Why Creativity is Essential

During this course, I’ve definitely come to understand the value of creativity not only for personal application in my life but its importance in a business and its operations/structure. As a business major, these lessons I’ve observed will definitely be embodied by me when I go into the world of business one day.

Creativity before and now

Personally, creativity for me then was simply the ability to create on the spot. Creativity was taking something and creating something much more with it. I never really thought about using creativity with the ideas of business to innovate or solve problems. Simply put, creativity along with critical thinking, allows one to use this to create and speculate on possible solutions or innovations given the information they have access to. Through this course and the project we worked on this entire quarter (Water hyacinth food packaging), my idea of creativity has definitely changed due to this new way that I was able to apply my ability to be creative and innovate.

Is creativity underrated in the context of organizations?

I came to realize how underrated creativity is in the context of organizations during the daily challenge activities that I was assigned to. The article that I found was about the role of creativity in a leader and a business structure. To be more specific, creativity essentially is what drives an organization to innovate and remain competitive with competitors. After all, innovation is the key to staying competitive with others as this creates the difference for consumers to choose you over another. Without creativity, this leads to the lack of innovation and ideas that can make or break an organization. As much as the books and firm leadership are crucial factors for an organization, creativity is what drives it to progress forward instead of remain stagnant.

What are the barriers that organizations face when trying to innovate?

I remember asking my parents who work at a law firm about their stories regarding innovation and the process that they do in order to do this. My mother told me a story about how the assigned group that was in charge of thinking of ideas to market the law firm could not think of a concrete idea that would be approved by the board. Until an intern at the firm suggested creating social media presence by creating a website, that way it wouldn’t simply be through emails or referrals that possible clients can contact them. With this example, a lot of organizations have the barrier of not seeking creativity from all ranks. Regardless of rank, creativity can be possessed by all and ideas are unique for each individual. By only targeting the ideas of high-ranking individuals that simply means that there are ideas that are not heard simply because of rank. This could be detrimental to an organization because rank does not determine the feasibility and quality of ideas fully. A simple fix would simply be to encourage ideas to be shared in groups regardless of ranks. Simply sourcing ideas from all personnel in an organization.

This course has definitely made me much more prepared for the day I venture into my own business. These lessons regarding creativity are definitely going to be integrated into my leadership style and my process when trying to innovate and create new ideas for the organization that I will one day use these lessons for.