I’m sharing this video featuring an interview with Ken Robinson, one of my favorite authors, and a world expert in human potential development, creativity, and innovation. In it, he provides many key insights into creativity and the creative process.
It’s worth watching the full video, but for those of you who don’t have time, here are some of the main ideas he highlights in this interview with Eduardo Punset:
- Thanks to imagination, we can visit the past and anticipate the future; we can take on another person's point of view. Therein lies the distinguishing feature of human intelligence.
- Creativity is a step forward. Creativity means putting imagination to work, applied imagination: it is the process of having new ideas that are valuable.
- Being in your element means that you do something you naturally understand and for which you have aptitude. But being in your element is more than that—you have to love what you do; passion is key. If you love something, if you are passionate about it, and you’re also good at it, as Confucius said, you never work again, because you live the life you were meant to live. You become your most authentic self.
- The answer to a parent who wants to know what to advise their child about what to do in life, is to observe them first. Not to look at the world around them, but at the child first, to see what inspires them, what captures their attention... Who are they? What are the things that excite them? What are the things they are drawn to, or the things that repel them?
- Creativity is a very practical process. Everyone has creative faculties, and these can be developed. You can be creative with anything that involves intelligence. But, to be creative, you must be able, over time, to control the materials you work with, to achieve the effects you are interested in and follow the path you set for yourself.
- People can be taught to be more creative, and we should do so in schools, in the business world, and in our daily lives!
- Part of being creative involves forming hypotheses, trying things out, sketching, exploring possibilities... but the second part involves being critical, making judgments about the results and asking: "Well, does it work? Is it what I was looking for?"
- It is a constant process, once we understand that being creative is a material process for which skill and practice must be acquired, we can teach it. We should teach it as meticulously as we teach reading or mathematics. Furthermore, we should recognize that creativity is not an additional element in our lives; it is what gives purpose to human life!
