When we hear the word "creative", such areas of human activity as marketing and advertising immediately come to mind. This is explained by the fact that the work of specialists from these areas is directly related to the generation of new ideas. However, if you think about what creativity is, then most likely it is a creative process, so it is very
important for any field of activity.
Today
Creativity has now become an important quality that a candidate who has taken part in the struggle for a high-paying position should have. Someone says that it is akin to genius, and it is impossible to develop it. Someone, on the contrary, offers to develop this quality and guarantees success for any person. Now everywhere you can stumble upon hundreds of trainings aimed at developing creative thinking, but are they really necessary? Therefore, before signing up for the next course, you should figure out what a creative is after all.
Meaning of the word
If we imagine creativity at the everyday level, then it can be called ingenuity, that is, the ability to achieve goals and find a way out of the current difficultsituations, using objects and furnishings in a non-standard way. From the outside, this may seem like something ingenious, but at the same time simple. The thought arises: "Why didn't I think of this before?" Such a non-trivial approach to solving problems is creativity.
Translated from English, this word sounds more like "create" or "create", but this applies not only to material things. As you can see, this is an extremely useful thing. But where does it come from? According to Abraham
Maslow, an American psychologist, this ability of an individual is innately characteristic of absolutely everyone, but in the course of upbringing and external influence it can be lost. To assess the level of a person's creative abilities, various tests, personality questionnaires are used, and various situations are simulated.
The problem of creating creativity
Now you know what creativity is. Let's take a closer look at the process of creating ideas. It may seem that brilliant ideas come from nowhere and just appear in your head, but it's not like that at all. English psychologist Graham Wallace identifies 4 phases of creative problem solving.
The first one is preparation. At this stage, the task or problem is formulated, and the first attempts are made to solve it. Next comes the incubation phase. Here a person, as a rule, is distracted by another object or action and does not return to the task until the moment of enlightenment (the third phase), until intuitive penetration into the very essenceProblems. And the final stage is verification, that is, the implementation of the solution.
In fact, in order for the creativity of thinking to manifest itself, it is necessary to turn off the consciousness and completely trust the subconscious. That is why the second phase is so important. Most often, we interfere with ourselves, trying to consciously find a solution in situations we already know, but this will not help to come up with something new. The problem of creativity can also be our complexes or psychological blocks, the fear of seeming stupid. All this interferes with creative thinking.
Criteria for creative thinking
Many tests are aimed precisely at assessing the criteria for creativity in a person. The most famous test at the moment was created by psychologist Paul Torrens. It allows you to determine the level of this very beginning. Here are some of the criteria:
- fluency;
- originality;
- flexibility (allows to detect false originality);
- metaphorical, that is, the ability to see complex things in simple things and vice versa;
- susceptibility;
- development;
- satisfaction.
Creativity Methods
Creativity Techniques are methods and techniques designed to facilitate the process of generating new original ideas and solutions given by
tasks. They are designed to help clearly and clearly formulate problems, speed up the process of finding solutions, increase the number of ideas, and also expand the scope of the problem. However, it should be noted that this is notalgorithm, following which you will certainly get a solution. Methods only increase the likelihood of good and correct ideas, they organize the search process itself, making it more efficient.
What is creativity? It is primarily a tool for getting something new and original. Stimulation techniques are used in all spheres of life, for example, engineers and inventors successfully apply such methods as morphological analysis and TRIZ (the theory of inventive problem solving). The lateral thinking technique is widely used in advertising and marketing, and the SCAMPER technique is used to create completely new products. There are also universal ones. These include brainstorming and the W alt Disney method. They have found application in almost every industry. Sometimes graphic images are also used, for example, the technique of building a mind map, these are also aimed at additional development of creativity.
Popular methods and techniques
The most famous at the moment are the following:
- TRIZ. This method was developed by Heinrich Alshuler. It mainly consists of providing a database and tools to solve problems sequentially and identify problems in order to create a new or improve an old system.
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creative value Brainstorming. This is an operational technique based on stimulating creative activity. Participants are usually asked to come up with as many ideas as possible, even if they are completely out of the ordinary. Subsequently, of all thoughts, the most successful one is found.
- When lateral thinking, the technique of six metaphorical hats is used, putting on each of which, a person should look at the problem from different points of view.
- Synectics was invented by William Gordon and consists of ten consecutive steps that are more related to the construction of analogies.
- The principle of the Delphi method is that a number of unrelated experts come up with a series of ideas, and the organizing team collects, analyzes them and brings everything together.
Developing Creativity
Having learned what creativity is, you will certainly want to try to find a non-standard solution. Perhaps you are one of those people who have not lost this ability, then you will not have problems. However, practice shows that without training aimed at development, it is not so easy to achieve creativity. How to develop your creativity?
First of all, you need to get rid of stereotypes in thinking and
acquire the ability to think outside the box. This can be facilitated by exercises that should become a habit for you.
Exercise for every day
Take, for example, your way home or to work. Usually it passes along the same road. Try changing your route to a stop or walking the part of the distance that you travel on the bus. Every day try to change the road and find new options.
Everything new and untried is useful: places, menus, actions, clothes and even thoughts. creative,the value of which is directly related to creativity, will help develop art or needlework. Exercises such as reading backwards (from bottom to top or from right to left) are also very useful and uplifting.
Try to come up with 10 exotic names like Diosthene, Hematina or Eiergestior. Draw an animal that doesn't exist, give it a name, figure out where it lives and what it eats. Take any word and imagine that it is an abbreviation, decipher it. All these exercises are simple and fun, but they will help you develop creativity.
