How to Nurture Creativity

As educators, our task isn’t to recognize creative talent after the fact, but rather to stimulate creative potential and offer an environment in which it can thrive.

Creativity is highly desirable, now more than ever. The ability to solve problems in a creative way is indispensible in today’s world complex and competitive world,  a world where innovation is key.

Nevertheless, creativity is a fickle thing. It is dynamic and multi-faceted and dependant upon what is known as self-actualization, or the attainment of one’s full potential. Some of the things which impact self-actualization (and in turn, creativity) include the following:

1. Individual factors

2. Ways of thinking

3. Approaches to problem solving

4. Personal characteristics and motivation

5. Favorable family, school and work conditions

6. Socio-economic factors

In spite of creativity being one of our most valuable resources, we are not doing enough to nurture creative potential.  This is due in large part to the dominant teaching methods. The great majority of schools use methods that tend to diminish students’ creative potential by emphasizing repetition, which can have a harmful effect on a student’s innate ability to think for him or herself, to be imaginative and to create. Consequently, students may tend to underestimate their abilities and suffer from lower self-esteem. Reaching a certain level of self-esteem is necessary for self-actualization and therefore for creativity. In short, teaching methods need to be revised.

However, we would be remiss if we did not point out other factors which we have observed as researchers and creative specialists. To be specific, we can’t emphasize enough that there are also significant external factors which negatively impact self-actualization and the full realization of creative potential.

These external influences are so powerful that they even lead the renowned psychologist, Abraham Maslow, to state,  “I think of the self-actualized man not as an ordinary man with something added, but rather as an ordinary man with nothing taken away. ”

Thus, in order to nurture creativity, we must also nurture self-actualization. 

	Raúl Jaime MaestreFounding partner of InnovPymes, which focuses on creative research and innovation in business. Currently collaborating as a professor with the IBES School.Maestre has worked as a professor and creator of educational materials in ESERP and the Barna School of Tourism. He has received an Executive MBA in Financial Management from EADA, an Executive MBA from the University of Barcelona and has degrees in business administration from the University of Catalonia and in business sciences from Pompeu Fabra.
Blog:	http://rauljaime@blogspot.com
Twitter:	https://twitter.com/InnovPymes
Facebook:	http://www.facebook.com/innovpymes

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