATIVITY

 

Key points covered in this paper:

What is creativity?

What is needed to be creative?

Why do we create?

What is the value of creativity?

Is creativity teachable?

 

What is Creativity?

Creativity refers to the process of converting new or imaginative ideas into reality. In other words, it involves turning something new into being or generating new ideas by changing, reapplying, or integrating existing ideas. While some of these ideas may be outstanding and superb, others may just be simple and practical ideas that nobody may have explored earlier. The main characteristics of creativity include; making connections between phenomena that seem uncorrelated, seeing the world from different perspectives or in new ways, generating solutions, and identifying concealed patterns. In most cases, creativity brings to light what was hidden previously or even directs us to new life. There are two processes involved in creativity namely; thinking, and producing (Naiman). For creativity to take place, one has to observe passion and commitment. The features of a creative individual include among others the following;

·         Flexibility

·         Confidence

·         Critical thinking

·         Tenacity

·         Self-esteem

What is needed to be creative

All humans (including children) have a substantial creative ability. However, education seems to be the major hindrance to creativity among adults. Nevertheless, it doesn’t depart from them and can always be reawakened through curiosity, commitment, passion, and knowledge. For individuals to be creative, they will need the following key things (Christensen);

·         Ability to believe in themselves, everything they do and their capabilities

·         Zeal to drive them to do the work

·         Experience numerous things to build up knowledge in life

·         Acceptance of any outcome including temporal pain, failing or being in the wrong

·         Time to relax their body and mind so as to work calmly into set outcomes

·         Exploring the environment (both mentally and physically) and get real adventures

Why do we create?

Researchers strongly believe that we are in the age of creativity known as the conceptual age. One adds value to their product or service thus getting a competitive advantage through creativity. Therefore, it can be safe to say that creativity is paramount for future success. Creativity is becoming critical because it does the following;

·         Improves quality of life

·         Unlocks one’s imaginations

·         Improves one’s skills

·         Raises one’s aspirations

·         Brings pleasure and benefits

What is the value of creativity?

Every individual can put their imagination to work; which is creativity. Creativity is a practical process that adds value to our lives. Both creative individuals and those with creative thoughts but don’t deem themselves as creative make a living out of it. Creativity must be exercised in everyday life including in businesses and schools. It gives confidence to individuals to exploit their potential, helps generate more ideas, and most importantly solve problems. Creativity is utilized everywhere especially in solving problems. Creativity also plays a significant role in scientific, artistic, or literary platforms (Nieto).

Creativity can have monetary value as well aside from obvious things such as best-selling authors or artists. Many people make a living by doing creative work even without reaching the status of notable people such as celebrities. Some of these creative works include graphic designing and writing. Besides, most happy and successful individuals in their ventures or jobs still use creativity to make a living. These include excellent auto mechanics and CEOs who discern complex figures. Such officials can be said to be creative on the job since they deploy expressiveness and originality in their work (Trait).

Is creativity teachable?

Creativity skills can be taught. In fact, some places teach creativity as an academic discipline. According to researchers, the mind can be primed to cultivate creative ideas. Learning creativity doesn’t involve just sitting in a lecture hall but applying creative thinking processes. A study conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of training creativity proved the fact. The study involved a quantitative meta-analysis of evaluated training programs spanning a period of the last fifty years. It also relied on seventy prior studies.

The findings indicated that decent creativity training programs induced desirable performance across target populations, settings, and criteria. Factors that significantly contributed to the efficacy of the training programs included; heuristics and cognitive skills development (used in skill application). George Land indicates in his study that humans are creative by nature and grow up learning to be uncreative. The act of creativity starts with finding knowledge, mastering a discipline, and learning a way of thinking. One can grasp creativity through using imagination, synthesizing information, questioning assumptions, explorations, and experiments.  All in all, creativity is a skill that can be developed or built through various practices and is a manageable process (Naiman).