A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral. – Antoine de Saint-Exupery

How many times has someone come up with an idea or even a name for something and I’ve said to myself ~ “wish I had thought of that,  it seems so obvious or right.”  The thing is, it wasn’t obvious or right to me before that moment because I was thinking within my own spectrum of possibilities.  Rather than allowing my mind to explore, I was ready to jump to conclusions that worked before or weren’t that far out of my habitual thinking.

As an artist, I am forever challenged by creating new images using the same medium.  It’s amazing to me how many permutations I can come up with in size, shape, color and form when I have kept my mind open to fresh ideas.  These ideas might not even have anything to do with the project at hand but they have been percolating and turning around in my mind ~ a photograph, a quote, a song, a page from a magazine.  The source isn’t important.  What’s important is my being open to the free flow of possibilities.

This is true in everything we do.  Thinking outside our proverbial little boxes opens us up to new ways of seeing and new ways of creating.  It expands our world, and in turn, expands our relationships, our work, our zest for life.

Creative thinking is open-ended, often original, non-judgmental and unpredictable. On the contrary, while risk-taking can include a measure of creative thinking, it also involves analysis and a prediction of the outcome. It’s important to understand the distinction between the two, otherwise, the early stages of creative thinking will be unnecessarily hampered by risk assessment. That comes later.

Creativity involves a break from conventional, tried-and-true ways of thinking, exploring and operating. This separation gives your brain and/or your team the space to breathe, to craft new approaches, concepts and products. The goal is to provide an environment in which free exploration and expression of creative thought are encouraged.

The focus of your creative thinking should be in areas that are suitable for your business. If you are in the fashion world, you wouldn’t be thinking of better ways to prepare fried chicken. That chicken, however, may be the result of a session on how to create a talked-about gala that will launch your new summer line.

“Rules” of engagement to begin the creative process:

• Openness not restriction of thought
• Allow for limitless possibilities
• Judgement free
• No pre-determined outcome
• “Reach for the moon”
• Perfection not allowed
• Willingness to lose face, lose control, experience failure

When you are ready to drill down and focus, that’s the time to implement your risk analysis. (Refer to my September 2008 newsletter, Coaching Risk Taking, in the Resources Section of my website. If you aren’t already signed up to receive or access my newsletters, you can do so on the top left column of this page.)

For further information, including a list of references, refer to www.stressdoc.com/creative_risk_taking.htm

I believe that we all come equipped with an in-born creativity. It never ceases to amaze me how naturally creative little kids are. If allowed, they are continually in a state of inventive thought and action. I think that our natural creativity gets squelched when it comes up against conformity of thought perpetuated by socialization, our public schools and other lock-step systems. Certainly, without these systems, anarchy and chaos would rule, but somewhere along the way we threw out the baby with the bath water.

Creativity is the hallmark of innovation. Imagination is the starting gate for change. I like the way John Maynard Keynes puts it ~ Ideas shape the course of history. William Blake said ~ Every great advance in science has issued from a new audacity of imagination and What is now proved was once only imagined.

Powerful words. Powerful concept. Powerful force. Creativity is to be embraced, not distained or held at a fearful distance. Our brains thrive on a heady and seemingly contradictory mixture of creative and “safe” thinking. Boredom sets in with too much routine. Too much chaos sends us diving for security. However, an essential aspect of creativity is not being afraid of failure.

A person needs a little madness, or else they never dare cut the rope and be free. ~ John Maynard Keynes. It is better to have enough ideas for some of them to be wrong, than to be always right by having no ideas at all. ~ Edward de Bono.

Creative thinking is particularly important in today’s global economy. The old-think of business as usual just doesn’t cut it anymore. I read that over fifty percent of the 500 largest companies in the U.S. have in-house programs focusing on problem-solving or creative thinking. New-think companies actively encourage the continual flow of new ideas. In other words, they encourage an entrepreneurial spirit within a corporate framework.

Nobody talks of entrepreneurship as survival, but that’s exactly what it is and what nurtures creative thinking. ~ Anita Roddick.

In next Monday’s blog, I will write about strategies for incorporating creative thinking.

My husband and I recently attended an exhibit featuring glass artist, Dale Chihuly. If you aren’t familiar with his work, google his name. There is great disagreement in the art world as to whether Chihuly is an artist, a craftsman or a mere technician, but that academic debate does not impact my astonishment and sheer enjoyment of what this man and his team of collaborators have done, and continue to do, with blown glass. As we walked from room to room looking at dazzling, extremely colorful displays of glass work, the word creative kept coming to mind. This man, building on the vision of glass artists before him, has caused me to look at art glass in a new and very creative way.

It also got me to thinking, just what is creativity anyway, and is it confined to the art world? So the first thing I did was grab my trusty dictionary and look up a few related words. To create means to cause to exist, bring into being, originate, to give rise to, produce. Being creative is having the ability or power to create things, characterized by originality and expressiveness, imaginative. A creator is one that creates. Creation means the act of creating.

I couldn’t find a single definition that made “art” the sole vehicle or end product for creative thought and action. Sure, there was a reference to “expressiveness” and “imaginative” but those words do not exclusively belong to the domain of the art world. Certainly architects can be expressive. Inventors are imaginative. And the list goes on.

So creativity is thinking outside the box. It’s looking at something familiar and tweaking it. It’s also inventing whole new things, thoughts, actions.

Next Monday I’ll look at the relevance of creativity in life and in business. In the meantime, check out a press release from John Hopkins University that “sheds light on the creative improvisation that artists and non-artists use in everyday life.” Entitled This Is Your Brain on Jazz: Researchers Use MRI to Study Spontaneity, Creativity, it can be found at www.hopkinsmedicine.org/press_releases/2008/02_26_08.html