So why have a blog about creativity?
The buzzwords are everywhere, but what is innovation, exactly? And how can it help my company? Why is it important to foster creativity in the workplace? We’ve found ourselves smack in the middle of an economic crisis, and we’re all focused on business strategies and sound economic practices. In this economy, innovation seems like a luxury. Why would we devote any part of the budget to it? Why does creativity matter, anyway?
“Powering the great ongoing changes of our time is the rise of human creativity as the defining feature of economic life.”1 In the last fifty years, there has been a major economic class shift from industrial jobs to jobs in the services and creative sectors. Approximately 38 million Americans, or 30 percent of all employed people, belong to the new Creative Class, which is compromised of “people in science and engineering, architecture and design, education, arts, music and entertainment, whose economic function is to create new ideas, new technology and/or new creative content.”2
Here’s reality. The way the world works has evolved beyond what it was thirty years ago, and we are never going back. The solutions and techniques we used then won’t work for us now. The skills that put as at the top ten years ago won’t cut it now.
The good news is that creativity and problem-solving go hand in hand. My belief is that in times of economic crisis, creative opportunities abound, more so than in times of abundance. For example, according to Seth Godin, there were more than a thousand car companies ninety years ago, and now in the US, we’re down to the Big Three.3 The Detroit Crisis is really just an open door for new innovators, engineers, and designers to step up and design smart American cars. Smarter than the competition. That’s what innovation is about.
My hope and chief aim in publishing this blog each day is that it will inspire you and give you some practical tools to increase your own ability to be creative and to produce innovation that will solve problems for you, for your organization, or for a cause you about which you are passionate. And that is why creativity matters.
End Notes:
1,2 Florida, R. (2002). The rise of the creative class. New York: Basic Books.
3 Godin, Seth. (2008). What to do about Detroit. Retrieved November 28, 2008, from http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2008/11/what-to-do-abou.html
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- The Difference Between Creativity and Innovation
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