mashable.com: What is the most important quality of an entrepreneur? Many would argue it is passion — an overwhelming love of what one is doing, and the drive and determination to see one's dreams realized. Others might say leadership — the ability to bring a team of people together and guide them toward a common goal. But some believe that creativity — a boundless imagination that is constantly innovating and seeing the world through a different lens — is the ultimate key to business success.
4 comments:
Creativity, to me, is incredibly important. The creative person has much more going for them then the person who never thinks outside of the box. Growing up my parents always encouraged me to play with my imagination, they never forced me to play with the toy but encouraged me when I decided the box it came in was more intriguing. Being able to be the kind of person who thinks outside of the box is beneficial as you grow. Companies like to find people who can bring something new to the table and not someone who has the same ideas that have always been there. This was an inspiring article to let your creativity out more.
One point that this article made that I really agree with is that creativity can be learned. It frustrates me when people say they could do some sort of artistic thing, but they back out or are scared away because they claim they “aren’t creative.” Creative thinking is a skill that takes practice and can definitely be taught and learned. At its core, it’s a matter of pushing yourself to come up with more solutions to a problem than is necessary. As a result, you mind finds other paths and connections that end up accomplishing the goal in what we call a “creative” way. For anyone who claims they cannot be creative, it is more likely they lack the patience and endurance to find and alternative way to solve a problem or create an object.
There is a discussion that asks whether creativity or knowledge is more valuable. I have always thought creativity and agree with this article in that creativity needs structure to flourish but not too much. That idea also coincides with the thought that it is difficult to discern a troublemaker from a creative person. I think something difficult that educational systems struggle with is finding the balance between enough structure for creativity to flourish without disregarding rules at all. Also, not only can creativity be learned, but so can intelligence and problem solving. Often times these two things go together and both are used in reaching common goals.
One point that this article made that really stood out to me is the idea that intelligence is often (inappropriately) valued over creativity, in part because it is simply easier to measure. This connects to a bigger issue, that I have grown to feel pretty strongly about over the years, which is the failures in our education system to encourage creativity. Knowledge and skills are important, but to solve big problems the most valuable thing a person can have is creativity. This is certainly becoming more widely understood, but our schools still stamp out creativity by valuing academic classes over artistic ones and teaching to get higher standardized test scores. The attitude that something like art is less valuable to most people than math because most people probably won't be artists is so misguided. Everyone should be exposed to art education, not because we are all going to become artists, but because we all need to nourish our creativity.
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