Dean's Perspective
Creativity—foundation for future prosperity
Dr. Mohammed Khayum
Article taken from College of Business Reports, Summer 2009
How creative are you? Compare your score with a global average
Creativity is often viewed as a rare quality associated with the particular personality or genius of a person. Yet, the study of creativity over the past six decades has shown that it is possible to develop creative thinking within individuals. Creative thinking has multiple dimensions, such as the ability to make connections involving ideas and experiences to synthesize or generate new things.
In the context of the rapid and complex change processes that characterize contemporary societies, individuals and organizations are constantly required to adapt to changing conditions. Increasingly, creative thinking is being identified as a key factor in generating new and adequate responses to the challenges caused by these changes.
This is particularly evident in the importance being attached to innovation as a solution to current challenges facing the global economy. Innovation as a process of transforming an idea into reality begins with creative thinking about doing something different. In this sense, creativity is a driving force for innovation. It is not surprising, therefore, to find that innovation and creativity are increasingly linked in discussions and policy proposals related to future prosperity of cities, regions, and national economies. The most recent illustrations of this include the European Union’s designating 2009 as the European Year of Creativity and Innovation (create2009.europa.eu/)and a May 2009 report by the Conference Board on U.S. Innovation and Competitiveness (www.conference- board.org/ publications/reports. cfm). In both instances, complex questions of the present and the future are identified as likely to be solved by cultivating creativity and innovation to foster social and economic growth, solve problems, forge new frontiers, and quickly adjust to changing economic forces.
One tool for exploring personal creativity is a creativity self-assessment provided by CREAX (www.creax.com/csa). This self-assessment measures creativity in eight different areas and provides a comparison with more than 100,000 other individuals who have completed the self-assessment. Aspects of creativity emphasized include an individual’s ability to make connections as well as qualities such as curiosity, perspective, abstraction, persistence, complexity, paradox, and boldness.
Awareness of an overall creativity index and the ability to benchmark oneself against others in these eight attributes of creativity pave the way for a focused approach to strengthen creative thinking skills.
Creativity is linked to creative individuals, but it also results from interaction among individuals. Organizational structure can enhance or impede creativity, depending on how it organizes and re-organizes its teams and units. Institutional leadership has a special role to play in this context by developing and implementing structures favorable to creativity.
Creative thinking may be enhanced (or hindered) by specific institutional and environmental situations. Favorable conditions include teamwork, crosscultural exchange grounded in sociocultural diversity, time and resources, and a risk-taking culture that tolerates failure.
The economic future of organizations and societies depends on their ability to create wealth by fostering innovation, creativity, and entrepreneurship. This requires time to experiment, learn, evolve, reflect, generate ideas, and provide solutions.
Within the College of Business, the establishment of an entrepreneurship minor provides opportunities for developing the creative thinking competencies of students. One of the courses has been especially designed with strong emphases on the role of creativity and innovation in the business setting.
