We normally associate creativity with art, literature, and the performing arts. We appreciate creativity because it is fresh and original. It usually shows an unconventional thought or style.
We might be surprised to know that creativity is strong in all other non-artistic industries. It is not just the realm of inventors and designers.
Highly successful businessmen and professionals are very creative in finding opportunities that make money.
Expert doctors can exhaust possibilities to properly diagnose a patient’s condition. During an operation, we want a skilled surgeon who can improvise when standard procedure fails.
In science, imaginative scientists discover breakthroughs because they consider the possibilities.
When we’re in trouble, we want a formidable lawyer who can find a creative legal solution or an accountant who helps us plan our finances and lowers our tax liability.
Of course, every executive appreciates the invaluable assistant who always finds a way to deliver what we need.
Contrary to popular notion, creativity is not limited to just producing novel or artistic work. Creative people who are competent in their fields will always produce results, often in unexpected ways.
Creativity is defined as the ability to transcend traditional ideas, rules, patterns, forms, methods, and interpretations. So more than just self-expression and creation, creativity is an approach to solving problems.
As our world evolves toward greater automation and online transactions, it becomes more important to change our approach to our business. Employers and employees both need to find new ways to operate within the digital age with a view to continued growth and longevity.
“In a world where lifelong employment in the same job is a thing of the past, creativity is not a luxury. It is essential for personal security and fulfillment,” writes Sir Ken Robinson in Out of Our Minds (2011).
Today more than 80 percent of the value of the S&P 500 firms is in the form of “the intangible secret sauce of success” while physical assets and wages account for less than 20 percent. This is a massive reversal of the business trend in the 1970s, writes Economist columnist Ryan Avent in The Wealth of Humans (2016).
“All organizations are organic and perishable. They are created by people and they need to be constantly re-created if they are to survive,” writes Robinson.
Online interactions have opened up business borders and allowed integration into international markets. Employers need employees with broader knowledge and experience that can translate into, and relate with, different cultures and mindsets. Diversity brings different perspectives that enrich collaboration and experimentation.
“Even critical thinking will be limiting, however, if we do not know how to put information together in new ways to solve problems that no one has ever seen before. And that skill requires… creative innovation,” writes Roberta Golinkoff and Kathy Hirsh-Pasek in Becoming Brilliant (2016).
Out with the old, in with the new
Traditional business models have been revamped by the technological age. The internet and portable devices have changed the way we think, live, and communicate.
“Radical innovations often interact with each other and generate entirely new patterns of behavior in the people who use them,” writes Robinson.
Many businesses are struggling to understand and adapt to this fundamental shift.
“To face these challenges we have to understand their nature; to meet them, we have to recognize that cultivating our natural powers of imagination, creativity and innovation is not an option but an urgent necessity. These challenges are global: they affect everyone. They are also personal: they affect all of us as individuals,” writes Robinson.
Consequently, the last decade also changed the way we buy and make decisions. We have become accustomed to instant gratification. Essentially, consumers don’t want the hassle of making a lengthy complicated decision. We’re too busy. We just want simple solutions to our problems, pay for it, and be done.
Visionaries who recognized this need in the marketplace found a way to fill the void and offered consumers a quick and easy service: Amazon delivers books, then products; eBay creates a marketplace; Paypal offers secure online payments; Facebook connects loved ones; Google is a search engine; Uber offers instant rides.
Those who did not understand this market transformation failed to adapt. Retailers who stuck to their old ways lost profits and customers, and eventually their business: Barnes & Noble, Blockbuster, Radio Shack, Macy’s.
“Those with the imagination to invent smarter ways to do old jobs, energy-saving ways to provide new services, new ways to attract old customers or new ways to combine existing technologies will thrive,” writes Thomas Friedman, New York Times columnist and three-time Pulitzer Prize winner in The World is Flat (2007).
It seems so obvious now, but it is not so easy to predict if a new technology will be a trend for a few years, or if it will become mainstream for decades. Then, even if a creation does become ubiquitous, things will still continue to evolve and change. How do we deal with constant change?
“Our best resource is to cultivate our singular abilities of imagination, creativity and innovation,” writes Robinson.
Creativity is the new currency
Even though we cannot predict how the future will shift, creativity allows us to reimagine the market and our place in it. Businesses need to harness the collective intelligence of its workforce by employing creative people, encouraging creativity, and cultivating a culture that values it.
“Company cultures, which shape worker incentives and determine how a business reacts to changes in the marketplace, have become much more important in the digital age,” writes Avent.
Imagination and design-thinking is a necessary skill in 2020, writes Thomas Davenport in Only Humans Need Apply (2016).
Historically, organizations and individuals who continue to be creative flourish amid any disruption or economic climate. The Apple iPhone and iPad were launched when the American real estate industry collapsed in 2006 to 2009. During this recession, the following start-ups were launched and changed our lives: Uber, Airbnb, Twitter, Spotify, and FitBit.
Creativity may be known by other names like resourcefulness, ingenuity, rule-breaking, and nonconformity. But it is not new. It has just been recently identified as the key to flexible thinking that allows us humans to continue to thrive despite adverse conditions or an internet revolution.
“In the global economy, creative thinkers are the kings and queens. These flexible innovators quickly assemble what they know to build a future of possibilities,” writes Golinkoff and Hirsh-Pasek.