I’ve been yapping about it for a while now, I should actually sit down and define the term.
Creativity is the act and/or process of coming up with new ideas.
I think that’s about as simple a definition as you can get, although Wikipedia also includes combining previously unrelated objects in their definition. Me, I’m not so sure, although I’m really much better at the latter than I am at coming up with entirely new ideas. I easily fall victim to the “If I can do it, it must not be hard” line of thinking, as I’m sure many of you fine folks do.
I feel the need to point out that the following is just my opinion based on my thoughts and experiences. I’m no psychology expert, but having spent nine years in art school, I feel entitled to comment on creativity. While most of it seems to jibe with what I’ve read from actual psychologists, that’s probably just coincidence.
Is the Legal Department satisfied now? Good.
There are three phases to being creative: The first is having ideas. Lots of ideas. About everything.
This seems like an obvious statement but if you really consider it, it’s so obvious that everyone overlooks it. When was the last time you tried to think of an alternate route to the grocery store? I know that for me, it’s been years. I have a grocery solution that works. Why should I bother to try thinking up a better one? To build creativity.
Sure some of the routes I might think of will be impractical. In fact, I’m fairly certain that the vast majority will entail something stupid like driving through a river or swinging from a telephone pole with a grappling hook. But. That’s how to be creative. Have lots of stupid ideas.
No seriously.
Here’s how it works. Any time you approach a brand-new problem the very first idea you think of is probably no good. You don’t mention it to anybody and instead give voice to your second idea… which may not be brilliant, but usually works. Most people stop right there, but a few keep going and come up with five or six stupid ideas. They recognize that they’ve just had six bad ideas in a row and give up. The key to being successfully creative is to keep going, have six more stupid ideas until you finally get to a good one. They key to being amazingly creative is to push it still further until you’ve had a hundred or more stupid ideas. Only then will you get to the truly great one.
More on phases 2 and 3 tomorrow.
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