Importance Of Creativity And Innovation In Career & Business

Today, we work in a profoundly competitive, global setting, making creativity essential. You may be wondering what does creativity accomplishes for a business or company? It is creativity that keeps your business pushing ahead with new groundbreaking thoughts and development. This includes more than new products/services, it incorporates smoothing out effectiveness and productivity. 

What is creativity? Let us make it simple – creativity is doing things differently to make things more efficient, more useful & more straightforward than the service or product was previously. Sometimes creativity is for the sake of creativity that may produce things so complex & so in-efficient that people do not use them. We have seen such creativity in the past. Here the creativity happened while the creator does not have the sense of people’s understanding & requirements in mind.

Why creativity? Creativity is clearly the selection bias of nature. When we were in the jungle, we were the weakest. We did not fight any animal with our muscles. We ruled the jungle with creativity – we made traps, weapons, guarding the wall, houses, etc for us. We trained wild animals to serve us. Thus we saved ourselves from vicious animals & natural disasters for millions of years. All the war that is won is won by creativity – not merely by force.

Creativity and innovation are progressively significant traits in the market regardless of whether for a large company or for a freelance expert who is beginning his activities. It is the utilization of groundbreaking plans to get better quality outcomes more proficiently.  

The combination between creativity and innovation makes the ideal condition for the way of life of advancement: a mentality open to the development in all cycles of financial action. The benefits from this can be seen in various areas of an organization, they all reflect on the financial performance accomplished. 

Entrepreneurship is a huge challenge, right? There are a few organizations going after similar spot in the market, and attempting to prevail upon people in various ways. In this specific circumstance, creativity, and innovation become much more significant. 

Thinking outside the box is a term that can be perceived as having thoughts or finding solutions that are extraordinary. That is, use creativity for your potential benefit to accomplish various outcomes – or, else acquire an outcome through another technique. When you bring this into the business condition, you can apply creativity and innovation to all procedures: from the manner in which you answer an email to the advertising technique to connect with the client. 

Creativity and innovation must be available in an entrepreneur’s expedition. Having the option to apply these ideas in your business is a differential aspect to get better outcomes and win your place in the market. In such a competitive market, organizations that figure out how to show creative proposals are effective in catching the public’s consideration. 

Nowadays, employees should be able to get their goals creatively to support a fast progress of the organization. Irrespective of the industry, there are approaches to be creative. For instance, in the retail business, there are ways you can be creative with inexpensive solutions that improve client service.

A homogeneous workplace cannot add to prospering creative solutions for an issue. Recruiting employees with varied background, knowledge, and experiences will influence a various number of innovative ideas to come out. Getting these workers to mix in social events and activities will bring out interchanging thoughts and unique plans forward. 

It is comprehensible that every company is defined by its workers and its development relies upon the exclusivity of the product the business is selling. Subsequently, the significance of creativity can’t be rejected from the association’s point of view, be it in deals or product design.  

The entire world of Business is driven by sales. And if the product couldn’t attract the customers, it turns into a terrible job for the business to pull off sales. So the need of creativity and innovation is very much logical. 

As nature has a clear selection bias completely towards creativity – nature made them unwanted success.

In today’s civilization, change has become a norm, whether it is the economy, whether it is technology and business or career. The changes that are happening in today’s civilization are more aggressive than those animals that we faced in the jungle. But let us remember, we never became angry or we never fought them directly – that would have been a reductionist’s idea. We fought them with courage & creativity – not with anger & frustration. We learned quickly about those animals and then found ways around them – their power did not work on us. The same is true in today’s civilization – we have to remain creative in our business & career no matter what.

Now let us have a look at the chart –

The chart shows the exponential growth of Apple after Steve Jobs got rehired and given full power to his creative potential. He was hurt by the apple board of members once – he was fired from his own company. But he did not carry any burden of anger & frustration with him. Instead, he created a beautiful company PIXAR that was ultimately bought by DISNEY. And when he came back to apple – he brought all his creativity into the play. You can see again in the line of nature’s selection bias towards creativity – he was the fittest. He was chosen & catapulted to a legend in his field. Success in business and career is directly proportional to your creative potential.

Why is creativity becoming difficult? It becomes difficult because we have more noise coming from the body and brain in today’s world. When you are in a bar, and a loudspeaker is playing as hard as it can be – you cannot even listen to your own voice, sometimes, or the ring tone of your cell phones. But when you are alone in a silent room – say in the church, you can clearly hear even the minute voice or sound. Because noise can suppress useful sound that we may sometimes require to listen to. Similarly, an unhealthy body & stressful brain produces noise signals so strong that we cannot use the creative modules of our mind.

Examples of noise in the body – If we take refined sugar, our blood sugar immediately rises. In that response, Insulin comes out in our blood, and the sugar in our blood comes down rapidly. We feel foggy. We do not condition a proper sleep, and our body does not regenerate. It generates noise. Lack of minimum maintenance work – de-condition our body and disturb your autonomic nervous system’s balance, i.e., sympathetic & parasympathetic system. Our unhealthy lifestyle can produce a powerful body noise – so strong that we may not be able to do even regular activities properly leave apart creativity.

Examples of noise from the brain – Lack of sleep increases adenosine in the brain – we feel foggy. The brain needs sleep to recover & also generate new brain networks. This is essential for learning & thinking clearly. Again refined sugar fluctuates dopamine in the brain – thus, motivation. The fluctuation of motivation & mood also causes instability in our capacity to focus. Focus is the state of the brain that is produced by the balance between our mood & motivation. Exercise brings endorphins in our brain – elevates mood. Exercise brings dopamine in our brain – elevates motivation. No doubt – our focus gets improved with exercise. No doubt that lack of minimum maintenance exercise creates more imbalances in our brain also. This creates foggy feelings. When we talk negative things to ourselves – we listen & we become worried by brewing these thoughts.  We also tag events & person “good” & “bad” – a self-conclusive data for our brain without any scope of analysis & learning. Our experiences in life without learning but with our judgments are garbage in our brains. The lack of flexibility of accepting things as they are & learn from them produce frictions – more stress – more noise. Falling prey into the mid-brain function – fight/flight/fright – we produce more noise. We rob our lateral thinking.

These noises from our body & brain suppress our capacity to listen to our inner talks of lateral thinking from our brain. These talks, we need to listen. Creativity doesn’t happen in the outside world. It happens inside our brains. The first thing we have to decide is to de-noise our body & brain to listen to the inner sounds. The collection of data for creativity with the least bias requires focus & attention without any judgment. We need both divergent thinking & convergent thinking to spread the threads of thoughts & then bring them together to something useful. We need both states of focused and defocused mind to produce creativity. With focus, we bring the data inside. As we defocus, we allow our implicit memory (past knowledge & experience) to flow smoothly into our present thoughts, analysis & action.

The bottom line is that we need a healthy body & brain to produce a state of the brain that has lesser noise. By changing the lifestyle to a healthier one and training the mind, the body & brain can be tamed to produce lesser noise. Then we are ready to give our brain the scope of high performance. At this point, the base becomes ready where your brain uses the leftover energy to produce new neural networks. You become prepared to listen to your inner sounds of analysis & lateral thinking. With cognitive training, you can produce a state of focus & defocus at will. Thus, you can move into the “zone of creativity” with ease. Remember, creativity is the expression of the highest physical & mental wellbeing.

Creativity, Innovation & Health

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