La crisis estructural que vivimos significa el cambio del paradigma. Para encontrar éxito y felicidad en los tiempos actuales creatividad se convierte en una habilidad imprescindible para llegar al éxito, y es un habilidad que cada uno puede desarrollar.
Crisis?: economic, financial, education, environmental, social… something else? Nowadays our society is going through the range of radical transformations that got reflected in crisis in various areas of our lifes. These crisis make us reflect serious regardign how we need to adapt our behavior.
However is it just a cyclical regular crisis that we just need to go through or is it something else?
Paradigm shift. Some facts. The fact that so many as pects of the system don’t function any more tells us that we are on the edge of the paradigm shift. We can see it if we take a look at certain facts.
Speed of change: before 1800 there were about 10 technicals and social life-changing inventions throughout 5000 years of the history of the humanity. In the last 200 years we have had about 25 of them.
Speed of change: product life cycle. Normal life cycle of industrial products lasts for abour 5-10 years. The cycle of high-tech products is way much shorter: 6-12 months, and it is becoming even shorter with more technology advances.
Speed of change: Years it took aproduct tor each an audience of 25 millions. It took 38 years for radio to reach this audience. It took only 2 years for Facebook.
Speed of change: information consumption. In 2007 it was estimated that we were consuming/producing around 4 exabytes of information in one year. It is more than the whole humanity comsumed/produced in total in previous 5000 years. Can you imagine how much we consume NOW?
Once again, this is estimation of 2007: it was estimated that the quantity of technical information was doubling every 2 years. Which means that anything that we study today, tomorrow (in 2 years) might be outdated.
Such a speed of change leads us to a much more complex and uncertain world than we used to be accustomed to.
And this complexioty and uncertainty inplies that we don’t know anything about how our future might be even just in several years. What will be the future jobs? What will be the future technologies? I want to stress that we don’t talk about predictions for future generations, we say that we don’t know even how our world will look like and how our society will function in 5-10 years.
This speed of changes has already started tranforming the way we work, creating new business models that are based on cooperation and networking. We build our work relationships more and more based on particular projects rather than based a fixed status and function within an organization. It changes in turn how organizations operate.
These systemic shifts indicate our transition from industrial into creative economy.
In Creative Economy it doesn’t matter any more what you KNOW.
What matters is
-how do you adapt to change?
-how do you deal with complexity and uncertainty?
HOW DO YOU SOLVE PROBLEMS?
WHAT IDEAS CAN YOU CREATE?
If you want to: find a job, change your job, not fear of loosing your job, create a job of your dreams for yourself, YOU NEED TO TRAIN YOUR CREATIVITY.
What is creativity?
Creative Problem Solving
Creative Problem Solving helps you
Creative Problem Solving helps you to change your way of thinking, your thinking process
Creative Problem Solving helps you to change your way of thinking, your thinking process in order to open up for you possibilities that you couldn’t see as feasible before.
The first pillar on which CPS is based is positive attitude.
That allows you to see problems
That allows you to see problems as oppportunities.
That allows you to see problems as oppportunities.
The second pillar is suspending judgement.
Before evaluating count till 10. Suspending judgment is not eliminating judgment (evaluation), but deferring your evaluation conciously. It allows you not to follow the first automatic response to the stimuli but to look for other posible reactions/evalutions and consider them equally.
Before saying “No” think in what ways you could come to saying “Yes”.
Why building our thinking process on postive attitude and suspending judgment allows us to be more creative and solve problems better?
WE ARE IDEAS KILLERS: In 1894, the president of the Royal Society, William Thomson, Lord Kelvin, predicted that radio had no future . The first radio factory was opened five years later. He also said, X - rays will prove to be a hoax.
WE ARE IDEAS KILLERS: In the early 20th century a world market for only 4 million automobiles was predicted because 鍍 h e world would run out of chauffeurs. �
WE ARE IDEAS KILLERS: Shortly after the end of World War II (1945), the whole of Volkswagen, factory and patents, was offered free to Henry Ford II. He dismissed the Volkswagen Beetle as a bad design.
WE ARE IDEAS KILLERS: The telephone was not widely appreciated for the first 15 years because people did not see a use for it. In fact, in the British parliament it was mentioned there was no need for telephones because 努 e have enough messengers here.
WE ARE IDEAS KILLERS: Western Union believed that it could never replace the telegraph. In 1876, an internal memo read: T h is telephone has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication.
WE ARE IDEAS KILLERS: Even Mark Twain, upon being invited by Alexander Graham Bell to invest $5 000 in the new invention, could not see a future in the telephone.
WE ARE IDEAS KILLERS: Irish scientist, Dr. Dionysius Lardner (1793 – 1859) didn’t believe that trains could contribute much in speedy transport. He wrote: 迭 a il travel at high speed is not possible, because passengers ‘ would die of asphyxia’ [suffocation].
WE ARE IDEAS KILLERS: In 1927, H.M. Warner, Warner Brothers, asked, W h o the hell wants to hear actors talk?
WE ARE IDEAS KILLERS: In 1936, Radio Times editor Rex Lambert thought “T e levision won’t matter in your lifetime or mine”.
WE ARE IDEAS KILLERS: In 1943, Thomas Watson, the chairman of IBM forecast a world market for “M a ybe only five computers”.
WE ARE IDEAS KILLERS: In 1966 CoCo Chanel said about miniskirts: “It’s a bad joke that won’t last. Not with winter coming. ”
WE ARE IDEAS KILLERS: In 1954, a concert manager fired Elvis Presley, saying, “Y o u ought to go back to driving a truck. ”
WE ARE IDEAS KILLERS: In 1962, Decca Records rejected the Beatles , “W e don’t like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out. ”
Positive attitude+ suspending judgment: the theory of trion brain.
If something causes us negative emotions, our cognitive processes are being downgraded to the level of the reptilian brain, responsible for surviving instincts. All what we are capable of in such moments is defending ourselves. No consious thinking process may be caried out with clarity.
On the other hand, positive emotions upshift our cognitive activities up to the neocortex, responsible for consious itellectual activity. This is when we create ideas and find solutions.
So this is how the combination of positive attitude and suspending judgement leads you to: new posibilities improved collaboration and mutual respect helps you to overcome your fear of faillure
Cicle of problem solving. This is how we normally solve problems: first we identify that we have a problem and what it is, then we look for ideas how we can solve problems, choose out of ideas the most appropriate solution and implement it.
Creative problem solving we do all the same with a little but SIGNIFICANT difference:
At each stage (whether it is exploring the problem, looking for ideas, elaborating solution or coming up with an action plan) we apply the principle of suspending judgment, separating like this the phase of creating options from the phase of their evaluation.
Suspending judgment allows us to create much more options than we usually are capable of, when we evalaute inmediately everything that come to our mind and what we hear/see. Creating more options allows us eventually break out of our zone of confort into the discovery zone - the space of our mind we don’t visit often and where the best ideas are stored.
Finally, the combination of positive attitude with suspending judgement is what allows us to solve problems.