My own creativity evaluation and methods to develop it further.

From my personal experience I can say that creativity is the quality which you can develop. I remember the times when I was in high school always looking for opportunities and trying to find my purpose in life. At that time I did not realize that you can force your creativity and it will lead you to a better things in life especially if you want to be a successful business man or entrepreneur. After doing some research I started to develop my creativity by using just a simple tools like: spending more time alone with your thoughts, removing emotional blocks, making more time to study or reading books. These are the main methods I used to enhance the level of my creativity. Reading books and spending time alone were one of my favorite ones that I truly enjoyed. Studies at Coventry university gave me an opportunity to learn even more about creativity in one of my modules this year. Now I have a better understanding of creativity as a concept I know more about the tools and how can I use them. In classes we usually do activities or group works related to creativity, for example just a simple tasks like “in what different ways you can use foil” or “name 10 things of which you cannot drink”. From first sight these brainstorming tasks looks ridiculous but they worked for me and I see it as good practice in your own time. At this time I see myself at a way better stage than I was few years ago or even before I started university.

Creativity test which I have done proves my statement about the improvement. I managed to score 69.22 points when average is 64.44. The test shows where you are good at and where you need to improve in different metrics. My strength is complexity followed by curiosity and it means that I am able to carry large quantities of information and I can manipulate and manage relationship between this kind of information. As well I have a desire to change or improve things which everyone else accepts as a norm. I am tend to agree with these statements because they truly reflect in my real life. As a person I am curious and always want to know more about new things and opportunities especially when it comes to business, I like reading psychological books about well-being, life success and motivation to chase your goals and dreams. I agree with the fact that if you want changes you need to leave your comfort zone and most of the educational institutions, exactly schools, kills your creativity because you must follow the requirements and the chances to reveal creativity are very small unless you are willing to do something extraordinary which is not related to what schools and teachers want you to do. I believe that each person has their own aim in life and there is no chance that you can be good at all subjects so I try to be the best in things that I am passionate about.

On the other hand creativity test showed me that there are things which I can improve like my connection and boldness. I need to work on connection between things that do not have apparent connection because it is necessary in creativity. You need to learn how you can creatively stick your ideas together. I need to gain more confidence and care less about what people think because if you are trying to be creative you look silly for some people that is the fact that I recognized in my high school. Whenever you try to be different or step out from the crowd you get criticized. Hopefully I will get a chance to improve my creativity at university or in extracurricular activities in groups with people who think same way as I do. Individually challenging myself with creative tasks like brainstorming on my new business or project ideas and after some time I will take creativity test again to see how I improved.

Identifying new opportunities and solving problems creatively

People face various problems every day, but only a minority knows how to solve them creatively. Creative ideas does not suddenly appear in people’s mind for no reason, creative ideas are the result of trying to achieve something that has not been done before, for example: a particular goal or solved problem that someone tried to solve and gave up.

If we look further to our past when our ancestry lived we can clearly remember geniuses like Albert Einstein or Thomas Edison who invented things such as a perfected light bulb for consumers or proved theory of gravity. Even in that age people were able to think creatively. Thomas Edison, the inventor of a perfected light bulb, motion picture camera, electric pen, etc. was one of o good examples of people who used creative thinking to innovate. He stated that very new idea is some addition or modification to something that already exists. (M. Michalko 2013) He always tried to change his main inventions through “try and fail” until he found what really worked. However light bulb by itself was not invented by T. Edison he just customized it for a consumer needs. We can relate his creative thinking to popular method SCAMPER that is still being used. How? He innovated on the first generation product using his creative thinking and he adjusted the light bulb to be available for consumer needs because the first product had negative and useless qualities. This is a good example where creative thinking can get you, if you want to be more creative you need to start acting like you are one.

From my personal experience I can say that skills of identifying and solving problems are really important when it comes to business and entrepreneurship. A few years ago me and my friends started our own business. All we had was just a very little investment and a business model which came to our minds without having a real experience in how everything works. The business model was very simple and related to agro-culture. Upon doing the research we found out that growing garlics is really reliable and valuable niche so went straight into it. We bought garlic seeds from our supplier and next season we were willing to sell them with a higher interest rate. It looked like simple start up for us. Everything went really fine from our first day, we prepared the seeds and planted them. After this process all we had to was just wait through the whole winter so in early spring we could take off the harvest. When the spring came we realized that our garlics were frozen and we have been left with nothing. We were really stressed because we lost our money and effort we put in this “business”. All of us decided to quit the business despite the fact that without a doubt business was really profitable and still is. We had just a bad experience but now I try to imagine what would have been if  we all  have known how to be creative and do not give up after the first failure? Now I feel that I gained some knowledge about the creativity in University  and I can easily relate it to my experience. If we were able to think creatively we would still run our business.

 

 

 

 

 

Evaluation of idea generation and creativity techniques

In order to be creative and be able to generate ideas you need to know specific techniques. You need appropriate knowledge and the ability to think flexibly. So what is idea generation and what techniques you need to use if you want to be creative? There are plenty of ways to generate your ideas, here is a few most commonly used ones:

• Brainstorming
• SCAMPER
• Mind Mapping

Most of the methods were developed from “brainstorming” which was invented by Alex Faickney Osborn in 1950’s. It has four main rules: generate as many ideas as possible, prioritize unusual and original ideas, combine and refine generated ideas and abstain from critics during the exercise. Alex Osborn was sure that brainstorming increases the creative process by almost 50%, opposite than individuals working on their own. Nonetheless, dozens of studies have shown that generating ideas in groups using traditional brainstorming is less effective than individuals working alone. For example a meta-analytic review (B. Mullen, 2010) which involved 800 teams made up from individuals having different perspective, reports that brainstorming groups were significantly less productive than normal groups in terms of quality and quantity. It was proved that brainstorming is more likely to abuse productivity if working in huge teams and when performance is oral rather than written. Another issue is that teams start to give up on their tasks when they realise that their efforts are not productive and does not lead to one clear idea. This is just one example of brainstorming ineffectiveness but it is still being used not to accomplish much but just as fun activity when working in groups.

SCAMPER is another power full and versatile idea generation tool, which was invented by Bob Eberle in 1971. As I mentioned before it is one of the idea generation methods that came from Alex Osborn‘s Brainstorming. However, SCAMPER was acknowledged as one of the most effective tools for idea generation. So how it works? First of all the word SCAMPER is an encryption and each letter means different process:

• S- substitute
• C- combine
• A- adapt
• M- modify
• P- put to another use
• E- eliminate
• R- reverse

This is the coffee powder and cup generation using SCAMPER.

SCAMPER is a good technique to use if you want to be innovative on something that exists or is already done. The SCAMPER technique uses a set of directed, idea-spurring questions to suggest some addition or modification. All you have to do is just analyse the problem with what each letter stands for and you will come up with a solved problem or even a new product. This method earned recognition as a learning tool as well that fosters awareness, drive, fluency, flexibility, originality, is really easy to use and does not take long time.

 

 

The last technique I am going to talk about is Mind Mapping which is not that popular but recognised as very useful. Mind Mapping was originated in 1960s by Tony Buzan. The founder (T.Buzan, 2011) describes it as a power full graphic technique which provides a key to unlock the potential of the brain to be creative and innovative. Mind Mapping is a graphical way to represent your creativity all you need to do is just take a sheet of paper, few pens and you can start drawing. It works very simple: you put pictures on a paper of which each means a thousand words and start connecting them to a main idea in the center of a paper with a key words whilst imaging what each picture means.

Example of a Mind Mapping.

Idea and creativity techniques are working really well and being known in the whole world. Examples and science reviled researches just help to evaluate them, which from my point of view is really hard to do because each individual discovers their own method and uses it. Without a doubt SCAMPER and Mind Mapping are more acknowledged and effective techniques than Brain storming, which is not used anymore, but was a start to all the other methods.

Difference between creativity and innovation.

Creativity and innovation are two commonly referred concepts. The biggest question that comes to our mind is what different meaning do they have? Which one brings the biggest value to your own business? If you are willing to succeed in entrepreneurship or as a business owner I think you need to have these both internals and if you don’t there is always an action plan which you need to take in order to develop perception in creativity and innovation. The biggest difference between creativity and innovation is  focus. There is no innovation without creativity. To be creative you need to come up with ideas and to be innovative you need act on these ideas. Creativity is something you can think of really widely without having actually supported claims and evidences. It’s necessarily responsible for all human progress. That is phenomenal force so many people think that creativity is very mysterious (D. Goleman, 2015).According to the research which was done by (T. Amabile 2010) it has shown how creativity happens over the past 50 to 60 years. “Basically, creativity is the production of anything. It could be an idea, a tangible product, or a performance. What’s developed should also be different from what’s been done before in some way. “You can conceive products, ideas or even solve problems. It is just simple ideas that comes to human’s mind. When on the other hand innovation is something that is measurable and followed by proper steps can become a reality. The innovation game calls for a series of highly managed elements that must come along with symphonic precision, elegance and be directed by passionate talent. (J.N.Webb, 2010)  It’s the process of a conversion  brainstormed ideas or inventions into product or service that creates value for customers who are willing to pay for it.