Today creativity and innovation are fundamental prerequisite for the growth. Modern organizations are running creativity programs for their employees on regular basis. Creativity is a vital component of modern education system across globe. Unfortunately most school and college education in India still focus on remembering and understanding the concepts & facts and creativity is still not a part of curriculum.

Why Creativity is so important today?

• IBM Global CEO study identifies 'Creativity' as the single most important leadership competency for seeking path in increased business complexity
• The Wall Street Journal reports that creativity course at GE resulted in 60% increase in patentable concepts
• Organizations led by creative leaders have a higher success rate in innovation, employee engagement, change management, OD and renewal.
• KPMG Global survey 2016 - 93% CEO say innovation & creativity in their top agenda

Creativity helps in...

• Enhancing problem solving skills
• Unleashing your idea generation and Innovation potential
• Generate, analyse, evaluate and implement ideas
• Develop critical thinking and strategic decision making skills
• Become an opportunity-finder
• Ask better questions
• Collaborate effectively
• Enrol others in your ideas
• Managing Creativity and Innovation processes
• Facilitating idea-generation and problem-solving sessions
• Recognize when and how ideas are stifled and how to prevent it
• Building a culture of innovation
• Make tacit knowledge visible
• Clearly communicate ideas and get people on board

Creative Thinking and Problem Solving:

Think of the acronym CREATE for six types of creative thinking when you want to do creative problem solving.

Combine : Can I combine, connect or challenge something in a new way?

Reverse : Can I reverse some parts or processes here ?

Eliminate : Can I eliminate or remove some part or process ?

Alternative : Can I use alternative methods or materials ?

Twist : Can I twist things around a bit ?

Extend : Can I extend, elaborate or add something ?

Six Thinking Hats by Edward De Bono:

Generating new ideas by imagining wearing different colours hats. This is a very powerful technique developed by Edward de Bono helped in generating new ideas for leading MNCs for product development, achieving market leadership and business success.

White: Information hat – consider all facts, figures, numbers and find 'way forward'

Black: Purposely think negative. Identify barriers and then develop safety features

Red: Emotions & Feelings Hat – used for product designing and adding new features

Green: Out of Box ideas – new ways of generating solutions and benefits

Yellow: Positive Hat – how to extend advantages to end-users and all stake-holders

Blue: Management Hat – overviewing, analysing and implementing new ideas

How to become more creative?

Tony Buzan, leading expert on Mind Mapping, advice right mind-set and tips as under...

• 'Everyone is Creative' – by practise one can learn and enhance creativity
• 'Left and Right Brain' – apply both sides of your brain
• 'Speed of Thought' – Try to generate maximum ideas quickly
• 'Originality of Thought' – Learn and apply skill of 'Thinking out of Box'
• 'Flexibility of Thoughts' – consider all options looking from different perspectives
• 'Imagination and Association' – Link, connect and find out new ways

Good news is we all are born creative and creativity is a skill. Therefore, creativity can be learnt, practised, applied and can lead to personal and professional success.

This post is based on Yuvalay Talk given by Mr. Vikas Chavda (Business Coach and Innovation Expert) on 3^rd September 2017.