Driving Force for Every Success: Creativity

Reading time: 3 minutes

Note that I am not a psychologist, nor a scientist, so my interpretation is purely based on my experiences and observations.

We saw that the first component of being successful is passion, but what about the case whereby you have the passion and desire to succeed, but you cannot offer anything new or exciting that can differentiate you from your competition? In this short post, I would like to talk about the importance of creativity and how you can use the power of creativity to envision new innovative products or services.

What is creativity?

There are various definitions of creativity, but a common definition is that creativity is seen as the process of creating something new (a product, a service, a solution or a work of art) that has some kind of value. The creative processes are studied in-depth across several disciplines – psychology, philosophy of science, sociology, economics, etc.

Why Creativity is important?

Creativity is important due to several reasons:

  • It gives you competitive edge over your competition
  • It enables you to look ahead in the future and become instrumental in something new and exciting that is yet to be developed but that can change an industry or sector, or in other situation, it helps you to set new trends
  • Ingenious creative ideas can make you famous or, in a small percentage of cases, rich.

Examples of famous products of creativity

The million dollar homepage,
Twitter, Facebook,
The first webcam, Electronic email, Instant Messaging, Internet. These are all examples of things that have been instrumental for the IT industry due to the fact that they have all created a revolution by fostering creative thinking, thinking out of the box which enabled their creators to see well ahead in the future and create products or services that are ingenious, yet so powerful and useful. Of course there are many more and valuable creative examples drawn from other industries, however, I am involved in IT, therefore, I am providing examples about this industry.

Fostering Creativity, how?

Ok, but how can I become creative?

That’s the most difficult part. I think, not everybody can embrace the power of creativity; otherwise, it would have already became an exhausted asset of minimal value. However, I believe that some of the mentioned techniques in this post would enable you to become creative or at least help you to think about it.

  • Set your imagination in action
  • In my opinion, one of the best ways of coming up with something new and ground-breaking is to set your imagination in wild mode. Try to think in terms of “What if…”? Everyone of us pictures an alternative reality in their mind, so you can make use of it and try to get some of your imaginative ideas and turn them into real solutions.

  • Have a need
  • In most cases, in order to be creative, you need something to push you in this direction and this could be a need. If a need arises for something that has never been done before or you simply cannot afford the tools, products or services that would enable you to satisfy the need, you would be pushed to think for alternatives and that’s when your creativity could kick in. For example, the guy who created the million dollar home page had a specific need – money to finance his education which enabled him to think out of the box and come up with ingenious and effective idea that was so simple and incredibly creative that it gathered an enormous interest in the project and the guy fulfilled his target in no time.

  • Think out of the box
  • That’s the most difficult technique. If you can think out of the box, you would be able to come up with creative solutions to your problems in no time. Thinking out of the box is difficult though and it mostly comes by itself through experience, imagination and other relevant factors.

These are my suggestions for becoming creative, but since this is a huge topic, I am keen on finding out how you deal with creativity and what techniques are you using to foster creative thinking?

Please share your experience in the comments section below.

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