Exploring Creativity
To me, creativity is not only thinking outside of the box but it is also the act of creating itself. In many cases throughout my career so far, I have found creativity to be as simple as changing a certain process. For example, my team has used the same process for uploading and sharing documents for the past two decades. However, recently a manager came into the group and developed a new way in which we upload and share our marketing materials. It’s easy to think of art or good design as something that is creative, but in a lot of cases I do not think that is true, because a good design could be copied from its original artist. That being said, in this case of my experience at work I believe that creativity is truly the act of taking a process or an idea and challenging it or turning inside out.
Along those same lines, when I think of creativity I think of the actual act of creating something. At many design firms across the world, designers are encouraged to “fail often.” In my opinion I think the actual act of trying to physically create something new is creativity, even if it’s considered a failure. As an example, I practice calligraphy in my free time. Sometimes this looks like practicing exact strokes and spacing of common script fonts. In other cases, though, this may look like me discovering a new way to portray a certain letter.
Overall, I think that creativity has a different definition to everyone. In my experience throughout my career, I am often seen as a “creative person” just because I appreciate good art and design. This is something I have struggled with because I sometimes don’t believe that appreciation is the same thing as actually being creative. In my first example of my current job, the manager who developed a new process for uploading our documents has a technical background in engineering. Many leaders may see this manager as a technical person who’s not creative, but based on the example I gave earlier he is a great example of someone who is the creative person in its truest form: both thinking outside the box and actually being able to create.
