How to be creative

Being creative especially in the media industry can prove to be quite a lucrative career. Just look at the likes of telly royalties like Peter Bazalgette, Lorraine Heggessey and of course Simon Cowell… And although it is an advantage to have a business brain, having a creative mind or being able to think creatively can really go a long way in terms of generating ideas that are outside the box and helps a lot with, as Sleepydog‘s Toby Moores puts it, sweating the assets.

My recent creative thinking course was really inspiring. It was all about liberating creativity, exploring how creative thinking works and the most fun of all was the hands on approach in which I was able to experiment with a range of creativity techniques. It’s interesting to hear that creativity can be learned, so there is hope for those who claim that they do not have a creative mind.

Here are just some points on how to liberate your creativity:
- Culture is a strong homogeniser, so although it’s good to work with people that you get on with, you must mix it up a bit and work with a range of people, because that’s where you get the diffusion from
- Routine can corrode creativity – French critic Marcel Proust said: “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having fresh eyes,” so creativity requires you to be curious of what’s around you and to have a child-like freshness approach to your surroundings
- To generate ideas you must stop evaluating at an early stage and judging yourself. Don’t kill the idea so quickly because you’re thinking about the practicalities (you can think about that at a later stage, give the idea some time to incubate) and no, you won’t sound stupid for contributing or for sharing your thoughts
- Assumptions, expectations and habit stop us from being creative.

Here’s a clip of Edward de Bono, one of the most celebrated advocates of lateral thinking.

I’ve just been doing some reading online and have found these sites. Check out the links below:
- Morphological matrix
- Creativty techniques
- Slide: Six Thinking Hats
- Slide: Creative Thinking Skills
- Introduction to Creative Thinking

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