What is creativity, and why is it important?
What is creativity, and why is it important?
What is creativity, and why is it important?
Creativity is easy to talk about as a good thing, developmentally and economically.
Its subjectivity is self-evident in the fact that we don’t all like the same music, people, or food.
In my writing, coaching, and group work, I lean heavily on the connection between creativity and self-actualization (being seen by others and the way you see yourself).
Creativity exists solely pre-language; once something is articulated, it moves to production.
My view is influenced by many years of working as a designer, educator, creative technologist, and researcher.
Sitting in a boardroom, on a Monday morning, talking through a new client brief, with a creative task blinking in a to-do list, all inertia pulling us towards getting the thing done, producing it.
It is easy to label a creative who is trying to do better work with better people as boiling the ocean.
In that scene, I would invite self-leadership and economic articulation.
The creative needs to navigate that situation with a sufficient balance of love and power; generosity with their ideas, and rigor in the boundaries that protect it. The truth is that some environments are not high-achieving and don’t have the collective executive function to improve.
On the management/client side, the opportunity is to articulate what creativity is, for them and the client, and what its economic value is.
We can all agree on the value of creativity when we go to innovation happy hours or conferences, but all value exists in consistency. Anything else is recreational, entertainment, a theatre of ideas.
It is those companies and individuals who are incapable of (or uninterested in) economic articulation that will be automated, after a long race to the bottom (of pricing, differentiation, and quality of work).
This week, I invite you to articulate your definition of creativity, please.
And share it in the chat.
