Why is Creativity relevant today?

The world we live in today is very different from the world we lived in even ten to fifteen years ago. In fact never mind 10 – 15 years here are some really interesting statistics on rapid change in our environment -

• It is estimated that 4 exabytes (4.0*10^19) of unique information will be generated this year. That is more than the total amount of information generated in the previous 5,000 years.

The amount of new technical information is doubling every 2 years. This means that for students starting a 4 year technical degree half of what they learn in their first year of study will be outdated by their third year of study.

• The implications of this are phenomenal. What arises is a situation where we now have a gap between reality and where peoples perception or mindset sits.

Simply put we are struggling to keep up. And is it any wonder when we look at the “Law of Accelerating Returns.’ which doesn’t operate in a linear fashion. It is exponential. This means that “we won’t experience 100 years of progress in the 21st century — it will be more like 20,000 years of progress (at today’s rate) because we’re doubling the rate of progress every decade and we’ll see a century of progress–at today’s rate–in only 25 calendar years. “
Added to this is the fact that even though we can put facts and figures down about how rapidly things are changing – there is another factor involved and that is the human ability to adapt to changes with the environment. This is not as simple to gauge and measure because it depends on ones individual and social development.

So herein lies the answer as to why creativity is relevant to us today more than any other time in history.

In order to close the gap between reality and our perception of and response to it we need to understand how to use our creativity. Creativity drives our ability to adapt or make meaningful or useful changes in our lives and working environments. To keep up we need to be constantly innovating and checking back to the environment we are working within to make sure that what we are offering is relevant.

Today’s Question: What changes have occurred in your environment in the last year and how did you cope with them? Did you use your creativity to cope with them and if not how might you have done so?

Pix Credit: Debate magazine

I am beginning a series of posts/articles, which relate to creativity in business, a subject I have barely touched upon yet.

Many businesses these days pay lip service to innovation, without truly understanding that ALL innovation is driven by creativity and that the creative process has it own set of anti rules, parameters and processes which don’t fit into corporate rules, boxes and traditional ways of thinking.

We spend more of our lives working, either for ourselves if we have our own business or for someone else if we are employed, than we spend doing anything else. Which ever applies to you, I have a couple of questions –

• Do you consciously use creativity or creative thinking in your day-to-day working life?
• Do you think it is a general creative ‘bent’ that you have or are you more aware that you have and use your own ‘creative genius’ in your working life.

Now if you are not an ‘artist per se’ or you don’t work in a ‘creative’ type of business you may well be saying something like “what creative genius” what!!….

Didn’t anyone tell you before that you have one? Well I’m here to let you know – if there was ever any doubt about it, that you do.  And the scariest thing about that, is owning up to the fact that you might be really good at something.  Why is that?

Pretty simple really, if I am truly good at something then that might lead me to…….see full article

Cool And Quirky Studio: Creative Thinking around a work space