THE World Economic Forum through its Future Jobs Report 2018 lists down the Top 10 Skills by 2020, and these are complex problem solving, critical thinking, creativity, people management, coordinating with others, emotional intelligence, judgement and decision making, service orientation, negotiation, and cognitive flexibility.
According to this report, of these 10 skills, creativity will be one of the highly important skills that workers need to be able to adapt and benefit from the changes brought about by new products, new technologies and even new ways of working. With the so-called Fourth Industrial Revolution looming by 2020, we will be living in the age of “advanced robotics and autonomous transport, artificial intelligence and machine learning, advanced materials, biotechnology and genomics.”
Therefore, we need to foster creativity not only for ourselves, but for the younger generation. Can it be learned? Can it be taught? The answer is both yes. Creativity can definitely be learned and taught at the same time.
Perceiving someone to being either creative or not is something that can be regarded now as a conventional wisdom. Recent studies now prove that “any person can learn, through techniques and behaviour, to become creative.”
Creativity is commonly defined as the “act of turning new and imaginative ideas into reality.” It happens when one tries to see the world in new and unfound ways, to discover hidden truths, to link seemingly unrelated phenomena, and to come up with useful solutions. Creativity involves two main processes: thinking, then producing.
A person can be creative based on a foundation of knowledge, and when he learns a new discipline, and tries to master a way of thinking. When one experiments, explores, questions assumptions, uses imagination and synthesizes information, one learns to be creative.
A study by George Land reveals that we are naturally creative and as we grow up, we learn to be uncreative. Therefore, creativity is a skill that can be developed as well as a process that can be managed.
Learning how to be creative is compared to learning a new sport. To be good at it, one needs practice and a supporting environment to make a continuous progress.
A famous and world-renowned artist said: “All children are born artists; the problem is to remain an artist as we grow up.” This artist is none other than Pablo Picasso.
It becomes inherent in all of us to foster creativity, which means that we have to cultivate and nourish our own sense of creativeness as well to be able to foster creativity and innovation.
This is our millennial challenge, so let us open ourselves which are enclosed in our own turtle shells, conveniently tucked in our confident cloaks and afraid of changes and new ideas. It is also the time for us to explore the artist within us.