According to the author’s research, Americans are far less creative today than they were 25 years ago, and this decline shows no signs of stopping. The most alarming revelation, however, is that this decline is most evident in children, whose creative skills and aptitudes should be blooming. Creativity is essential in high-skilled jobs and for a technological breakthrough, on which a country’s success can depend. Without it, we will all struggle to adapt to the constant changes of an ever-evolving world.
There are many reasons for this decline in creativity. Firstly, there is the issue of economic insecurity: as it becomes harder to achieve financial stability, parents are pushing their children into studying for more lucrative careers, while focusing less on their creative potential, imagination, and originality. Secondly, public and private funding for research and development has been significantly reduced in recent decades. What’s more, the American educational system is becoming increasingly standardised, in an attempt to provide a better education for everyone, but this has resulted in too much standardisation and control, which hinders the creative expression of young people.
According to the author, the solution is to teach future generations how to be creative. Although this is not a difficult task in itself, it does mean that we need to clear up a lot of the misinformation that is still out there. If young people grow up believing that creativity is reserved for a lucky few, for the geniuses and artists of the world, they will be much less likely to explore their own creative potential. This is why it is so crucial to approach the concept of creativity from a scientific perspective.
The author explains that creativity is the capacity to do something unique and useful. It is a process that leads to innovation, and as such, can be applied to all fields, including the arts, science, mathematics, medicine, business, engineering, parenting, and sports. Innovation derives from the creative process, and can be tangible, such as a new smartphone or a painting, or intangible, like the theory of relativity. The important thing is that the idea is useful to people and to society as a whole, otherwise it cannot be considered as innovative.
The author proposes three practical steps for developing innovation, which can also help us encourage creativity in young people: cultivating creative climates, nurturing creative aptitudes, and developing creative thinking skills.
The climate is the most critical part of the creative process, and is the aspect that parents and teachers can most easily control. The creative climate, when taken as a whole, influences the way a person thinks and behaves, and can therefore either encourage or discourage the development of their creativity. All human beings have creative potential, but it is often wasted, or goes unnoticed, if we grow up in a climate that does not bring it out effectively. The creative climate is made up of the soil, where our creativity takes root, the sun, which inspires and encourages us, the storm, which challenges us, and the space, where we are able to cultivate our unique talents.
Once we have developed a climate in which creativity can flourish, we need to think about nurturing creative attitudes, meaning how each person responds to the climate. Most of us, at some point in our lives, will come into contact with different people, cultures, opinions, and tools, but we must also have the necessary curiosity to benefit from these experiences. The same two people, in the same environment, can have very different experiences depending on their attitudes.
These attitudes contribute to the third step, the development of creative thinking skills, which the author divides into the Inbox, Outbox, and Newbox.
