Creativity is a beautiful and amazing thing. So many people really love and admire true creativity when it becomes responsible for an amazing piece of art or a new innovative design, technology, fashion, books or a new product.

However, not everyone finds it easy to accept the new, when the new comes along. Often if a culture is not ready for it, it can be shunned, labeled, locked away, hidden or otherwise removed from society as an aberration.  Sometimes in the case of technology, we have to wait for the infrastructure to change to accommodate the new as often networks of all kinds remain outdated. An easy example of this would be the fax machine – a really common item may be a bit outdated now but most offices do contain the fax machine somewhere – but when was it invented? it was actually invented in 1843 well before it was needed or could be accepted by the culture and also because it needed new infrastructure. Education too always takes a long time to catch, you may not know it but our education system is often hopelessly outdated and often fails to prepare people for jobs in a fast-paced changing world. New jobs become available and exist due to the rate of change and innovation, that nobody is equipped to fill because training hasn’t caught up.

So what skills can we learn in the modern world that would be useful in these times? Creativity could be one such skill. What is creativity? its often considered a little bit mystical a mysterious force that brings an idea from the ether into solid reality as something new. Creativity could be considered thinking outside the box or its ideas that have value.

Creativity is used to fuel innovation which is something that’s really important in these times of transitions and change in all aspects of society and in the ways we evaluate what we think we know about the world.

You may not know it but theres different types of innovation

Theres sustainable innovation which is looking at ways we can care for and sustain our planet

Service innovation – which is innovation around services

Experience innovation – which is all about providing an experience, for instance, Apple produced a product with a  specifically designed a box that was slow to open to provide the ultimate anticipation experience upon receiving and opening the product. This innovation can be anything to do with the user experience in a variety of different ways.

Then there’s my favorite, impossible innovation this is innovation that is way ahead for its time that seems impossible such as the moon landing initially was years ago something that seems impossible now, but actually, it may become reality one day.

Creativity and innovation is also really important in our society because it fuels social change. A recent example we could look at on this is the recent amount of technological innovation which has caused mass changes in our society now everyone has a phone which has changed peoples habits and behavior.   The internet has caused huge changes in the way people do things and continues to do so with new ways now of earning money online and the new easy connectivity around the world that didn’t exist before

So what is innovation? innovation is applied creativity. Creativity, a mystical gift we all have to some degree, applied usefully to create innovation and drive mass culture change. Possibly and potentially world-changing.

Fluidity modernity is a constant flow of innovation that is changing the world every second of every day.

Innovation while being fuel for mass culture change around the globe is also quite lucrative. In the UK alone in 2007, 1.8 billion was spent just on innovation and the generation of interesting ideas.

So the nitty gritty… how do you do it? is creativity and innovation truly so mystical a gift that is for the creative few, out of the grasp of mere mortals. Well not everyone thinks it is, many people think creativity is something we all have and is something we should all be using and if we really utilized it well could potentially bring about some amazing changes in society.

Creativity is all about divergent thinking.. that’s our out of the box thinking. So how do you do that? Many people claim to not be able to see the box let alone think outside of it – but is that really totally true.

A really easy process and an example would be – just think of all the uses for something like a pencil.

You may think ok – you can draw or write with a pencil so these would be the ordinary every day uses for a pencil but then if you decided to think a bit more creatively you may think well really what else could you do with it – you could use it to put your hair up its wooden and burns so it could be used to start a fire it could be used to make holes in the ground for seeds a weapon chewing erasing.

So this is a really good start in our creative brainstorming – but then what happens if we add something else to the equation.

Didnt mention the size of the pencil or the material

so what could we do with the pencil now – build a house a rocket ship  titanium pencil used to sculpt, edible pencil

So what happens when we say it doesn’t have to function as a pencil

ok so now we get new possibilities – its a ruler, chopsticks, fidget spinner table leg tree support.

But then when we get truly divergent thinking – we may actually have to totally suspend our ideas of reality and what we think the world and the pencil should look like in reality to get something new.

So how could we do that? well an example would be to take the pencil to a totally fantastical place and imagine its uses there

For example – lets take the pencil to the land of harry potter – so if harry potter was going to use the pencil in his land – what would he use the pencil for?  In this example, we can begin to suspend reality and begin to think in ways that are not totally logical or linear to produce new results.

Examples could be as a wand as a mind-reading device, for recording dreams, records conversations, write spells, mind reading pencil, or you could use a giant pencil instead of a broom to fly with, in the game Quidditch

So there we have come up with quite a few ideas that are a little bit out of the box that could potentially become something new one day.

Creativity and innovation is not out of the reach of everyone –  maybe if we all applied a little creativity magic to our lives we could you come up with some amazing ideas to change your life, live with interest and colour and variety, and inspire the lives of those around you.

This blog post has been inspired by the talk by Josh Hart who used meditation and spiritual pracices to fuel innovation and design – given in the Tech hub, 3rd May 2018

JOSH HART
“The Mystery Behind Creativity and Innovation”

This is an interactive talk unpacking the mystery behind the nature of creativity by delving into the uses of divergent thinking. Cognitive barriers tend to prevent creativity being accessed whenever a person wants, there are structures and tools you can use to overcome this problem, to give yourself step by step innovative thinking, whenever you need it.

Josh Hart VA, author of Phenomenological Design. He has an MA in Design Futures. He is a Designer and Director of Mindfulness Design. “I am a multidisciplinary designer with a keen passion for design and mindfulness. I thrive off creative challenges and collaborative experiences.”

Mindfulness Design is a new company, based in Cardiff that promotes innovation and mindfulness within a business