CREATIVE THINKING
What is creativity?
Creativity is an ability to imagine or invent something new, which did not exist before, either as a product, a process or a thought.
What is creative thinking?
Creative thinking is a process to look at problems or situations in a different perspective with brainstorming and lateral thinking by responding, and dealing in a creative way with higher level of development and risk taking.
Idea sells the business and creativity is vital
For any organization to prosper in the midst of fast scientific and technological advancement, people should be creative. Then, who are these creative people? Are these creative people more intelligent and extraordinary? Creativity is not intelligence. It’s the imagination of an idea to the extent of a human could see and visualize the results and try to achieve the same. Hence, ideas are important. “Ideas are the currency of success”. Innovations will never happen without creative ideas. Creativity is the main factor that keeps any organization ahead of the competition. Take for example – Steve jobs of Apple, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, Larry Page and Sergey Brin of Google. All these people didn’t invent things straight away. They got the ideas first and then proceeded further. In order to be creative, there should be a necessity and environment.
Typically creative people have the following characteristics :-
Assiduous and doesn’t give up early – Winner never quits and quitter never wins. Knowledge, intelligence and research are important. Spend the time according to the requirement and never give up.
Brainstorming – Creative people have the ability to suspend the judgement. The most important thing in brainstorming is – there should not be any criticism in order to give freedom to express each and every individual’s idea or thought. It is very effective to get as many solutions as possible.
Challenging – Creative thinking itself is a challenging and a creative person always ask hard questions to discover what is genuine.
Courage – Every creative person naturally have courage to try new things and risk failure. Creative people have audacity to try new things to build something out of the ordinary.
Creating creative climate – Creative people show dynamism and have empowered freedom, time and support along with self-motivation and openness for experimentation, while thinking outside the box.
Independent thinking and enthusiasm – Creative people have passion, knowledge experience and method to be creative. They are more enthusiastic, which plays crucial role in organizing and defining the objective.
Inquisitiveness – Creative people are eager to know all kinds of things. Apart from knowing, creative people always ask questions. They want to know why particular thing is like this or that. And why not try this or that? Pose the same question to different people and compare the answers.
intrinsic motivation – Creative people get motivated by task rather than by external rewards.
intuition – Intuition is a spiritual thought. It’s an insight and basic instinct. Creative people call it a sixth sense and they have it.
More imaginative and realistic – Creative individuals alternate between imagination and reality. They can brainstorm, daydream and visualize on novel concepts but the novelty they see is rooted in reality, and they know what is what.
Originality – When all people thinking alike, creative people think in a different way and walk alone likely to find themselves in different place, where no one has ever been and seen.
Problems are invited – Creative people never run away from problems rather they wholeheartedly. welcome problems and get delighted as an invitation and invariably see problems as opportunities.
Profundity – Creative people have often found inspiration for their creativity from areas that are enor- mously different from their area of expertise and proficiency.
Seek good in bad – Creative people always have positive view even in the most negative situations. They see failures as opportunity to learn new things. “They can who think they can”.
Vision – A vision is a motivating view of the future and gives direction. Creative people go out into the future and look around and see what is there. Visioning works because we are all an imaginative species and are motivated by what we perceive as a possible or desired future.
In addition to the above, creative people believe in themselves and more confident about their conceived ideas and determined to proceed further with enthusiasm. All most all the creative people have either all these qualities or some of these. These qualities are not quite familiar to all people. At the same time, they are not very difficult. Creative people usually have one important quality, discipline, which is the birdge between conceiving an idea and accomplishment. Creativity is of two types. The creativity that we all have in general such as succeeding in a difficult endeavor in any field or meeting deadlines where sufficient time is not available. Since we all can do these types of actions with general creativity, nobody cares this type of creativity. The second type of creativity is valued by others. The society will notice when somebody does something of this type. For example, the creativity of Steve jobs, Einstein and Edison.
Pessimism – the enemy of creativiy
Pessimism has an excellent record that it had never won any battle Pessimism will not lead a business to profit, an idealist to innovation, or a person to success. “It’s almost impossible – Nobody can do this – It’s not possible – It’s unconventional – It can’t be done”. All these statements are like running away from problems and surrendering before the battle. An excellent point made by modern writers about corporate excellence is that innovations in industry almost always come from individuals outside of the area of the invention. The present education system is fostering more pessimism rather than optimism, for which every student is trying hard to get cent percent marks with role learning. “Progress is made only by those who are strong enough to endure being laughed at”. Thomas Edison had tried about 1800 things. After about 1000 attempts, someone asked him if he was frustrated at his lack of success. He said something like, “I’ve gained a lot of knowledge – I now know a thousand things that won’t work.”
Impediments for creative thinking
Demanding correct answers – You can question on different ways, but answer should not be as per your wish and expectation. Never focus on correct answer to any particular question or problem. Answers might be Integer. Ambiguity plays spoilsport while demanding correct answer for any posed question.
Fear of failure or worry for being wrong – Everyone in this universe gets fear one way or the other. In regards to creativity, there should not be any fear, even an ounce. Creativity never allows fear on its path and it doesn’t know what fear is Creative people’s greatest strength was that they were not afraid to be wrong. Never being wrong is much worse than being wrong.
Having more than enough money – When you have more than enough money, you would not get any creative ideas and you never think of one. Many times, people who have enough money either buy the idea with lucrative offer or encourage the creative people for their gains.
I am telling that I am not creative – Creative ability is everyone’s birth right and patent. Rejecting your own creativity is refuting your own existence. Your thingking is your creativity. If you don’t use your neurons for optimal usage, your creativity is handicapped.
Meeting deadlines – Creativity flows when you have adequare useless, useful and empty time You can’t meet deadlines when you are on creative path. Somebody asked me while I was in Melbourne, “What you normally do when you have nothing to do?” I didn’t have the correct answer then, but now, When I have nothing to do – I read – then I think – eventually I get ideas – subsequently leads to cretivity. Empty time is when creativity flows.
Perfection is enemy to creativity – Our education taught us for precision. When we try for perfection on anything we do, we normally miss creativity without our consciousness. Every creative thing is a vision and imagination to where nobody has visited before. Perfection is an afterwards thing. Once created, we can amend and change several times for perfection but not before making any creative thing.
Tilting towards logical thinking – Too much logical and analytical thinking throw us from creative path. “Innovation is not the product of logical thought, although the result is tied to logical structure – Albert Einstein”. Creativity with logical thinking entails fallacy. Logical thinking is very much useful, if we use it for augmenting creative process.
Uncertainty and Ambiguity – All innovative people make friendship with ambiguity. In ambiguous situations the creative people are often uncertain of the desired outcome, and seldom dissatisfied with their knowledge. When most people are uncomfortable to face ambiguity, the creative people embrace the ambiguity and never run away from it. Ambiguity thus involves perceived discrepancies between a problem situation and conceived idea. Ambiguous contexts allow scope for creative action through processes of iteration, projection and estimation.
Creativity Vs Logic
Creative thinking and logical thinking are exactly opposites and never be the same, and in all the situations both creativity and logical thinking are impediments to each other. Entrepreneurs are naturally creative whereas engineers and scientists are highly logical and think systematically. If both the groups intuitively convert from one type of thinking to other, as and when the situation requires, it will be highly useful for successfully achieving the desired results.
Creative thinking techniques
Amalgamation : Generally ideas emerge with different concepts. When one idea that we have in our mind does not fetch any expected outcome, then two or more ideas can be combined for a new idea for better results.
Doing something different – Creative people naturally think outside the box, means doing everything differently. TATA made budgetary nano cars where remaining all companies in the world didn’t even think of it. “When you do the common things in life in an uncommon way, you will command the attention of the world – George Washington Carver”.
Free writing : If you want make a search engine better than Google, what you do? First you write about what Google can, and how you can make another popular search engine with better options. Instead of thinking , Just start writing on paper whatever comes to your mind without looking back at what you wrote. You may get stuck at some point, but still you write something on and on. I am sure you will definitely write something new which you did not think before.
Mind mapping : Mind mapping is a technique for drawing information in diagrams, instead of writing it in sentences. With the advent of technology, computer based mind mapping has emerged. There are several software applications available in the market worldwide, which made mind mapping even easier.
Technology based mind mapping is as effective as traditional mind mapping as a creative too. If applied correctly, it will give double output than traditional mind mapping.
Progression : Every idea comes from other idea or ideas. Almost all the appliance whether it is grinder, mixer, glider, mobile, computer and car or satellite have been developed through a long period of constant improvisation. Each new model you see these days is a collective creativity of previous models. Every problem solved previously can be solved again in a better way, with step by step improvement, as per the needs of the current generation.
Reapplication : Creative thinking entails innovative ideas. Everything that was creatively innovated needs to modify or extend its usages to meet present day requirements. The key is to see beyond the previous or stated applications for some new idea or solution, and to see what other application is possible.
Sudden realization : When the brain is relaxed such as sleeping and day dreaming, the mind allows the radiant thinking process to spread to the farthest reaches of the brain, increasing the probability of mental breakthroughts.
Seeking inspiration : Many of creative people usually get inspired by creative geniuses. Getting inspiration from well known and proven systems or people is easy but carring on for further results takes whole lot of things.
Thinking opposite – Convergent and divergent thinking process – Creative thinking is a process where convergent and divergent methods are takes place. Creative people would not depend on one method. They think opposite of the idea and see things backwards and in all directions, till they achieve better results.
What is NLP and how creativity is linked?
Neuro-Linguistic Programming is a simple method for using you brain and nervous system for maximum usage – especially your sensor system like visualization, sound and feelings. NLP is a balance between head and heart that is required for the useful creative life. Practitioners of NLP have created a number of techniques that can be used to illustrate the strategies used by extremely successful people. If you’re interested in NLP as a way to enhance your creative potential, then you need to talk with those who know a lot about NLP, and find a dedicated and creative mentor. We are all more creative than we could possibly imagine, but we haven’t had the opportunities or challenges to bring them to our lives or we simply have not learned the constitution of creative thinking. Focus on your attitude, behavior, character, vision and values, which is your behavioral pattern. That is what NLP is. Caution! Never become mentally handicapped while being creative using NLP.
Companies should have strong framework for new inventions
Creativity with single mind is good and doesn’t consume much time. What if an organization put number of people together for any creative product? A collective vision is needed to dig deep into the base idea, which leads to create an innovative product. The companies that integrate innovation into strategic planning, budgeting and resource allocation are more likely to achieve desired innovative product thereby achieving expected targets. In order to be competitive and stand ahead in the world, companies should have robust strategy for new and socially acceptable innovations. When new markets are created, the customers, employees and shareholders are happy and the company sustains its growth. Moreover, the companies those maintain and stick to organizational ethical behavior will only survive in the logn run against any type of competition.
Students should be encouraged towards creative thinking
All creative people thus far seen were once students only. Students can be creative in some way or the other while at school or college. The teacher needs to provide a friendly and conducive environment, so that students can feel comfortable enough to voice their opinions and explore new ideas. Educators must implement new strategies in their daily teaching to help students enhance their creativity. Students should be encouraged to chase for experimenting with new ideas. Teachers should make sure that they are giving their students a bunch of choices and different opportunities when it comes to assignments and projects. If enducators think creatively and help students to develop creative competencies, the students will be in a better position to be equipped with required creative ingredients to face continuously changing world.
Recognizing talent and creativity
The geniuses of Srinivasa Ramanujam was not found by any indian but the greatest mathematician of the day at Cambridge, who spots the genius in Ramanujam and helped him flourish as a mathematician and eventually Ramanujam became the Fellow of the Roayl Society Rabindranath Tagore got Nobel Prize for Literature for his Gitanjali not because Indians recognized his poetry, it was the great poet, William Butler Yeats, who took it upon himself and makes the world aware of the poetic genius of Rabindranath. This is
the main difference between the Indian and Western mentality, and this is why the West has advanced and prospered, We should foster this quality in us.
Are we okay with present standards of research and development?
As the population of our country is going to touch 1.3 billion or more in coming decade, what we, including government, need to do. With a free spending consumerist society at the helm or government, the huge requirement of basic amenities and daily necessities will put us into doldrums. The natural resources are rapidly depleting day by day as we are exploiting more and more from very meagerly available god given resources. The avenues for innovation are plenty and endless. First – energy – without energy economic growth is not possible as conceived. Then there are consumer electronics, pharmaceuticals, food process- ing, post-harvest technologies, bio-technology, automotive parts and assembly, information technology, software and IT-enabled services, transportation…………………………………………………….. and the list endless. Research and Development is the
only way where we can maximize our potential for creativity and innovation for new things to meet new demands. It’s time for the government to be vigilant to set up a high level board to recommand measures to speed up Research and Develpment in India to meet the entire requirement as we are hoping to become superpower one day. Can we? Can’t we?
What is the necessity for creativity?
We have been living in a world where we don’t have any idea how this universe has been in existence. We are all simply living and striving for personal growth in our day-to-day lives, It was because of creative people we are taking everything for granted. The point is why these creative people hitherto only take the responsibility for creating creative things for betterment of humankind and society, where we live in com- fortably with the rapidly changing world.
It’s very simple to know that creativity takes place when necessity arises. in fact there is much necessity for urgent creativity in following various fields to create a sustainable existence for all, on priority basis:-
- Uninterrupted power supply throughout the country
- Storage facilities for all commodities to reduce the wastage
- Increasing agri products with minimum land and resources
- Cyber Security
- Cent per cent education
- Health care to all
- Vehical engines that run more than 100 kms with one litre oil
- Reducing oil imports to lowest level – indigenous alternatives
- Vehicles need to run without petrol – either by solar or by water
- Housing for all
- Safety and security – internal and external
- Permanent seat at UNSC
Creativity for nation development
There was a boy namely Ramu living in Siripuram village. He was educated within his sources in village. Soon he joined an engineering college at nearby town. He started observing the acute difference in people in terms of money, status, manners and power. All these days he was facing many problems in his village – lack of drinking water – power cuts – no jobs for his agricultural parents – he was feeling sorrow for peasantry – he knew that world was changing very fast – but his country was not.
Though, in news papers he saw India was emerging as a next super power, but he didn’t see any real change that’s been happening around him. Large number of people still didn’t have any access to education, health, shelter and minimum required comforts.
Pertubed with all the things happening around him, he used to think a lot about how his country would prosper and could be able to provide the essential necessaries to all his countrymen.
He has learnt from authorized sources that country exports the products that worth billions of dollars to different parts of the world and at the same time, the country forced to import more than what it exports. He also knew that India was only country in the world that receives $80 billion through remittances every year. But, our foreign currency reserves were evaporating quickly while paying for oil imports. Country had no new coal resources and whatever we had, was depleting very fast.
Hence, he fully understood that if we had more energy, the country would develop in all sectors. Now, his total focus was on creating more energy. He was not getting sleep on this issue and even taken his engineering project on energy creation.
He started contacting people who had done something on renewable energy and gathered all the information curiously to work on his project. Now he was digging in and outs of solar power and photovoltaic plates. Mean time he met people who had knowledge on nanotechnology. On learning that with nanotechnology we could make affordable photovoltaic plates and could receive 10 to 12 times more solar power than existing photovoltaic plates. Then he concentrated on storage facility into batteries and started working to make more useful batteries which could store more solar energy than previous batteries.
After working for more than two and half years on his research, He had created photovoltaic plates with new Metallic Sandwich procedure and the sub-wave-length-plasmanic-cavity that could receive 12 times more than existing ones and also created batteries that could store all the received solar power comfortably.
He made a light revolution much to the relief of billion people who were burning kerosene for cooking and illumination and facing power cuts for more than 12 to 14 hours in a day. Now his newly invented solar panels became standalone sources of electricity from freely available sunrays that made significant dent in rural electrification.
With this, now India has made massive investments in solar panel production and has driven out costs. All industries, organizations, homes, schools, colleges and hospitals have their own solary panels at roofs and no more dependency on electricity boards. Eventually, he made portable solar panels that could be fixed easily on two wheelers, Cars, Buses and Lorries, that made these vehicles run more than 1000 kms in a day as the panels were receiving sufficient solar power through these panels and storing in batteries.
Now the country stopped importing oil completely saving billions of dollars, After exactly 3 years, the country joined in top 5 strong economies. With After exactly 3 years, the country joined in top 5 strong economies. With unlimited power, the country started exporting almost all the items to all the countries of the world. New industries have been opened. Jobs are available in millions and nobody is complaining for want of job. All the people of India are happy now.
Coal mines are banned completely as the country does not need any coal for thermal power. Now India became the first country to be of fuel pollution free in the world.
Now even in hinterlands with sparse population got independent solar power systems. Every village has electricity. No more kerosene or gas stoves and everything is cooked or boiled or fried on solar power based appliances. Now there are no transmission losses, grid failures, no burdensome electricity bills, no copper wires or electricity pilferage.
He made alternatives with wind and bio-fuels that can compensate in the absence of sun light. He also made wind power wherever possible. Electricity is predominantly a wired, network service. Now the country remains self-sufficient and off-grid electricity system.
All farming sectors have pump sets to support 3 HP – 5 HP power pump sets linked to drip irrigation systems and sprinklers. Now framers hav 24 hours uninterrupted power supply. No suicides from farming community.
Now the entire world is looking at India. Business people around the world eagerly want to invest in India and students from all over the world want to get their education in India. More than million people are waiting at Indian embassies in almost all the countries to get Indian visa to work in India by wearing lungi, dhoti and women wearing sarees and putting vermillion on their foreheads to impress interviewer at Indian embassies.
Creativity is not serendipity
use it or lose it, most of the time we waste it Find it and grind it, make it and fix it
No matter if it’s an ambit or orbit, make it a habit.
