What is my personal
view on and experience with being creative?
I
have always enjoyed being creative- in High School, this translated into writing.
I started many (still unfinished) novels, constantly had new ideas for stories,
and took a Creative Writing class my senior year. I wrote poems and short
stories that got published in the school literary magazine two years in a row, and
also entered several contests that I heard nothing from.
One
challenge for me was bridging the gap between talent and how I wanted to be
creative. I have competed in a poetry jam and written poetry contest the last
two years in college; I won third place in written poetry, but never placed in
spoken. However, I always found myself more excited to perform and read my work
aloud than submit written poetry. Even back in high school, I liked to work on
a few drawings and submit them to the literary magazine. I don’t think they
ever got published.
I
guess I mention that because I wonder whether we can measure how creative we
are being based on performance measures, or rather what we enjoy and feel most creative in? My true passion
is dancing, and I have taken several classes, performed a couple of places-
nothing that got me any medals. However, I feel most creative with dancing. I
can’t hear a song without choreographing in my head, and my favorite thing
about coming home is a living room and hallways to dance around in.
And
there have been several times when I have felt extremely uncreative. Not every
problem necessarily calls for a creative solution- my math classes and science
classes really just need a formula to be applied.
Of
course, I have mostly talked about creativity in art forms so far. I think this
is because most of my experiences with true, unbounded creativity have been in
those aspects. But I would love to have more creative business experiences. I
do think I have gotten to exercise some creativity in my time at McCombs.
My
internship last summer, for example, introduced me to a company that values creativity.
I think Target has made great strides in enabling their employees to be
creative at the Headquarters in Minneapolis. As a Marketing intern, I was given
a broad issue for my project, and encouraged to think out of the box. We had
access to the Target Commons, across the street, where there were comfy couches
and a lawn patio to work on, and ping pong, foosball, video games, bean bags,
and more to play. There were barbeques there, as well as an intern celebration
for us. We even had meetings where instead of sitting down in a traditional
conference room, we “walked the skyways” which connect the downtown buildings.
We were encouraged to “Work.Different” and I believe it truly fostered
creativity. Getting the chance to get out of my cubicle and explore different
environments gave me different ways to enable my own creativity, and the
freedom to pursue the channel that worked for me.
I
also attended open houses in the office where teams shared information about
worldwide trends in retail. This way, an employee that had never traveled for their
position got the exposure to innovations in Europe and Asia, and consumer
insights that could help them with their every day decisions. The members of
these teams were extremely accessible as well, and I got to chat with them over
coffee and learn more about what they do and their journey to that position.
One
huge part that allowed me to be creative at Target is that the pressure of
grades was taken away. I have found the same trend in school projects- whether
individual or group, classes where I don’t feel as scared of making a bad grade
let me be more interested in thinking out of the box and investing in a project
for more than a score.
Can I be creative by
myself?
I
first answered this question with a confident “no,” citing that if someone lived
their whole life as a hermit, they would not be creative- but that let me prove
myself wrong. Because I feel they would
be creative even in that environment. They would have issues or problems they
need to solve in a creative way. They would have dreams and imagination and I’m
guessing curiosity about the outside world. And there have been several times
when my imagination has run wild and I’ve come up with creative ideas for
clubs, initiatives, stories, art, dances, and more- by myself.
Is a group within an
organization capable of being creative?
I
do think a group in an organization can be creative. However, I believe the
correct environment must be fashioned to allow this. The group should be a
space every member feels comfortable sharing ideas. If the group dynamic is one
that goes off topic, laughs together, and gets along well, I feel they will be
inclined to be more creative than a group who is only focused on results, or
worse, does not get along well. This has been proven again and again in my
academic career. When you feel comfortable with your group, you can throw out
crazy ideas- and veto them as well. You can think more about your cause or your
project outside of the group setting,
and thus have more to contribute at your group meetings. When you feel
affection to your group or group members, I think you will be more inclined to
think more creatively.
Are there different
creative types of problems and, thus, different creative processes?
Should we trust
ourselves to know when we need one type of approach versus another?
I
like the idea that there is structure to foster creativity. As the article, “How
to be Creative,” suggests, creativity is not magic, but rather a skill to be
developed. I think there are different creative types of problems and processes
to address them. However, I feel it is better to have different creative
processes that we can use our judgment to apply to the problems. As I mentioned
before, I enjoyed having the freedom at Target to use the avenue I chose to
pursue creativity. Sometimes I wanted to slave away on my project at my desk,
sometimes I wanted to muse over it outside the Commons on a couch with the sun
shining on me. I think we can view the processes the same way. They are
frameworks that can be applied to different problems.
It’s
hard to know which approach we need or which would work best. I think we can
treat it as a framework, where the different processes can be tied to previous
situations it has been used. Often, creativity is linking different experiences
so I don’t think this would limit it in any way.
One
thing I feel we need to keep in mind is that often, these processes may thrive
when we are alone. In “How to be Creative,” there are several examples where a
solution is thought of completely alone, after thinking about the issue over and
over. We saw this with the development of post-it notes and with the creation
of “I <3 NY.” In my own experiences, I often get “obsessed” with my most
creative ideas, thinking, planning, and molding them in different places from
the shower to the bus. The group setting is a great place to bounce of ideas or
put solutions into action, but I don’t think we should use structure to label
spells of individual obsession and imagination obsolete.
