What is Creative Thinking?
“Creativity simply means being able to come up with something new. Therefore, creative thinking is the ability to consider something – a conflict between employees, a data set, a group project – in a new way.” Alison Doyle in this article:
Benefits and Examples of Creative Thinking
There are numerous examples of creative thinking in our lives, but we usually don’t think of them as such, for example, when you discover a more efficient way of getting something done. In that situation, you were using your creative thinking skill to be creative. Here are articles about other examples, as well as about the benefits of creative thinking of which there are many.
Developing Your Creative Thinking Skills
Creative thinking is the act of expressing an idea or solving a problem in a novel and useful way. Though it might seem abstract, thinking creatively really comes down to knowing what you want to accomplish, coming up with possibilities, and then testing them against reality.
Said with a little more panache, “Creativity is a wild mind and a disciplined eye.” Most people mistakenly think creativity rests solely on eureka moments, but professionals know systems are what help you consistently bring abstract ideas into the tangible world.
Principles for thinking creatively
We’re better off starting with a set of principles for creative thinking before getting into habits and tactics. These aren’t strict rules, but instead recurring patterns in the creative process that are worth noticing.
Why? Because whenever you’re stuck, applying one of your principles is like wearing a lens: it helps you see the problem in a specific and familiar way, which can help speed up the path to insight.
- 1. Explore before you refine
- 2. Make your work repeatable, but not repetitive
- 3. Focus your creativity on unsolved problems
- 4. Create alone, move forward together
- 5. Get honest feedback early and often
- 6. Follow fixed deadlines with a flexible scope