If we analyze the most creative ideas in mankind's history, we find that they are ideas that were born from a combination of realities that already existed. We are educated to think logically and analytically and, therefore, it is very difficult for us to associate things that apparently have nothing to do with each other. This natural resistance of ours to associate things that apparently have nothing to do with each other is a huge obstacle to creativity because it is from this association of improbable and unpredictable points that innovation arises. We know today that the most creative people are those who manage to make these unlikely associations, who manage to connect points that no one has yet connected and manage to do so before everyone else does.
We also know today that humans are programmed for two seemingly contradictory realities. We are programmed to save energy. We are alive because we have developed a central nervous system that allows us to save energy to use in the next hours, days, weeks. So we love norms and standards because they allow us to save energy. However, we are also programmed to explore and appreciate the novelty and to take risks, thinking about worlds that don't exist yet.
Thinking about worlds that don't exist implies going outside the norms and making us spend a lot of energy. One of the activities that use up most of the energy in our brain is thinking about new ideas. That is why it is so difficult for humans to innovate. And there is a direct relationship between the quantity and quality of innovative ideas. So, to find a good idea, we have to generate many ideas and this creation of ideas takes time and consumes a lot of energy.
Another important discovery has to do with how human emotions impact the creative process. Thus, all behaviors and practices that help us to know ourselves better and to develop our emotional intelligence will literally transform us into more creative beings.
Creativity is also associated with human memory and the stimulation of our senses. We use sight, hearing, touch, smell, and taste to understand what surrounds us. Our brain uses these stimuli to formulate ideas and opinions, to assess situations and then store what it has learned in our memory. For this reason, we must cause to live new experiences, systematically.
These scientific discoveries are just a few examples of what we know today about the way the human brain innovates and that are leading us to adapt the learning methodologies of this human skill.
But there is yet another reason why Nova SBE is highlighting this ability in its training portfolio: it is that the most creative people have a tremendous capacity to tolerate ambiguity, dissonance, inconsistency, and things that seem off-site. They look at problems from different perspectives and try to examine different variables, looking and often focusing on the unexpected.
And it is human beings that we want to form.
Article originally published in PME Magazine.