designing experiences
Children in the U.S. have become less creative over the past ten years, according to alarming research presented in a recent Newsweek article, “The Creativity Crisis.”
Creativity is often presumed to be the key ingredient of innovation. If that is true, this decline bodes ill for future American – or by extension, Canadian – innovation and productivity.
Authors and researchers Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman define real creativity as the ability to process both divergent thinking (idea generation) and convergent thinking (distillation and clarity).
Design by its very nature is a discipline that nurtures both of these skill sets in order to achieve new creative solutions. This is why the lack of designers in business is a growing concern for MBA educators like Roger Martin, dean of Rotman’s School of Management.
It’s not as simple as dropping right-brain thinkers into left-brain organizations. In order to drive innovation, Martin has introduced the concept of ‘thinking like designers’ into his curriculum to embrace alternative thinking styles.
Sir Ken Robinson has been telling world leaders for years to rethink educational systems to inspire creativity in adults by nurturing the natural curiosity of children.
I heard Sir Ken speak on creativity a few years ago at a gathering of industrial designers in San Francisco. He asked the 500 of us in the audience to rate our own creativity at age 5, and now as adults. Perhaps it’s no surprise that we overwhelmingly rated our childhood creative selves as 9 out of 10 and as adults only 4 out of 10.
His believes this is a result of only rewarding children for correct answers and not exploring other possible answers. This reinforces the linear kind of thinking that is systemic in the children who grow up to become business leaders.
Creativity and innovation is about possibilities, not the ‘right’ answer. Collaborative design thinking stays open to explore and generate ideas and uses a disciplined but non-linear process to develop those ideas into real products and services that break the mold.
This is something to think about when your child proudly brings home her report card – that A+ won’t be for creativity.
Caroline Hughes is strategic partner with figure3 –nurturing the creative spirit of figure3’s design teams.
