Creativity is a Necessity by Henning Rasmussen
Note article citation is at the end of the excerpt. The Copenhagen Institute for Future Studies site is temporarily under renovation and the link is not active at the moment.
Creativity is a necessity (excerpt from an article from the Copenhagen Institute for Future Studies)
There are two crucial factors that make creativity a necessity, especially for the business sector. The first is the technology explosion, which makes demands of renewal, and the second is that there are more inner-directed people in need of challenges.
The technology explosion means that there are constant demands for renewal. In other words there is an external need for creativity because the world becomes smaller and changes take place at an ever-increasing pace. Product shelf life becomes shorter and shorter. At HP, half the turn-over is from products that are less than a year old; Disney releases 12 new products every hour; and while a manager in 1970 learned one new skill every year, a manager today has to learn a new skill every day.
In order to be competitive, companies must constantly renew themselves in every aspect. Top managers in the companies are well aware of that, but it is my experience that the desire for developing creativity often comes from the employees themselves. (For instance, when did you last recommend your employees to participate in a creativity seminar - or do only the new employees have to be creative?)
This desire from the employees is based on the fact that people have an increased inner desire for new challenges and an increased need to actualise themselves and make their ideas real. This is the second, often overlooked factor.
The Creative Space
If the individual only lives in the outer world, it can't create anything, but must constantly adapt, and the consequence is that the individual in time will experience hopelessness and meaninglessness.
The creative space is experienced by the individual as something belonging to the reality of the individual, while the environment perceives it as belonging to itself. This mental space is developed by the child straight from birth, and soft toys or security blankets are physical expressions of it. These transitional phenomena, as Winnicott calls them, are defences against e.g. fear.
Games are played in the creative space. It is a space the child can enter as needed and a space where you can have a ‘buffer' between your inner reality and the physical reality outside (which the infant by the way feels it creates). This is where the child loses itself in absorption and concentration and where it tests things. Games are by their nature exciting, risky and fundamentally satisfying, and so they must/will end after some time. When the child is allowed to play games, the creative space grows, and self-worth and trust in the outer world increase. Later in life we develop other transitional phenomena like religion and art.
In order to build the creative space, two basic elements must be present for the individual/employee. The first is relations; i.e., that team spirit is important to create trust among the participants in the creative space. Good relations facilitate freedom to be open and positive and courage to let go of the controls and postpone criticism and evaluation.
The second is rituals; i.e., that a recurring introductory behaviour lessens the fear in the chaotic field that the creative space also is. Rituals promote energy in the space and break down barriers.
The creative space is governed by concepts like: playing, humour, chaos, imagination, emotions, concentration, wonder, curiosity, experiments, risks, adventure, joy, ideas, and satisfaction. The concrete activities surrounding e.g. brainstorm meetings and the formation of creative teams should always be adapted to the participants in the creative space in order to facilitate the above in an optimal way.
Creativity Leads to Reduced Stress – Copenhagen Institute for Future Studies
Av Henning Rasmussen
http://www.cifs.dk/scripts/artikel.asp?id=848&lng=3