The New Book “100 Creativity Ingredients” Introduction: Chapter IV: Creative Activity Ingredients

Today’s digital professionals are innovative workers, hard workers, knowledge workers and intelligent workers who are exploring, innovating and evolving in bringing new digital paradigms. Unleashing creativity is a journey and flexing creativity muscle is a continuous practice. Creative people bring in bright, original and creative ideas, they have an infectious enthusiasm for making things better, They continually and constructively challenge the status quo and have positive ideas for improvement.

Observation: Observation is an important ingredient of creativity, also a crucial stage in innovation. It is the state of being mindful and conscious about the surrounding. Observation is not just about seeing, but understanding; what you see depends very much on what you are familiar with and on the parading, it’s contextual, and it’s a personal story. Creative observation means that you can see things from different angles, see above, underneath, and around the corner, to capture the new insight or ignite creativity. Like many things we do, observation needs a goal, and observers need a purpose. Quality observation brings unique perception and stimulates creativity.
Imagining: Creativity is part imagination and part knowledge. Imagination is the fuel for the “Creativity Engine.” Creativity is an actual project or idea carried out in a tangible way that offers or shows something new or imagined. No imagination, the engine will not run. Imagination is the ability to expand the boundaries of knowledge to grow into creativity. The creativity in the human sense is not due to connecting of two shallow pools of knowledge, but the ability to make deep connections and build on those connections to generate novel ideas. To put briefly, thinking things differently and making imagination roll into reality is creativity.
Questioning: Creative people are both problem finders and problem solvers and always challenge conventional wisdom by asking questions which often lead to discovering situations others do not see at first. Creative people initiate the open and bold inquiries such as “Why Not,” or “What if.” Good questions evoke imagination and great questions inspire creativity. Even we ask the wrong questions, tell ourselves the wrong answers and creativity gives it all another chance to make it right. So it is important to build a culture of creativity and encourage inquisitiveness. Doesn’t the real solution to innovation or creativity begin with inquiry?
While we each have the enormous creative capacity, our willingness to express and exercise it becomes more complicated. Creative people are inspired to think and work nearly every day on creating, they are not waiting for such an “Aha” moment, but proactively stimulate the new energy with the fountain of creativity. After all, we all find new ways to make our work “easier,” more rewarding, better for ourselves, our customers and our society.Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu