Jumpstart Your Creativity (5 page)

WORK IT

Which ideation technique are you most likely going to use first and why?

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What are some of the issues you could work on right away—at work, at home, or within yourself—that would benefit greatly from ideation?

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When are you going to schedule your first ideation experience and who needs to be invited?

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What are the benefits or the value of making and taking the time to follow through on an ideation experience? How will your work life or personal life be better for it? (What will inspire you to take action right now?)

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CREATIVITY CRISIS

The thing is to become a master and in your
old age to acquire the courage to do what
children did when they knew nothing
.

—E
RNEST
H
EMINGWAY

WAKE
up! We are in a crisis mode for creativity in our nation. Sadly due to our current education system still being so focused on functional literacy since the industrial revolution, the creativity with which we are born is basically trained out of us by the time we are only ten or eleven years of age. Tragic! Creativity is replaced with compliance and conformity—more so the teachers can manage their classrooms than for the benefit of the children. Follow the rules, stay in line, memorize this, memorize that, repeat what we say, don't be original. When Shawn was in school, at the age of ten, he was told by the teacher that he must use a brown crayon (Burnt Sienna) when coloring a picture of a tree. He could not use a blue crayon! “After all,” she said, “trees are not blue!” (Geez.)

Today we live in a post-industrial world that is continuing to change at record pace due to technology at our fingertips,
advancements in science and math, and continued changes in global competition. Think about it, for the first time in seventy-five years, we have four generations working side by side in the workplace—Veterans, Baby Boomers, GenXers and GenYers (Millenials). We have entered a new era that many refer to as the Digital Age. Whether you call today the Digital Age or the Information Age, we are living in a time of incredibly complex shifts in culture, technology, lifestyle, communication, and work life. Steven's son is eight years old, he will graduate college in 2026, and he will be at the peak of his income-generating portion of his career in 2048. We have no idea what demands our world will place upon his generation, how different his daily life will be, and what skills and competencies will be required in the workplace.

We wager a friendly bet, however, that our current education system is failing to adapt fast enough to provide the type of learning challenges and experiences that will best prepare today's third graders to enter the workplace in 2026. According to the literature and research we reviewed in brain science, creativity, divergent thinking, psychology, human development, and education, experts far smarter than Shawn or Steven argue convincingly that the need for greater creativity, divergent thinking, critical thinking, and problem solving are critically important to our future success. The 2007 formation of the
National Math and Science Initiative
focused on dramatically improving math and science education in the United States. The work of many organizations, including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, to improve our public school education in the United States is critically important,
desperately needed, and greatly appreciated. But we believe there is another crisis in our education system because of the absence of adequate focus on creative thinking in all of its many forms.

We support and encourage all of the brilliant minds working today around the world to further our understanding of the creative process, creative thinking, brain science, and the potential for creativity in our daily lives. In this book we are offering you practical tools and strategies to foster and enable creativity within your daily life at work, home, and at play.

The challenges to implement a greater focus on creativity in our schools are many and varied in their source and complexity.

This new economy and the world we live in today and in the future require us to produce adults who can think creatively and solve more complex problems than ever before. This is based on the rapid acceleration of technology, cultural diversity from immigration, generational differences in the workplace, global competition, and the massive changes in the nature of work moving forward.

Our education system has been based on feeding workers to the industrial complex for far too long, especially now that we have entered the Information Age. Our entire education system is geared toward college acceptance, yet a college degree today can be worthless as a competitive advantage (just ask the twenty-eight-year-old sleeping in your basement), it's
a minimum requirement. Master's degrees are now expected to be competitive in the workplace. Sadly too many colleges today are marginal institutions that are not about academic excellence but rather financial stability. Hence the typical college degree is practically useless and a waste of $100,000 to $250,000.

We have failed to re-engineer our school curriculum from third grade through college, to put creativity, divergent thinking, and creative problem solving as a priority for the new economy. Check out this informative article:
http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html
.

Similar to the poignant message of the film
Faith Like Potatoes
, we must have faith just as a potato farmer that our crop (our future) will prosper from investing in creativity training. Potatoes grow underground; and it is not until harvest time when the soil is dug up and turned over that the farmer discovers whether the potato crop is a prosperous one. Having this blind faith in the power of creativity as a way to prepare our future generations requires leadership, commitment, and consistency over time. This is obviously as hard if not harder as the current struggle to keep music and art classes in our public schools that are plagued by budget cuts, a lack of vision, and a lack of commitment to the value of these educational programs.

One amazing solution for unleashing creativity and innovation to solve problems that change the world is Peter Diamandis' X PRIZE Foundation that provides contests across multiple industries based on Peter's principle of
Revolution through Competition
. Creating a 100-mile-pergallon automobile and developing a manned space travel vehicle are just two examples. One incredible outcome of these X PRIZE contests is the involvement of people who otherwise would have never been involved in these inventions and solutions. School teachers, executive assistants, and high school students, for instance, have participated and some won contests. Check out
www.xprize.org
and Peter's book,
Abundance
.

Elizabeth Gilbert, now famed author of
Eat, Pray, Love
, explored the common notion that “Creativity and suffering are somehow inherently linked and artistry in the end will always lead to anguish” in her February 2009 TED Talk, “Your Elusive Creative Genius.” Humankind's history of belief about creativity is that it first came from the Greek belief of daemons (mythical beings), and genius seen as a magical divine entity who lives among the creative person, artists, or sculptors for instance, according to the Romans.

However during the Renaissance period, the person and their skills were placed at the center of the creative process. Gilbert aptly said this left us at risk of arrogance and narcissism with the belief that creative people would think “it came from me.” This leads to great self-consciousness and possible anxiety and stress once you have made a great creation. Think of all the bands in the 1980s and 1990s that were “one hit wonders,” never making another successful chart-topping
album or single after the first big hit. Do you remember the song “Billy Don't Be a Hero”? The self-imposed pressure can be immense. Painters unable to lift a paintbrush. Authors staring at a blank page or computer screen for days. Average Joe or Jane Public avoiding the creative process altogether by staying consumed by busy work.

Creativity is difficult for some people because:

• It is easier to focus upon what we know how to do in the concrete world, especially when overwhelmed and stressed, so we avoid it.

• It is too difficult to push through the “clear your mind” stage.

• They rush to decision, robbing everyone of quality ideation and assessment.

• They fear making a mistake.

• They fear being wrong. Children are not afraid to be wrong; when they don't know the answer, they try anyway. Steven's eight-year-old son is always coming up with different ideas about the origin of things and why things work the way they do without once ever worrying if it's “wrong” or not. If you are not prepared to be wrong, you will never come up with anything original. Even worse, we stigmatize those who make mistakes at work.