Creative Skills Development

7/29/2019 Creative Skills Development

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CREATIVITY

ETYMOLOGY

Creativity comes from the Latin term cre "to create, make".

DEFINATION

Creativity is the ability to generate innovative ideas and manifest them from thought into reality.

The process involves original thinking and then producing.

"Creativity is the process of bringing something new into being...creativity requires passion and

commitment. Out of the creative act is born symbols and myths. It brings to our awareness what

was previously hidden and points to new life. The experience is one of heightened

consciousness-ecstasy."

- Rollo May, The Courage to Create

Unlike many phenomena in science, there is no single, authoritative perspective or definition of

creativity. And unlike many phenomena in psychology, there is no standardized measurement

technique. Some say it is a trait we are born with; others say it can be taught with the application

of simple techniques. It is the act of turning new and imaginative ideas into reality. Creativity

involves two processes: thinking, then producing. Innovation is the production or

implementation of an idea. If you have ideas, but don't act on them, you are imaginative but not

creative.

Creativity has been associated with right or forehead brain activity or even specifically with

lateral thinking.

DISTINGUISHING BETWEEN INNOVATION AND CREATIVITY

It is often useful to explicitly distinguish between creativity and innovation. Creativity is

typically used to refer to the act of producing new ideas, approaches or actions, while innovation

is the process of both generating and applying such creative ideas in some specific context.


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"...creativity by individuals and teams is a starting point for innovation; the first is a

necessary but not sufficientcondition for the second."

Although popularly associated with art and literature, it is also an essential part of innovation and

invention and is important in professions such as business, economics, architecture, industrialdesign, graphic design, advertising, game design, mathematics, music, science and engineering,

and teaching.

CREATIVE THOUGHT

Creative thought is a mental process involving creative problem solving and the discovery of

new ideas or concepts, or new associations of the existing ideas or concepts, fueled by the

process of either conscious or unconscious insight.

From a scientific point of view, the products of creative thought (sometimes referred to as

divergent thought) are usually considered to have both originality and appropriateness.

Although intuitively a simple phenomenon, it is in fact quite complex. It has been studied from

the perspectives of behavioral psychology, social psychology, psychometrics, cognitive science,

artificial intelligence, philosophy, aesthetics, history, economics, design research, business, and

management, among others.


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Because of, the ambiguity and multi-dimensional nature of creativity, entire industries have been

spawned from the pursuit of creative ideas and the development of creativity techniques.

Some students of creativity have emphasized an element of chance in the creative

process. Linus Pauling, asked at a public lecture how one creates scientific theories,

replied that one must endeavor to come up with many ideas, then discard the uselessones.

Another adequate definition of creativity, according to Otto Rank, is that it is an

"assumptions-breaking process." Creative ideas are often generated when one discards

preconceived assumptions and attempts a new approach or method that might seem to

others unthinkable.

CREATIVITY IS THE MOST CRUCIAL FACTOR FOR FUTURE SUCESS

According to the IBM 2010 Global CEO Study, which surveyed 1,500 Chief Executive Officersfrom 60 countries and 33 industries worldwide, CEOs believe that, "more than rigor,

management discipline, integrity or even vision - successfully navigating an increasing complexworld will require creativity."

CEOs say creativity helps them capitalise on complexity "The effects of rising complexity calls

for CEOs and their teams to lead with bold creativity, connect with customers in imaginative

ways and design their operations for speed and flexibility to position their organisations for

twenty-first century success."Amen to that! If we are going to find solutions in a world that is becoming increasingly

interconnected and complex, we cannot rely on traditional ways of leading and managing.

Creativity requires whole-brain thinking;

right-brain imagination, artistry and intuition,

plus left-brain logic and planning.

CREATIVITY AT WORK

Creativity is a core competency for leaders and managers and one of the best ways to set your

company apart from the competition. Corporate Creativity is characterised by the ability toperceive the world in new ways, to find hidden patterns, to make connections between seemingly

unrelated phenomena, and to generate solutions. Generating fresh solutions to problems, and the

ability to create new products, processes or services for a changing market, are part of theintellectual capital that give a company its competitive edge. Creativity is a crucial part of theinnovation equation.


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INTELLIGENCE

ETYMOLOGY

Intelligence derives from the Latin verb intellegere; per that rationale, understanding

(intelligence) is different from being smart (capable of adapting to the environment).

CONCEPT

i) from Mainstream Science on Intelligence (1994), a report by fifty-two researchers:

A very general mental capability that, among other things, involves the ability to reason, plan,

solve problems, think abstractly, comprehend complex ideas, learn quickly and learn from

experience. It is not merely book learning, a narrow academic skill, or test-taking smarts. Rather,it reflects a broader and deeper capability for comprehending our surroundingscatching on,

making sense of things, or figuring out what to do.

(ii) from Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns (1995), a report published by the Board of

Scientific Affairs of the American Psychological Association:

Individuals differ from one another in their ability to understand complex ideas, to adapt

effectively to the environment, to learn from experience, to engage in various forms of

reasoning, [and] to overcome obstacles by taking thought. Although these individual differencescan be substantial, they are never entirely consistent: a given persons intellectual performance

will vary on different occasions, in different domains, as judged by different criteria. Concepts of

intelligence are attempts to clarify and organize this complex set of phenomena.


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Intelligence is an umbrella term describing a property of the mind including related abilities,

such as the capacities for abstract thought, understanding, communication, reasoning, learning,

learning from the experience, planning, and problem solving.

THEORIES OF INTELLIGENCE

i) The single intelligence based upon the unilinear construct of general

intelligence

(ii) The construct of multiple intelligences. Influenced by his cousin Charles Darwin, FrancisGalton was the first scientist to propose a theory of general intelligence; that intelligence is a

true, biologically-based mental faculty that can be studied by measuring a persons reaction

times to cognitive tasks. Galtons research in measuring the head sizes of British scientists and

laymen led to the conclusion that head-size is unrelated to a persons intelligence.

Alfred Binet, and the French school of intelligence, believed intelligence was a median average

of dissimilar abilities, not a unitary entity with specific, identifiable properties.

EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE

Emotional intelligence (EI) refers to the ability to perceive, control, and evaluate

emotions. Some researchers suggest that emotional intelligence can be learned and

strengthened, while other claim it is an inborn characteristic.

Since 1990, Peter Salovey and John D. Mayer have been the leading researchers on

emotional intelligence. In their influential article Emotional Intelligence, they

defined emotional intelligence as, the subset of social intelligence that involves theability to monitor one's own and others' feelings and emotions, to discriminate among

them and to use this information to guide one's thinking and actions (1990).

Salovey and Mayer proposed a model that identified four different factors of

emotional intelligence: the perception of emotion, the ability reason using emotions,

the ability to understand emotion, and the ability to manage emotions.

FACTORS EFFECTING INTELLENGENCE

Intelligence is an ill-defined, difficult to quantify concept. Accordingly, the IQ tests used tomeasure intelligence provide only approximations of the posited 'real' intelligence. In addition, a

number of theoretically unrelated properties are known to correlate with IQ such as race, gender

and height but since correlation does not imply causation the true relationship between thesefactors is uncertain. Factors affecting IQ may be divided into biological and environmental.


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Biological

Other biological factors correlating with IQ include ratio of brain weight to body weight and the

volume and location of gray matter tissue in the brain.

Environmental

Evidence suggests that family environmental factors may have an effect upon childhood IQ,

accounting for up to a quarter of the variance.

Ethical issues

Since intelligence is susceptible to modification through the manipulation of environment, the

ability to influence intelligence raises ethical issues.

Neuroethics considers the ethical, legal and social implications of neuroscience, and deals with

issues such as difference between treating a human neurological disease and enhancing thehuman brain, and how wealth impacts access to neurotechnology. Neuroethical issues interact

with the ethics of human genetic engineering.

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Artificial intelligence (or AI) is both the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer

science which aims to create it, through "the study and design of intelligent agents"or "rational

agents", where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions

which maximize its chances of success. Achievements in artificial intelligence include

constrained and well-defined problems such as games, crossword-solving and optical characterrecognition. General intelligence or strong AI has not yet been achieved and is a long-term goal

of AI research.

Among the traits that researchers hope machines will exhibit are reasoning, knowledge,

planning, learning, communication, perception, and the ability to move and manipulate objects.

MEMOREY

Memory is the retention of, and ability to recall, information, personal experiences, and

procedures (skills and habits). ubjectivity in remembering involves at least three importantfactors:

1. Memories are constructions made in accordance with present needs, desires,influences, etc.

2. Memories are often accompanied by feelings and emotions.3. Memory usually involves awareness of the memory (Schacter 1996).


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PROCESSES

From an information processing perspective there are three main stages in the formation and

retrieval of memory:

o

Encoding or registration (receiving, processing and combining of received information)o Storage (creation of a permanent record of the encoded information)

o Retrieval, recall or recollection (calling back the stored information in response to some

cue for use in a process or activity).

MODELS

Two models of thinking which are popular with

Materialists are the behaviorist model (thinking is a set of behaviors) and that of cognitive

psychology (the brain is like a computer). Neither can account for the subjective and present-

need basis of memory (Schacter 1996).

The Freudian model posits an area of the unconscious where memories of traumatic

experiences are stored. These unconscious memories are claimed to be significant causal factors

in shaping conscious thought and behavior. This model is not consistent with what is known

about the memory of traumatic experiences.

TYPES OF MEMORY

SENSORY MEMORY

Sensory memory corresponds approximately to the initial 200500 milliseconds after an item isperceived. The ability to look at an item, and remember what it looked like with just a second of

observation, or memorisation, is an example of sensory memory.

The sensory memories act as buffers for stimuli received through the senses. A sensory memory

exists for each sensory channel: iconic memory for visual stimuli, echoic memory for aural

stimuli and haptic memory for touch. Information is passed from sensory memory into short-


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term memory by attention, thereby filtering the stimuli to only those which are of interest at a

given time.

SHORT TERM MEMORY

Short-term memory acts as a scratch-pad for temporary recall of the information under process.For instance, in order to understand this sentence you need to hold in your mind the beginning of

the sentence you read the rest.

Short-term memory (or "primary" or "active memory") is the capacity for holding a small

amount of information in mind in an active, readily available state for a short period of time. The

duration of short-term memory (when rehearsal or active maintenance is prevented) is believed

to be in the order of seconds.

LONG TERM MEMORY

The storage in sensory memory and short-term memory generally have a strictly limited capacity

and duration, which means that information is available only for a certain period of time, but is

not retained indefinitely. By contrast, long-term memory can store much larger quantities of

information for potentially unlimited duration (sometimes a whole life span). Its capacity is

immeasurably large.

For example, given a random seven-digit number, we may remember it for only a few seconds

before forgetting, suggesting it was stored in our short-term memory. On the other hand, we can

remember telephone numbers for many years through repetition; this information is said to be

stored in long-term memory.

WORKING MEMORY

The term working memory refers to a brain system that provides temporary storage and

manipulation of the information necessary for such complex cognitive tasks as language

comprehension, learning, and reasoning. This definition has evolved from the concept of a

unitary short-term memory system. Working memory has been found to require the simultaneous

storage and processing of information. It can be divided into the following three subcomponents:

(i) the central executive, which is assumed to be an attentional-controlling system, is important in

skills such as chess playing and is particularly susceptible to the effects of Alzheimer's disease;

and two slave systems, namely

(ii) the visuospatial sketch pad, which manipulates visual images

(iii) the phonological loop, which stores and rehearses speech-based information and is necessary

for the acquisition of both native and second-language vocabulary.


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FORGETTING

Forgetting is due to either:

Weak encoding (why we forget most things, including our nightly dreams);

Lack of a retrieval cue (we seem to need something to stimulate memory);

Time and the replacement in the neural network by later experiences

Repetitive experiences (you'll remember the one special meal you had at a special

restaurant, but you won't remember what you had for lunch a year ago Tuesday), or

A drive to keep us sane. (Imagine the brain overload that would occur if we were to never

forget anything, the stated goal of L. Ron Hubbard's dianetics. His followers should read

Jorge Luis Borges's "Funes, the Memorious," a story about such a being.)

An additional reason for forgetting may have something to do with dreaming:

*In the quiet of night your brain may turn the day's events into dreams. Through dreams your

brain may examine those events and make sense of them. It may erase some and add others to

your memory bank.*

The chances of remembering something improve by "consolidation," which creates strong

encoding. Thinking and talking about an experience enhance the chances of remembering it. One

of the better known techniques of remembering involves the process of association.

MENEMONIC

A mnemonic device is a mind memory and/or learning aid. Commonly, mnemonics are verbal

such as a very short poem or a special word used to help a person remember somethingbutmay be visual, kinesthetic or auditory. Mnemonics rely on associations between easy-to-

remember constructs which can be related back to the data that is to be remembered. This is

based on the principle that the human mind much more easily remembers spatial, personal,

surprising, sexual, humorous or otherwise meaningful information than arbitrary sequences.

REFERENCES:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1736359

www.wikipedia.com

http://www.med.univ-rennes1.fr/iidris/cache/an/40/4003

http://www.questia.com/googleScholar.qst?docId=76974189

About.com
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1736359http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1736359http://www.wikipedia.com/http://www.wikipedia.com/http://www.med.univ-rennes1.fr/iidris/cache/an/40/4003http://www.med.univ-rennes1.fr/iidris/cache/an/40/4003http://www.questia.com/googleScholar.qst?docId=76974189http://www.questia.com/googleScholar.qst?docId=76974189http://www.questia.com/googleScholar.qst?docId=76974189http://www.med.univ-rennes1.fr/iidris/cache/an/40/4003http://www.wikipedia.com/http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1736359

Creative Skills Development

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