Everyone is born creative, but unfortunately our environment – school, parents, community and our workplace, bosses, and the choices we make – often stifle our creativity.
So, if you have been accused by your boss of not being creative enough, or you are just looking to bolster your performance and productivity by being more creative, then you should be clear about the core factors that pre-dispose people to being more creative and develop an action plan to bolster your creativity in these areas.
To spark your creativity and innovation, pay attention to these three factors, made popular by Harvard Business School’s Professor Theresa Amabile in her book – “The Componential Theory of Innovation”:
#1: Domain Skills:
Domain skills refer to expertise in a specific area of work and life. It requires you to go deep and become an expert. This is usually achieved through deliberate practice –acquiring new skills, being audacious enough to practice them, and applying them to solving real-life problems.
It’s not about acquiring degrees or certifications alone, although this may be useful initially. If you are not working to be an expert in a particular area, and just go in and out of work like everyone else, you will struggle to be creative on that job.
#2: Intrinsic Motivation:
This is about loving what you do and being motivated by same because it is your passion; aligns with your purpose; and represents “play” – you are having fun. If the only reason you do what you do is to earn a living and pay your bills, then you are not intrinsically motivated and will struggle to be creative.
#3: Contextual Focus:
You must possess the skills for divergence (coming up with a lot of ideas) and convergence (selecting the most appropriate ideas and converting them to solutions). If you are not good at striking the balance between these two activities, you will struggle to create value with your ideas.
