The Creative Thinking Handbook

Until a few years ago, knowledge was something that allowed a company to become the leader in its sector. Knowledge, research, training and experience were the characteristics that gave companies an advantage over their competitors. This is no longer the case.

Of course, information and knowledge are still very important factors for any business, but they are not enough to guarantee its survival, let alone to deliver a dominant market position.

As well as having the knowledge, we need to be able to adapt and to evolve, responding to the continuous changes and unexpected events that crop up, both as a company and as individuals. Our success depends on what we are able to create.

If we take a look back over the last thirty years, we can see countless examples of companies that at one time seemed to be untouchable (think about Blockbuster and Blackberry), but which became the victims of change, because they didn’t recognise, or they weren’t able to respond to, the changes in their markets.

Navigating certain changes requires creativity, an innate ability that each one of us possesses. Just think about when we were children, capable of inventing worlds and making up stories. While growing up, however, we lose the habit of thinking outside the box. From school to work, we are taught to conform and to believe that there is always only one right answer, just one single way to deal with a problem.

We often talk about creativity and innovation as though they were the same thing, when they are in fact, two different things. Creativity is the process of finding new solutions, while innovation is the result of the unison of creativity and logic, which enables our ideas to become something concrete.

Creativity exists within us all, we just need to learn to bring it back to the surface.