creative thinking in value education

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Tips for Guiding Students to Think Creatively

These simple creativity challenges can encourage students to have the mindset of an artist, a designer, and a change-maker.

We’re living in an era when the thinking process is becoming increasingly more important in a student’s learning journey: the ability to be reflective, adaptable, flexible, and nimble during times of constant change.

While an answer, statistic, or other random “product” can be found by simply asking the ever-growing breadth of artificial intelligence options, the process of creative and critical thinking cannot.

How might we shift toward a culture of thinking that’s process oriented in our learning spaces? What types of thinking would be most beneficial during a constant state of flux? Here are three ways of thinking that can help prepare students for career, life, and, most important, humanity. 

Thinking like an artist

In a world that’s moving at breakneck speed, thinking like an artist is about slowing down to uncover the nuance, complexity, and emotion of the world around us. Thinking like an artist is about developing the skills for meaningful expression. Adapted from the Columbus Museum of Art’s Making Creativity Visible project, this process focuses on the dispositions inherent in thinking like an artist.

Artists are playful and imaginative, and they experiment with ideas. They generate original ideas and approach the world with an insatiable curiosity. They’re comfortable with ambiguity and persist through failure. They value questioning, collaboration, and reflection. They communicate ideas and celebrate the beauty of thinking in unique and whimsical ways. What if you asked students to think like an artist in your learning space? What would that look, sound, and feel like?

Imagine if you asked students to find an object in the room and to write a series of questions they would like to ask the object. Then have them pick a question and answer it from the object’s perspective. Ask the students to use some simple materials like tape, paper, and scissors to make something connected to the answer they came up with.

This is a quick creativity challenge that can help create the conditions for students to think more like an artist in your space. If we want students to slow down and be more playful with their thinking, we must give them opportunities to exercise these dispositions. 

Thinking like a designer

We currently have a surplus of problems facing our world. Our students see, hear, and/or feel the problems that surround us every day. Imagine if we asked our students to think like a designer in our learning spaces. What if we facilitated learning experiences as an opportunity to identify and solve problems?

Designers find inspiration in the people, questions, and problems of their community. They use this inspiration to generate human-centered ideas. Designers prototype and implement a variety of possible solutions. They reflect and iterate on these solutions until they find one that has a lasting and meaningful impact on those most closely connected to the problem. Inspired from the work of IDEO , a design firm in Palo Alto, California, thinking like a designer can help students see how learning can be a more collective act, as opposed to the more individualistic one common throughout schools today.

How might you create space in your classroom to empower students to think more like a designer? Imagine if you had the students at the beginning of the year write down one worry they had about the upcoming year on a sticky note. Next they each found a partner and shared their worry. You gave them the time to conduct an empathy interview to get a better understanding of the worry. Then, with simple materials like tape, paper, string, scissors, and markers, you tasked them with designing an artifact that would help relieve some of the stress of their classmate’s worry. After students completed their artifact, they took turns sharing the artifact, its meaning, and how it addressed the worry of a classmate.

The purpose of this creativity challenge is to recognize the power in thinking like a designer —finding inspiration in those around us and gathering ideas from deep, meaningful conversation and creating solutions that matter to others.  

Thinking like a change agent

One element we need more of in our schools is meaning. Students know that much of what they’re learning is isolated and devoid of meaning. They know that the majority of what they’re learning is to satisfy state measured assessments. What if we asked students to think more like an agent of change in our learning spaces? What might that look, sound, and feel like?

Pulling from the work of the Columbus Museum of Art and Project Zero’s Cultivating Creative and Civic Capacities project, I and my colleagues have identified some essential dispositions of thinking like a change agent. Change agents must be able to imagine a more beautiful, just, and sustainable world for everyone. They must be able to slow down to investigate the complexity of taking action. They must be able to harness the power of influence to inspire change. Lastly, they must be able to explore the tensions between the individual and the collective society we all live in.

How might you create the conditions in your learning space for students to think like a change agent ? Imagine if you took your students on a noticing stroll around the campus or community. What if you asked them to identify meaningful issues, problems, or questions that they observed along the way, and to investigate some of these noticings to dig deeper into the interconnected nature of the causes and impact and where there might be opportunities for transformation?

Students could then take time to imagine new possibilities. How might your students design possibilities that influence others to take action and enable student experiences to be more beautiful, just, and sustainable?

The purpose of this creativity challenge is to help provide a process for students to find meaning by thinking like a change agent. What if we moved from maintaining the status quo to challenging it?

What creativity really is - and why schools need it

Associate Professor of Psychology and Creative Studies, University of British Columbia

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Liane Gabora's research is supported by a grant (62R06523) from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.

University of British Columbia provides funding as a founding partner of The Conversation CA.

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Although educators claim to value creativity , they don’t always prioritize it.

Teachers often have biases against creative students , fearing that creativity in the classroom will be disruptive. They devalue creative personality attributes such as risk taking, impulsivity and independence. They inhibit creativity by focusing on the reproduction of knowledge and obedience in class.

Why the disconnect between educators’ official stance toward creativity, and what actually happens in school?

How can teachers nurture creativity in the classroom in an era of rapid technological change, when human innovation is needed more than ever and children are more distracted and hyper-stimulated ?

These are some of the questions we ask in my research lab at the Okanagan campus of the University of British Columbia. We study the creative process , as well as how ideas evolve over time and across societies. I’ve written almost 200 scholarly papers and book chapters on creativity, and lectured on it worldwide. My research involves both computational models and studies with human participants. I also write fiction, compose music for the piano and do freestyle dance.

What is creativity?

Although creativity is often defined in terms of new and useful products, I believe it makes more sense to define it in terms of processes. Specifically, creativity involves cognitive processes that transform one’s understanding of, or relationship to, the world.

There may be adaptive value to the seemingly mixed messages that teachers send about creativity. Creativity is the novelty-generating component of cultural evolution. As in any kind of evolutionary process, novelty must be balanced by preservation.

In biological evolution, the novelty-generating components are genetic mutation and recombination, and the novelty-preserving components include the survival and reproduction of “fit” individuals. In cultural evolution , the novelty-generating component is creativity, and the novelty-preserving components include imitation and other forms of social learning.

It isn’t actually necessary for everyone to be creative for the benefits of creativity to be felt by all. We can reap the rewards of the creative person’s ideas by copying them, buying from them or simply admiring them. Few of us can build a computer or write a symphony, but they are ours to use and enjoy nevertheless.

Inventor or imitator?

There are also drawbacks to creativity . Sure, creative people solve problems, crack jokes, invent stuff; they make the world pretty and interesting and fun. But generating creative ideas is time-consuming. A creative solution to one problem often generates other problems, or has unexpected negative side effects.

Creativity is correlated with rule bending, law breaking, social unrest, aggression, group conflict and dishonesty. Creative people often direct their nurturing energy towards ideas rather than relationships, and may be viewed as aloof, arrogant, competitive, hostile, independent or unfriendly.

Also, if I’m wrapped up in my own creative reverie, I may fail to notice that someone else has already solved the problem I’m working on. In an agent-based computational model of cultural evolution , in which artificial neural network-based agents invent and imitate ideas, the society’s ideas evolve most quickly when there is a good mix of creative “inventors” and conforming “imitators.” Too many creative agents and the collective suffers. They are like holes in the fabric of society, fixated on their own (potentially inferior) ideas, rather than propagating proven effective ideas.

Of course, a computational model of this sort is highly artificial. The results of such simulations must be taken with a grain of salt. However, they suggest an adaptive value to the mixed signals teachers send about creativity. A society thrives when some individuals create and others preserve their best ideas.

This also makes sense given how creative people encode and process information. Creative people tend to encode episodes of experience in much more detail than is actually needed. This has drawbacks: Each episode takes up more memory space and has a richer network of associations. Some of these associations will be spurious. On the bright side, some may lead to new ideas that are useful or aesthetically pleasing.

So, there’s a trade-off to peppering the world with creative minds. They may fail to see the forest for the trees but they may produce the next Mona Lisa.

Innovation might keep us afloat

So will society naturally self-organize into creators and conformers? Should we avoid trying to enhance creativity in the classroom?

The answer is: No! The pace of cultural change is accelerating more quickly than ever before. In some biological systems, when the environment is changing quickly, the mutation rate goes up. Similarly, in times of change we need to bump up creativity levels — to generate the innovative ideas that will keep us afloat.

This is particularly important now. In our high-stimulation environment, children spend so much time processing new stimuli that there is less time to “go deep” with the stimuli they’ve already encountered. There is less time for thinking about ideas and situations from different perspectives, such that their ideas become more interconnected and their mental models of understanding become more integrated.

This “going deep” process has been modeled computationally using a program called Deep Dream , a variation on the machine learning technique “Deep Learning” and used to generate images such as the ones in the figure below.

The images show how an input is subjected to different kinds of processing at different levels, in the same way that our minds gain a deeper understanding of something by looking at it from different perspectives. It is this kind of deep processing and the resulting integrated webs of understanding that make the crucial connections that lead to important advances and innovations.

Cultivating creativity in the classroom

So the obvious next question is: How can creativity be cultivated in the classroom? It turns out there are lots of ways ! Here are three key ways in which teachers can begin:

Focus less on the reproduction of information and more on critical thinking and problem solving .

Curate activities that transcend traditional disciplinary boundaries, such as by painting murals that depict biological food chains, or acting out plays about historical events, or writing poems about the cosmos. After all, the world doesn’t come carved up into different subject areas. Our culture tells us these disciplinary boundaries are real and our thinking becomes trapped in them.

Pose questions and challenges, and follow up with opportunities for solitude and reflection. This provides time and space to foster the forging of new connections that is so vital to creativity.

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Creative Thinking

Creative Thinking involves the generation of ideas and concepts that are novel and innovative in the context in which they are generated, reflection on their value to the individual or others, and the development of chosen ideas and concepts from thought to reality.

People who think creatively are curious and open-minded, have a sense of wonder and joy in learning, demonstrate a willingness to think divergently, and are comfortable with complexity. A creative thinker reflects on existing ideas and concepts; uses imagination, inventiveness, resourcefulness, and flexibility; and is willing to take risks to go beyond existing knowledge.

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Creating and innovating

Students get creative ideas that are novel and have value. An idea may be new to the student or their peers, and it may be novel for their age group or the larger community. It may be new to a particular context or absolutely new. The idea or product may have value in a variety of ways and contexts – it may be fun, provide a sense of accomplishment, solve a problem, be a form of self-expression, provoke reflection, or provide a new perspective that influences the way people think or act. It can have a positive impact on the individual, classmates, the community, or the world.

Generating and incubating

Students may generate creative ideas through free play, engagement with other’s ideas, or consideration of a problem or constraint, and/or because of their interests and passions. New ideas and inspirations can spontaneously arise from the unconscious mind, but students can also develop strategies to facilitate the generation of ideas – learning a lot about something, engaging in a period of reflection, providing time for incubation, and doing relaxing or automatic activities to quiet their conscious mind. The capacity for creative thinking expands as individuals increase their range of ideas and concepts to recombine them into new ideas. The ideas available as raw material for creative thinking depend on previous experiences and learning, as well as students’ cultural legacies.

Evaluating and developing

Students reflect on their creative ideas in order to decide which ones to develop. They consider whether their idea would ultimately support the well-being of self, community, and the land. They do this with a sense of place and taking into consideration unintended consequences for other living things and our planet. If they decide to develop an idea, they work individually and/or collaboratively to refine it and work to realize it. This may require accessing the knowledge of those who have gone before, building the necessary skills, sustaining perseverance, using failure productively over time, and reflecting on process and results. It may also require the generation of additional creative ideas to come up with solutions to problems along the way.

I get ideas when I play.

I get ideas when I use my senses to explore. My play ideas are fun for me and make me happy. I make my ideas work or I change what I am doing.

I can get new ideas or build on or combine other people’s ideas to create new things within the constraints of a form, a problem, or materials.

I can get new ideas to create new things or solve straightforward problems. My ideas are fun, entertaining, or useful to me and my peers, and I have a sense of accomplishment. I can use my imagination to get new ideas of my own, or build on other’s ideas, or combine other people’s ideas in new ways. I can usually make my ideas work within the constraints of a given form, problem, or materials if I keep playing with them.

I can get new ideas in areas in which I have an interest and build my skills to make them work.

I generate new ideas as I pursue my interests. I deliberately learn a lot about something by doing research, talking to others, or practicing, so that I can generate new ideas about it; the ideas often seem to just pop into my head. I build the skills I need to make my ideas work, and I usually succeed, even if it takes a few tries.

I can get new ideas or reinterpret others’ ideas in novel ways.

I get ideas that are new to my peers. My creative ideas are often a form of self-expression for me. I have deliberate strategies for quieting my conscious mind (e.g., walking away for a while, doing something relaxing, being deliberately playful), so that I can be more creative. I use my experiences with various steps and attempts to direct my future work.

I can think “outside the box” to get innovative ideas and persevere to develop them.

I can get new ideas that are innovative, may not have been seen before, and have an impact on my peers or in my community. I have interests and passions that I pursue over time. I look for new perspectives, new problems, or new approaches. I am willing to take significant risks in my thinking in order to generate lots of ideas. I am willing to accept ambiguity, setbacks, and failure, and I use them to advance the development of my ideas.

I can develop a body of creative work over time in an area of interest or passion.

I can get ideas that are groundbreaking or disruptive and can develop them to form a body of work over time that has an impact in my community or beyond. I challenge assumptions as a matter of course and have deliberate strategies (e.g., free writing or sketching, meditation, thinking in metaphors and analogies) for getting new ideas intuitively. I have a strong commitment to a personal aesthetic and values, and the inner motivation to persevere over years if necessary to develop my ideas.

The Core Competencies relate to each other and with every aspect of learning.

Connections among Core Competencies

The Core Competencies are interrelated and interdependent. Taken together, the competencies are foundational to every aspect of learning. Communicating is intertwined with the other Core Competencies.

Creative Thinking is one of the Thinking Core Competency’s two interrelated sub-competencies, Creative Thinking and Critical and Reflective Thinking.

Creative Thinking and Critical and Reflective Thinking overlap. For example:

• Students use critical thinking to analyze and reflect on creative ideas in order to determine whether they have value and should be developed
• Students engage in ongoing reflection as they develop their creative ideas
• Students use creative thinking to generate new ideas to solve problems and constraints that arise as they design and develop

Communication

Creative Thinking is closely related to the two Communication sub-competencies, Communicating and Collaborating. For example:

• Students communicate to share and build on one another’s creative ideas and collaborate to develop their creative ideas
• Students use creative thinking to get new ideas about how to communicate effectively
• Students can use creative thinking to come up with new ideas about how to distribute leadership and co-regulate group interactions as they collaborate

Personal and Social

Creative Thinking is closely related to the three Personal and Social sub-competencies: Personal Awareness and Responsibility, Social Awareness and Responsibility, and Positive Personal and Cultural Identity. For example:

• Students use their personal and social awareness and responsibility to decide which creative ideas have value for themselves, others, and the community
• Students use creative thinking to generate new ideas for ways to exercise personal and social responsibility
• Students often see their chosen forms of creative expression as an important part of their identity

Connections with areas of learning

Creative Thinking is embedded within the curricular competencies of the concept-based, competency-driven curriculum. Curricular competencies are focused on the “doing” within the area of learning and include skills, processes, and habits of mind required by the discipline. For example, the Creative Thinking sub-competency can be seen in the following Big Ideas in Arts Education:

• Creative expression develops our unique identity and voice. (Arts Education 2)
• Artists experiment in a variety of ways to discover new possibilities. (Arts Education 4)
• Creative growth requires patience, readiness to take risks, and willingness to try new approaches. (Arts Education 8)

How Education Quashed Your Creativity

Why it's difficult to find creative answers..

Posted August 13, 2021 | Reviewed by Davia Sills

• Our education (K-college) is excessively focused on getting right answers, rather than promoting creative responses.
• An overemphasis on standardized testing negatively impacts our creativity.
• The kinds of questions we're asked in school severely limits our creative output.

For much of our lives, we are predisposed to look for a single solution to a single problem (e.g., What is 2 + 2? What is the state capital of North Dakota? Who wrote the Declaration of Independence?). We have been “brainwashed” to think that for every problem, there is one, and only one, way to solve that problem. Much of our educational experiences have been focused on learning the right answers to pre-established questions. Seldom have we been offered the opportunity to consider that there might be a multitude of potential responses to any problem. The “one-problem, one-answer” syndrome has been thoroughly ingrained into almost every educational curriculum, irrespective of grade level or subject matter.

Sir Ken Robinson put this all into perspective when he wrote, “…too often our educational systems don’t enable students to develop their natural creative powers. Instead, they promote uniformity and standardization. The result is that we’re draining people of their creative possibilities and… producing a workforce that’s conditioned to prioritize conformity over creativity.” In short, our educational system is focused more on getting the right answers (thinking inside the box) than on promoting creative possibilities (thinking outside the box).

What are the ramifications?

The implications can be staggering. Logic supports the notion that an excessive focus on a one-right-answer mentality forces us into a “don’t take any risks” mindset. This obsession with getting the right answer (a proven consequence of an over-emphasis on standardized testing) conditions us not to take chances… it teaches us not to be creative. That’s because when we make too many mistakes, we get a low test score. Get a low score, and you may deprive yourself of a college education (as a result of your SAT scores), a chance at graduate school (via your GRE scores), or an occupational advancement (via your score on the LSAT [law school] exam, MCAT [medical school] exams, or PAPA [teacher certification assessment], for example).

Simply put, we are not taught how to be creative; rather, our education is focused more on “mental compliance” than it is on innovative expression. Robert Sternberg writes, “Creativity is a habit. The problem is that schools… treat it as a bad habit…. Like any habit, creativity can either be encouraged or discouraged.”

Michael Roberto, in his book Unlocking Creativity, further cements this view when he states, “Our schools [are] discouraging creative students in a variety of ways. A stream of research has shown that teachers claim to value qualities such as independent thinking and curiosity, yet they reward behaviors such as obedience and conformity.” As an educator for more than 50 years, that concerns me!

Because of the prevalence of exams in our lives (it has been estimated that students take nearly 2,500 tests, quizzes, and exams during their school years, grades K-12), we have a tendency to stay in a comfort zone: a focus on right answers. Occasionally, we may be asked to voice a creative response in class (“What do you think are some of the long-range consequences of our current trade policy with China?”), but are hesitant to do so on the belief that the teacher may be looking for a specific and particular response. Perhaps our creative answer is not the one the teacher was looking for. We may have stepped outside the bounds of what was expected and into the territory of the unknown.

The objective of most classroom lessons often becomes: Right answers get rewarded; innovative or inventive responses are frequently censured. In short, we are creating a generation of factual masters and a decided dearth of creative thinkers.

How to enhance your personal creativity

Fortunately, there are ways we can boost creative thinking at any age.

1. Ask the right questions.

On a Zoom meeting, a conference call, monthly department meeting, or any other kind of group discussion, try to avoid asking the following questions: “What is the answer?” or “What is the solution?” By posing those queries, you are severely limiting a multiplicity of responses simply because the group is now focused on finding the answer or the solution… rather than on generating a vast array of potential answers or solutions. More appropriate questions might include, “What are some possibilities here?”; “How many different ways can we look at this?”; or “What are some of the impediments we have to overcome?” In short, ask questions for which there may be a wide variety of responses, rather than questions that limit the number or type of responses.

Convincing research has overwhelmingly demonstrated that we tend to think based on the types of questions we are asked [emphasis added]. (Incidentally, during your educational career , you were asked approximately 400 classroom questions a day, or roughly 72,000 questions during any school year. There’s an abundance of data to show that about 80 percent of those questions were literal or simple recall questions.) Thus, if we ask questions for which there is the expectation of a single “correct” answer, that’s all we’ll get. On the other hand, if we pose questions that naturally generate a multiplicity of responses, then the collective creativity of the group is enhanced considerably.

2. Work backward.

Imagine writing a press release for a brand-new product long before you have even begun to design that product. Well, that’s what the folks at Amazon do. When they conceive a new product, the team sits down and drafts a full and complete press release for that product as their initial step. What are the most compelling features of the new product? What are the most significant values of the new product to consumers? What is their primary audience, and how will they target the new product to that audience? What benefits will customers get from the new product? Enormous time and energy are devoted to crafting a compelling press release long before (months or years) the product is ever ready for the marketplace.

In short, product developers must travel into the future and imagine the day the product is released to the public. Then, they are tasked with moving backward in time to conjure up the steps (in reverse order) that will be necessary to make that press release a reality. Backward thinking offers a new reality. A study in 2004 conclusively proved that when participants were tasked with completing a project from back to front (rather than the more logical front to back), they achieved higher levels of creativity. The researchers noted that participants were forced to utilize abstract, high-level, and conceptual thinking rather than logical, concrete, and time-worn thinking.

Kathryn Haydon. “When You Say You’re Not Creative…” Psychology Today.com (January 4, 2019). ( https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/adventures-in-divergent-thinkin… ).

Ken Robinson. Out of Our Minds: Learning to be Creative . (New York: Wiley, 2011).

Robert J. Sternberg and T.I. Lubert. Defying the Crowd: Cultivating Creativity in a Culture of Conformity . (New York: Free Press, 1995).

Michael A. Roberto. Unlocking Creativity: How to Solve Any Problem and Make the Best Decisions by Shifting Creative Mindsets . (New York, Wiley: 2019).

Anthony D. Fredericks. Ace Your First Year Teaching: How to be an Effective and Successful Teacher . (Indianapolis, IN: Blue River Press, 2017).

Jeff Dyer and Hal Gregersen, “How Does Amazon Stay at Day One?,” Forbes , August 8, 2017.

Anthony D. Fredericks, Ed.D. , is Professor Emeritus of Education at York College of Pennsylvania. His latest book is In Search of the Old Ones: An Odyssey Among Ancient Trees (Smithsonian Books, 2023).

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Creativity in learning enriches wellbeing

Creative thinking was assessed as a competence for the first time in PISA 2022, emphasising a new understanding of its importance in a well-rounded education. The study defined it as the ability to engage productively in the generation, evaluation and improvement of ideas .

The third PISA 2022 report will focus on this creative thinking assessment . It will examine pupils’ capacity to generate original and diverse ideas, and how attitudes towards creative thinking vary in different countries and educational contexts.

Source: PISA Creative Thinking Test by OECD

Creative pedagogical approaches using the arts

Integrating music, visual arts, drama and dance into the general curriculum nurtures pupils’ creative thinking ability. Creative expression through the arts enhances cognitive development and serves as a form of self-expression and stress relief.

The Colors project took a cognitive approach, using tests to identify different kinds of intelligence and align them with creative learning techniques. These included:

• music classes and rhythm workshops for pupils for rhythmic intelligence
• painting workshops and design workshops for visual intelligence
• composition and poetry contests for verbal intelligence.

Connecting pupils to learning using creativity

Some pupils have specific needs because of their personal circumstances, and encouraging their creativity can help them feel connected. Young people who feel disconnected from their school or peers have a higher risk of substance and mental health problems, and early school leaving .

• The To be or not be well? project used drama and theatre to develop methods to support pupil wellbeing and help them feel connected and engaged with their communities and peers.
• The CHIMES project using music and dance as a vehicle for engagement with disadvantaged young people who feel excluded, whether socially, economically or for cultural, personal or mental health reasons, to help these young people to feel engaged in society and learning.
• The Once upon YOUR time project used the study of national tales and myths as an innovative method to work with young people at risk of school dropout and social exclusion to prevent, solve and understand disruptive, antisocial or exclusionary attitudes.
• The ALIISA Project aimed to development inclusive art pedagogy in international cooperation between higher education and general art education.
• The Digital Director project used training in film skills to enable pupils to create short films about social, political or psychological problems that affect them.

Creative learning environments: space for exploration

The opportunity for play, experimentation and exploration creates an atmosphere in which children are secure enough to take risks and make mistakes.

Flexible learning environments, with adaptable seating arrangements, movable furniture and designated creative spaces can support a variety of learning styles and encourage collaboration and invention.

Nature-based activities not only stimulate creativity but also promote physical and emotional wellbeing. Teachers can take learning outside the classroom with outdoor education experiences.

The Opening the door to outdoor project used ideas and topics specific to each participant country to take learning outside.

• Iceland: volcanoes, geysers and glaciers
• Germany: mathematics and the environment
• Netherlands: farm and outdoor arts activities
• Croatia: biology in underground caves and seasides
• Greece: history and democracy

The goal of the Green extended classroom project was to provide space for innovative, creative forms of learning about sustainability and health in an outdoor setting.

Thematic collections of practical and digital learning material were created to help pupils get to know their environment through artistic interpretation and creative sustainability projects, including a cross-school competition to build new class mascots from recycled materials.  

A role for teachers’ own creativity

Teachers can use their own creativity to encourage interdisciplinary learning and connect different subject areas in classroom projects. This promotes creativity by encouraging pupils to create new ideas and understand what they are learning in a larger context.

• Incorporating regular opportunities for reflection and feedback into the learning process encourages pupils to reflect on their creative processes, celebrate their successes and learn from challenges.
• Providing pupils with opportunities for choice and autonomy in their learning fosters a sense of engagement and ownership and empowers them to explore their creativity.

Additional information

• Target audience: Teacher Student Teacher Head Teacher / Principal Teacher Educator Researcher
• Target audience ISCED: Primary education (ISCED 1) Lower secondary education (ISCED 2) Upper secondary education (ISCED 3)

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Key competences.

19 Creative Thinking Skills (and How to Use Them!)

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In a fast-moving world, being able to find new perspectives and create innovation is an increasingly valuable skill . Creative thinkers are often at the forefront of driving change, solving problems, and developing new ideas. Not only that, but those who bring creative thinking to how they work are often happier, more productive, and resilient too!

So you might be asking yourself, how can I develop my creative thinking skills and think more creatively at work?  Whether you want to supercharge your interpersonal skills, advance your career or be happier and more satisfied in the work you do, it pays to learn to think more creatively.

For many people, creative thinking is the key that unlocks solutions, promotes diverse thinking, and leads to better relationships and job satisfaction. So how can you get started with creative thinking?  As passionate believers in the value of creative thinking, we’re here to help and truly think unleashing your creativity can be key to your personal development!

In this post we’ll define what creative thinking is, highlight the benefits, explore 19 key creative thinking skills and give you some examples of how to apply them in the workplace . Let’s dig in!

What is creative thinking?

Why is creative thinking important, what are the benefits of creative thinking.

• What are creative thinking skills?  
• Examples of creative thinking skills (and how to use them)
• How to use creative thinking skills at work?

How to improve your creative thinking skills? 

Creative thinking is the ability to approach a problem or challenge from a new perspective, alternative angle, or with an atypical mindset. This might mean thinking outside of the box, taking techniques from one discipline and applying them to another, or simply creating space for new ideas and alternative solutions to present themselves through dialogue, experimentation, or reflection.

Bear in mind that the number of different creative approaches is as vast as the number of creative thinkers – if an approach helps you see things differently and approaching a challenge creatively, follow that impulse.

While there are some proven methods and guidelines that can help you be a better creative thinker, remember that everyone can be creative and finding what works for you is what is important, not the terminology or specific framework.

One misapprehension about creative thinking is that you have to be skilled at more traditional creative skills like drawing or writing. This isn’t true. What’s important is that you are open to exploring alternative solutions while employing fresh techniques and creative approaches to what you’re working on. 

You don’t need to be a great artist or even work in a traditionally creative field – we believe everyone is capable of creative thinking and that it enriches your personal and professional lives when you learn to be more creative.

Another misconception about creative thinking is that it applies only to the ideation or technically creative parts of the process. All aspects of our lives and interactions with people and challenges can benefit from creative thinking – from the ability to see things differently.

At work, thinking creatively might mean finding better ways to communicate, improve your working practices, or developing and implementing fresh solutions too.

Creative thinking is important because it drives new ideas, encourages learning, and creates a safe space for experimentation and risk-taking.

As organizations and people grow, they often develop tried and tested ways of operating. While it’s important to have solid working practices and processes, unswerving dedication to the norm can lead to stagnation and a lack of innovation and growth. 

Creative thinking is important because it drives new ideas, encourages learning and creates a safe space for experimentation and risk-taking. Simply put, creativity and creative thinking are part of what helps businesses and individuals succeed and grow .

Whether your team or business thinks of itself as a creative one, you can’t afford to miss out on the benefits of creative thinking if you want to grow , deliver change, and help your team bring their best selves to work. 

Using creative thinking skills at work creates b enefits not only in the ways we solve problems but also in how we approach everything from communication to self-fulfillment, task management, and growth . Bringing a culture of creative thinking into a workshop or group is often the job of a talented facilitator but whatever your role, there are benefits to thinking more creatively. Let’s explore some of the benefits of thinking creatively at work and in your everyday life!

Build empathy

• Bust assumptions  
• Become a better problem solver  

Find ways to move quickly and effectively

• Increase happiness

Discover new talents and promote learning

• Boost resilience and deal with adversity

Boost your CV and employability 

Empathy and creative thinking go hand-in-hand. By practicing creative thinking skills and regularly looking for new ideas and points of view, you can actively become better at understanding your colleagues, customers, and even your family and friends. One of the major barriers to having productive and meaningful relationships is an unwillingness to see things from a perspective other than your own or failing to understand how another person is feeling. 

By developing this skill, you can engage more meaningfully and honestly with people, ideas, and perspectives in all aspects of life. What’s more, because of the benefits that creative thinking can bring, you’ll actively want to see things from new perspectives and be more empathic : something that’s fundamental to creating real change.

Bust assumptions 

Assumptions can be harmful in both our personal and professional lives. Whether it’s making assumptions about why someone is behaving the way they are in a workshop or what features will make your customers happiest, holding onto incorrect or inadequately formed assumptions can be problematic . It can create difficulty and tension in relationships and what’s more, it can lead to the development or introduction of solutions that are simply unfit for purpose.

Using creative thinking skills to challenge assumptions, build clarity, and see things from new perspectives can be transformative. If an assumption someone else makes feels incorrect, think about why and try to find out more. If someone challenges an assumption you hold, be open and listen.

Become a better problem solver

An example of not being a creative thinker is sticking to a tried and tested approach and sticking to the norm in every situation without considering whether trying something new might not lead to better results.

When looking to solve a problem or create innovative solutions, going outside of what you know and being open to new ideas is not only exciting, but it can create more impactful solutions too. You might even try using problem-solving techniques alongside some of the creative thinking skills below to find the absolute best solutions!

Some processes and working practices can be slow, especially in large organizations with many moving parts – but do they all have to be? Thinking creatively can help you find lean, actionable solutions that you can put into practice quickly and test ahead of bigger changes .

Experimentation and a willingness to take risks are vital to growth and change, and creative thinking helps create a climate conducive to finding and trying quick, effective solutions. 

Increase happiness and satisfaction

Finding fresh, appropriate solutions to problems can be incredibly satisfying and is a fast-track to finding happiness both in and out of work. Bringing your whole self to a situation and being enabled to think outside of the box is a great way to feel valued and engaged with what you are doing.

Feeling frustrated with how a situation or process at work is going? Try developing and employing your creative thinking skills alongside your colleagues to find a better, happier way to collaborate! Feel unfulfilled or that not all of your skills and interests are being utilized? Consider how you might creatively deploy the skills or talents that make you happy and scratch that itch.

As children, we are encouraged to see things differently and try new things as part of our learning and growing process. There’s no reason we shouldn’t do this as adults too! Trying new things and learning to think creatively can help you find new skills, talents, and things you didn’t even know you were good at.

Staying curious and following what interests you with an open mind is a prime example of what a small change in thinking can achieve. Remember that creative thinking is a gateway to learning and by actively developing your creative toolset, you can grow and discover more in all walks of life – a surefire path to personal development.

Get better at dealing with adversity

It’s easy to get frustrated when problems seem to come thick and fast and existing solutions or methods don’t work. Adversity is something all of us will face at some point in our personal and professional lives but there are ways you can become more able to handle problems when they arise .

A strong suite of creative thinking skills is an important aspect of how we can build resilience and be more flexible when adapting or creating change. By exploring alternative ways of thinking, you’ll be better prepared to face adversity more openly and find alternative ways to resolve challenges in whatever context they emerge.

Creative thinkers are valuable employees at organizations of any size. Whether it’s championing innovation, creating change in policy, or finding better ways to collaborate, people who can effectively solve problems and leverage their creative thinking skills are better positioned for success at work.

Consider how you might plug your skills gap and boost your CV by developing your creative skillset and you won’t just be more successful – you’ll be happier and more engaged at work too! 

Whatever your background or role, you are capable of thinking creatively and bringing creativity into your life.

What are creative thinking skills? 

Creative thinking skills are the methods or approaches you might use when trying to solve a problem differently and explore a fresh perspective. While some of these skills might come naturally to you, others might need a more considered, purposeful approach.

For example, you might be a natural visual thinker who is great at presenting and interpreting visual information but you might not be so good at freely experimenting or creating space for reflection. In this case, you might try some brainstorming exercises to loosen up your experimentation muscles or create scheduled time for reflection in your working routine.

While creative professions like artists, writers, or designers may see more obvious uses for creative thinking skills, all professions can benefit from developing and deploying creative thinking . If you find yourself having difficulty at work or in need of inspiration or motivation, finding space to build on your creative skillset is a way to not only move forward but have fun while doing so.

If you think you’re not creative or have no creative thinking skills, we’re here to tell you that whatever your background or role, you are capable of thinking creatively and bringing creativity into your life : you might just need a little push or to reframe how you think about creativity!

Save time planning your next creative workshop

Examples of creative thinking skills (and how to use them) 

Creative thinking skills come in all shapes and sizes, ranging from things like abstract thinking and storytelling to finding ways to radically plan projects or recognize organizational patterns .

In this section, we’ll explore each of the example creative skills below and talk about how you might use them in your personal and professional practice. We’ll also point out some things to watch out for where appropriate so you can make the most out of your new creative skills and avoid potential setbacks.

We’ll also include a method from the SessionLab library that will help you practice and explore each skill, whether alone or with others .

Feel free to read and explore the creative thinking skill which feels most interesting or applicable to you and come back and experiment with others in the future!  

Some example creative thinking skills include:

Experimentation

Open-mindedness, lateral thinking.

• Pattern recognition   

Deep and active listening

Challenging norms, lean organization, simplification, radical planning.

• Collaborative thinking

Data collection

• Interpretation and analysis

Interdisciplinary thinking

Frameworks and rulesets, micro and macro thinking, visual thinking, abstract thinking, storytelling.

Note that this list is not exhaustive, and there are many more ways of thinking creatively – try to see these creative skills as a jumping-off point for seeing things differently and exploring creative thinking at work . 

Let’s get started!

A core creative skill is the ability to experiment and try new things, whether that’s in your personal practice, in a closed environment, or even in the field. It can be easy to fall short of implementing new ideas or following through with creative projects because critical judgment or overthinking gets in the way . A good experimenter is a self-starter who makes informed decisions to kickstart projects and test hypotheses. 

Think of a painter who throws paint at a canvas and introduces new materials without overthinking or being self-critical. While not everything they try will be perfect, that’s the point – not every experiment needs to be successful in order to teach you something useful. By experimenting, you can try things that might prove useful or will lead you towards new solutions and better ideas. Remember that the act of experimentation is generative and often fun so be sure to give it a try!

One thing to watch out for is being sure to effectively capture the results of your experiments and to continue developing and iterating on the results. Experimentation is a great place to start, but remember that it is part of a larger process. Without effective documentation, you might not trace what delivered the best results and be unable to reproduce the outcomes. Experimentation is a great example of why creative freedom should be paired with a strong process in order to be at its best. 

Four-Step Sketch   #design sprint   #innovation   #idea generation   #remote-friendly   The four-step sketch is an exercise that helps people to create well-formed concepts through a structured process that includes: Review key information Start design work on paper,  Consider multiple variations , Create a detailed solution . This exercise is preceded by a set of other activities allowing the group to clarify the challenge they want to solve. See how the Four Step Sketch exercise fits into a Design Sprint

Four-Step Sketch is a great method for promoting experimentation. By following a process that enables quick brainstorming before development, you can help build an experimental mindset that also generates results.

Open-mindedness is a critical element of creativity and one of the best creative thinking skills you can try to build if you’re new to the practice. Being open-minded means being receptive to new ideas, different ways of thinking, and perspectives which are not your own. It means not closing down conversations or ideas prematurely and trying to actively explore what is presented to you.

Imagine that a colleague comes up with an idea that is so far out of the status quo it seems off-the-wall and bizarre. Being open-minded means actively engaging with what is presented and to refrain from forming judgments before first understanding where your colleague is coming from .

Your colleagues’ initial idea might not be perfect, but being open-minded and truly attempting to understand their perspective means you can create dialogue, foster creativity, and move forward as a team. 

Being open-minded doesn’t mean accepting every new idea and agreeing wholesale with every different opinion. While you should always try to be open and receptive to new ideas and other perspectives, you should also critically appraise and engage with them as part of a larger creative process. Don’t be so open-minded you have no strong opinions of your own!

Heard, Seen, Respected (HSR)   #issue analysis   #empathy   #communication   #liberating structures   #remote-friendly   You can foster the empathetic capacity of participants to “walk in the shoes” of others. Many situations do not have immediate answers or clear resolutions. Recognizing these situations and responding with empathy can improve the “cultural climate” and build trust among group members. HSR helps individuals learn to respond in ways that do not overpromise or overcontrol. It helps members of a group notice unwanted patterns and work together on shifting to more productive interactions. Participants experience the practice of more compassion and the benefits it engenders.

Open-mindedness is particularly useful when it comes to meaningfully communicating with others. Whether its developing the ability to walk in the shoes of someone else or building empathy and listening skills, Heard, Seen, Respected is a great method to try when learning to be more open-minded.

Lateral thinking is a prime example of how we can creatively solve real-world problems in a measurable and easy-to-understand manner. Deploying lateral thinking means using reasoning or non-traditional logic to find an indirect or out-of-the-box approach to solving a problem. 

A simple example might be a challenge like: we need to increase revenue. Traditional thinking might mean considering hiring new salespeople to try and get more direct sales. A lateral approach might mean engaging more with current customers to reduce churn, working with external partners to get new leads, working to get sponsorship, piloting an affiliate scheme or any number of new ways to solve the existing problem.

Broadly speaking, lateral thinking often means stepping back and considering solutions or approaches outside of the immediately obvious.

One potential danger with lateral thinking is spending time to create new solutions to problems that don’t need them. Not every problem needs to be solved laterally and the best solution might actually be the most straightforward. Be sure to tap into existing knowledge and appraise a problem before trying something radical to avoid wasted time or frustration!  

The Creativity Dice   #creativity   #problem solving   #thiagi   #issue analysis   Too much linear thinking is hazardous to creative problem solving. To be creative, you should approach the problem (or the opportunity) from different points of view. You should leave a thought hanging in mid-air and move to another. This skipping around prevents premature closure and lets your brain incubate one line of thought while you consciously pursue another.

Developing your lateral thinking skills comes more naturally to some than others. The Creativity Dice is a great method for getting out of linear thinking habits and moving into different ways of thinking.

Pattern recognition 

Pattern recognition is the ability to recognise existing or emerging patterns and make connections based on the patterns you have discerned . While pattern recognition goes back to our prehistoric roots, being able to spot patterns outside of the ordinary and consider what may not be immediately obvious is a vital creative thinking skill for today. 

Consider how meetings between some members of a team might often end in conflict. While it might first seem that these two people just can’t get along, it might actually be that certain emotional triggers are being tripped or the format of the conversation isn’t working. Looking beyond your initial impressions and from a new perspective might let you find a repeating pattern that isn’t immediately obvious.

When trying to spot patterns, try to be mindful of existing biases so you avoid bending what is happening to fit a pattern you might be expecting. Be sure to interpret all data fairly and honestly, even if you believe a pattern is already forming. 

Affinity Map   #idea generation   #gamestorming   Most of us are familiar with brainstorming—a method by which a group generates as many ideas around a topic as possible in a limited amount of time. Brainstorming works to get a high quantity of information on the table. But it begs the follow-up question of how to gather meaning from all the data. Using a simple Affinity Diagram technique can help us discover embedded patterns (and sometimes break old patterns) of thinking by sorting and clustering language-based information into relationships. It can also give us a sense of where most people’s thinking is focused

Pattern recognition is a skill that benefits from thoughtful practice. Try starting with a deliberate pattern-finding process like Affinity Map to build the ability to see patterns where they might not first be obvious.

While it might not seem like it at first, being a good listener is a creative thinking skill. It asks that a person not only try to understand what is being said but also to engage with the why and how of the conversation in order to reframe prior thinking and see things from a new perspective.

Deep listening or active listening is not only hearing the words that someone is saying but actively seeking to interpret their intent, understand their position, and create a positive space for further conversation. Not only does this create a deeper conversation for both parties, but this act of engagement and understanding leads to more creative and dynamic results too. 

Think of a workplace grievance that one person might have against another. Without actively listening and trying to understand the core issues from the perspective of everyone involved, you might not only fail to solve the issue but actually make staff feel less heard and valued too.

By employing this creative thinking skill in such a conversation you can see things more clearly and find a way to creatively satisfy the needs of everyone involved. 

Active Listening   #hyperisland   #skills   #active listening   #remote-friendly   This activity supports participants to reflect on a question and generate their own solutions using simple principles of active listening and peer coaching. It’s an excellent introduction to active listening but can also be used with groups that are already familiar with it. Participants work in groups of three and take turns being: “the subject”, the listener, and the observer.

Trying to be more present in conversations is a great place to begin building your deep listening and active listening skills . Want to supercharge the process as a group? Try a role-play activity like Active Listening to more thoughtfully see and reflect on how important this skill can be.

Not all established working practices are the best way of doing things. People who practice this creative thinking skill are likely to question the status quo in search of something new which can deliver meaningful change. While any challenge to the established order needs to be conducted respectfully and thoughtfully, thinking of how to go beyond the norm is how innovation occurs and where creative thinkers excel.

When trying to practice this skill, be prepared to question existing methods and frameworks and ask if there might be a better way outside of the limits of the current system. 

As with lateral thinking, it’s important to recognize that not everything is a problem that needs to be solved and so you may need to be selective in which norms should be challenged – otherwise, you may never make it out of the front door!

Additionally, challenging the established order often means questioning the work someone else has already done. While this is a necessary part of growth, it should always be done constructively and respectfully.  

W³ – What, So What, Now What?   #issue analysis   #innovation   #liberating structures   You can help groups reflect on a shared experience in a way that builds understanding and spurs coordinated action while avoiding unproductive conflict. It is possible for every voice to be heard while simultaneously sifting for insights and shaping new direction. Progressing in stages makes this practical—from collecting facts about What Happened to making sense of these facts with So What and finally to what actions logically follow with Now What . The shared progression eliminates most of the misunderstandings that otherwise fuel disagreements about what to do. Voila!

Challenging norms without a considered approach can be ineffective and potentially frustrating. Taking the time to build shared understanding and push in the same direction with What, So What, Now What? is a great way to explore how your existing process is or isn’t working and challenge norms productively.

Creative thinking doesn’t mean being disorganized or chaotic just because you have an abundance of ideas. In order to facilitate creative thinking, it’s important to stay organized and approach the process with the right framework, mindset, and space. As a creative thinking skill, lean organization means considering what you absolutely need to do in order to make things happen, versus what you don’t.

Think of how a large, multi-discipline team might go about organizing themselves for a big project. While it’s vital everyone is aligned and kept up to date, a traditional system of scheduled meetings might not be the most productive. Lean organization means considering the needs of the team, the project and thinking creatively about what you need to stay organized, and keeping unnecessary admin to a minimum.

Thinking creatively about organization is something all leaders should practice but any project can benefit from thinking through the process by which it will be accomplished. 

MoSCoW   #define intentions   #create   #design   #action   #remote-friendly   MoSCoW is a method that allows the team to prioritize the different features that they will work on. Features are then categorized into “Must have”, “Should have”, “Could have”, or “Would like but won‘t get”. To be used at the beginning of a timeslot (for example during Sprint planning) and when planning is needed.

Lean organization often means being honest and realistic about what is absolutely necessary versus nice to have. MoSCoW is an effective agile framework for planning work and also reframing your approach to organizing time, tasks and more!

Simplifying, presenting or decoding any information is a vital skill when working with others. In a creative thinking context, simplification is the act of seeing what is important about a task or piece of data and stripping away the extraneous parts to see things more clearly.

Some problems can feel unassailable because of their complexity or scale – simplification allows you to reconsider a problem in simple terms and reframe it in a way that means you can approach it productively. 

An example of using this creative thinking skill at work might be when presenting the results of a project to the rest of your organization. People working on other teams and in different disciplines could become disengaged if exposed to too many complex moving parts or it might simply be a waste of time to discuss every detail.

By simplifying a project into more succinct terms, you not only can help your group connect with the material swiftly but also boil a project down to its most important elements . This is a great way to creatively re-energize a project and identify where you can make an impact immediately. 

6 Words   #ufmcs   #red teaming   This tool is designed to help critical thinkers focus on a core idea by writing a short phrase summarizing their thoughts into a set number of words that are clear, concise, and accurate. This idea is based on a complete short story written by Ernest Hemingway: “For sale, baby shoes – never worn.” Six Words forces people to synthesize their ideas in a succinct and meaningful way, cutting away fluff and distilling the idea to its bare essence.

One way of practicing simplification is by summarising or condensing thoughts, ideas of stories into a more concise, compressed form . 6 Words is a method for cutting away extraneous material from ideas that engages creative thinking and reframing approachably – great for groups!

Any major project requires some measure of planning in order to succeed, especially when working with others. But are there times where overplanning or traditional working processes feel too slow or frustrating for the project at hand? This is where these creative thinking skills come in handy! Radical planning is a way of approaching project planning from an alternative angle in order to generate fast, effective results.  

When taking this planning approach, you will often shuffle the order of the normal planning process in order to create alternative outcomes and cut out elements you may not need. For example, with the backcasting workshop activity, the approach is to think of desired outcomes up to twenty years in the future and work backward to figure out how we can make small steps today.

You might also try planning with a mindset of what you and your team can each achieve immediately and in a more experimental fashion with an activity like 15% solutions . 

By approaching planning with a creative thinking mindset, you can surface ideas and plans which may not have come up with a more traditional planning process. Another great benefit is to question the normal manner in which your team or organisation approaches planning and can help your team find a method that works best for you!

Backcasting   #define intentions   #create   #design   #action   Backcasting is a method for planning the actions necessary to reach desired future goals. This method is often applied in a workshop format with stakeholders participating. To be used when a future goal (even if it is vague) has been identified.

Collaborative thinking 

Effective collaboration requires us to bring many different skills together, but consciously considering how to be a more effective collaborator is worth mentioning separately. When a creative thinker approaches collaboration, they will try to think of how to use alternative approaches to make the collaborative process more effective while also helping everyone on the team contribute and be heard.

An example is when it comes to getting work done in meetings – if the current process isn’t enabling everyone to collaborate effectively, you might employ creative thinking to try finding an alternative format, consider working asynchronously, or timeboxing parts of your agenda.

The best collaborators also find ways to champion the work of others and create a safe space for everyone to contribute – it might not be enough to assume collaboration will be accomplished when you get people in a room.

Employing this creative thinking skill can make all the difference when it comes to job satisfaction, interpersonal relationships and group outcomes too! Try approaching your collaborative projects more mindfully and see how it changes things for you!

Marshmallow challenge with debriefing   #teamwork   #team   #leadership   #collaboration   In eighteen minutes, teams must build the tallest free-standing structure out of 20 sticks of spaghetti, one yard of tape, one yard of string, and one marshmallow. The marshmallow needs to be on top. The Marshmallow Challenge was developed by Tom Wujec, who has done the activity with hundreds of groups around the world. Visit the Marshmallow Challenge website for more information. This version has an extra debriefing question added with sample questions focusing on roles within the team.

Working together on a task as a team is an effective way of kickstarting collaborative thinking, especially if you approach the task mindfully . The Marshamllow Challenge with debriefing is a proven method for engaging teamwork and by adding reflection time afterward, your group can share and build on what they learned.

Collecting data might seem like a solely analytical skill, but it is another area where creative thinking can lead to productive, unexpected and transformative results. Approaching the data collection process creatively might mean trying new techniques or sources, or simply reconsidering the how and why of your data collection processes.  

Imagine you are running a survey to measure customer happiness. You might try asking traditional survey questions, but find that your response rate is low and furthermore, your approach might be invasive and actively decrease happiness too!

If you were to approach this problem creatively, you might find that using a simplified form, asking for feedback at a different point in the customer journey, or utilizing an alternative measurement scheme delivers the data you are looking for. In many cases, thinking about the questions you are asking from a new point of view is what unlocks a better data collection process.

The key to this creative thinking skill is to try looking at the data collection process from a new, preferably customer-centric perspective while also considering why and how you are collecting data. You will likely find that by asking for input from your customers more creatively, you create space for more creative responses too!

3 Question Mingle   #hyperisland   #team   #get-to-know   An activity to support a group to get to know each other through a set of questions that they create themselves. The activity gets participants moving around and meeting each other one-on-one. It’s useful in the early stages of team development and/or for groups to reconnect with each other after a period of time apart.

3 Question Mingle is a get to know you activity that does double duty in demonstrating the power of approaching data collection creatively. By creating their own questions, a group can really think about what they want to know, how they ask questions, and how the results differ. Be sure to give it a try!

Interpretation and analysis

Interpretation skills can be varied though in a creative thinking context it means being able to successfully analyze an idea, solution, dataset, or conversation and draw effective conclusions. Great interpreters are people with a desire to listen, understand, and dig deeper in order to make their interpretation fully realised.

One of the ways creative thinking can improve interpretation is in helping us challenge assumptions or initial readings of data in order to consider other possible interpretations and perspectives.

Say your product is having a problem with losing lots of new customers shortly after signing up. You do a survey and people say that they leave because the product isn’t useful to them. Your initial interpretation of that data might be that you’re not the right fit for these customers or that the product needs new features.

If you were to apply creative thinking to the interpretation of this data, you might conduct further research and see that the product is fine, but people didn’t find the right features for them and that your onboarding process needs to be improved.

The key here is interpreting the data from various perspectives and then correlating that with other sources to form an accurate and representative interpretation, rather than going with your initial assumption . By following this process, you might also find that the way you are collecting data is flawed (perhaps not asking the right questions) or that more research and data collection is needed.

So long as you are sure to have data points and analysis to back up your findings, it pays to explore alternative interpretations so you can avoid bias and find the most accurate takeaways . 

Fishbone diagram   #frame insights   #create   #design   #issue analysis   Fishbone diagrams show the causes of a specific event.

Effective interpretation and analysis isn’t possible without a thorough exploration of the problem or topic at hand. Fishbone Diagram is a simple method for not only surfacing insights but framing them in a way that allows for proper and multi-perspective analysis.

Einstein is quoted as saying, “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” In this mold, sometimes the best ideas and solutions come from fields and disciplines outside of our own. By considering how someone with a different skillset to your own would solve a problem or deploy solutions, you can often find ideas and techniques you may never have considered. 

Consider being tasked with improving employee happiness. A social media manager with a background in illustration and events management would likely try a very different approach to a sales manager who is used to a culture of incentives and bonuses. If you were trying to develop a new product, think of how a developer would approach deciding on key features versus an academic or a customer success manager? 

The important thing here is to try and use the perspective, skill set , and approach of another field or discipline to first consider and then solve a problem more fully . Where possible, try and include people from other disciplines in the process and try to avoid making assumptions.

As with all creative thinking skills, being open-minded and sourcing the expertise and opinions of others where necessary is vital when creating true innovation.

Mash-Up Innovation   #hyperisland   #innovation   #idea generation   Mash-ups is a collaborative idea generation method in which participants come up with innovative concepts by combining different elements together. In a first step, participants brainstorm around different areas, such as technologies, human needs, and existing services. In a second step, they rapidly combine elements from those areas to create new, fun and innovative concepts. Mash-ups demonstrates how fast and easy it can be to come up with innovative ideas.

Interdisciplinary thinking isn’t just for radical academics. By combining ideas from disparate fields in a fast, fun manner, Mash-Up Innovation is great for building creative thinking skills and generating results in one fell swoop!

All creative thinking skills are about reframing things in a new way of finding alternative approaches. This can often mean abandoning an existing framework and thinking outside of the box. That said , another way of applying creative thinking is by bringing rulesets, constraints, or frameworks to your approach in order to trigger deeper creative work and tap into a problem-solving mindset . 

Consider a simple task like trying to generate more customers. With free reign, there are innumerable ways to accomplish this. But what happens if you create a rule like, we cannot spend any money, or, these must be driven by social media alone. In order to accomplish your goal under these conditions, you must think more creatively and deeply, deploying more concentrated problem-solving skills than if you could try any approach you wanted. 

Alternatively, you might approach a problem with a framework that forces you to think under specific circumstances or with a rigid set of steps. Six thinking hats is a great workshop activity that asks participants to frame and reframe a problem from six different angles. While it might first seem counterintuitive, the use of rules or frameworks can create fertile ground for creative thinking and lead to more realized solutions!

The Six Thinking Hats   #creative thinking   #meeting facilitation   #problem solving   #issue resolution   #idea generation   #conflict resolution   The Six Thinking Hats are used by individuals and groups to separate out conflicting styles of thinking. They enable and encourage a group of people to think constructively together in exploring and implementing change, rather than using argument to fight over who is right and who is wrong.

Not all problems are created equal. Depending on how much it directly affects you, you might see a given problem as being more or less important than your colleagues, leading to a different response and approach to solving the problem. This creative thinking skill is all about being able to switch between seeing the bigger picture while also considering how something might manifest on a smaller scale.

Think of how frustrating it can be when an executive team makes sweeping changes that affect frontline staff in a way they might not have anticipated. Micro and macro thinking means seeing both problems and potential solutions from multiple perspectives and adjusting accordingly. 

Another key aspect of applying this approach is knowing the limits of your own knowledge and involving stakeholders from all levels of an organization to inform your ideation and problem-solving process.

If you’ve never worked in support and don’t regularly talk to your support team, you might not understand how a change to helpdesk software could impact your team and your clients – remember that a big part of any change in perspective is doing the research and talking to who will be affected ! 

Stakeholder Round Robin Brainstorm   #idea generation   #brainstorming   #perspectives   #remote-friendly   #online   A divergent process to generate ideas and understanding from different perspectives.

Learning to practice micro and macro thinking often starts with first listening to and understanding the needs and perspectives of others . Especially those who have varied positions in relation to the problem, solutions, or organization you are working with. Stakeholder Round Robin Brainstorm is an effective method of surfacing insights and perspectives quickly and productively.

Of all the creative thinking skills on this list, visual thinking might be one you are most familiar with. Visual thinking is a method of processing, learning, and presenting information and concepts with visual assets such as images.

Visual thinking is often associated with creative thinking because of the consumption and creation of images at its heart. Don’t let this make you think you have to be able to draw in order to be a visual thinker.

Applying this creative thinking skill means being able to interpret visual information, present concepts in an often simple visual manner, and communicate in a way that is more universally understood.  Drawing stick people is actively encouraged!

Visual approaches to problem-solving can help foster shared understanding and help people be more succinct or creative in their ideas. Remember: if an idea is too complex to be put into pictures, perhaps it needs further refinement .

Imagie-ination   #idea generation   #gamestorming   Images have the ability to spark insights and to create new associations and possible connections. That is why pictures help generate new ideas, which is exactly the point of this exercise.

While you might be able to jump straight into direct applications of visual thinking, it can help to try an exercise where you and a group explore using images simply and engagingly. Imagie-ination helps unlock the power of visual thinking as a team while also helping generate ideas too!

Abstraction or abstract thinking is the art of taking things out of their normal context and presenting them in a radical new light . While most creative thinking skills utilise abstraction in some form, it’s worth noting that actively trying to take an idea from one context and place it in another is a creative approach all on its own.

Think of Pablo Picasso’s cubist portraits – by taking something as common as a human face and bringing abstraction to his process, he created something radically different and innovative. You can create a similar effect by recontextualizing ideas, concepts, and problems and by looking at them from different, perhaps even conflicting points of view.

Abstract thinking is often built on engaging with absurdities, paradoxes, and unexpected connections . As such, it can often be fun, wild and surprising, and is a great way to generate creative ideas even in those who might be resistant to other forms of creative thinking. Lean into the weird!

Forced Analogy   #divergent thinking   #zoom   #virtual   #remote-friendly   People compare something (e.g. themselves, their company, their team) to an object.  

Forced Analogy is a quick, fun activity you can use to promote abstract thinking. Comparing one thing to another seemingly unrelated thing asks for a creative approach to context and metaphor and can really unlock a groups divergent thinking process.

Telling stories or narrativizing a problem can help us not only see things differently but understand where we share common ground with others. Everybody tells stories – whether that’s explaining our employment history, telling colleagues about what happened at the weekend, or when creating user personas and journeys. 

Leverage this inclination to help people not only realize they are creative thinkers by nature but to help them share something of themselves too!

As a creative thinking skill, storytelling is about applying our natural proclivity for stories into new situations or thinking about how to reappraise or present material narratively . Think of the basic storytelling concept like the idea that all stories have a beginning, middle, and end – how might we bring this thinking to a tough challenge, a new product, or when solving a customer complaint?

You might even use storytelling tropes like the hero’s journey when exploring ideas or company conflicts. Whichever way you go, remember that stories are a universal element of culture and you have a rich lineage to dip into if you need a new perspective. 

Telling Our Stories   #hyperisland   #team   #teambuilding   To work effectively together team members need to build relations, show trust, and be open with each other. This method supports those things through a process of structured storytelling. Team members answer questions related to their childhood, young adulthood, and now; then weave them into a story to share with the rest of their team.

Telling Stories in a collaborative space is one of the best ways you can approach creative thinking through narrative . By doing this activity as a team, you can help a group see the benefit of applying storytelling approaches outside of more traditional forms.

How many times have you had a tough problem that you can’t seem to solve so you get frustrated and leave your desk. Then, when you’re on a walk, standing in the supermarket, or falling asleep, a solution seems to arrive out of thin air? Often, you’ll find that creating space to reflect on a problem is an effective way to find a way forward.

The trick with making reflective space work as a larger part of your working practice is knowing when to take time to reflect, building space into your regular schedule, and finding techniques that allow things to surface effectively.

This might mean going for a walk with the intention to be present in noticing the world around you and gaining insights that can help your situation. It might also mean remembering to take time to rest or simply read and give your brain something good to chew on.

I notice, I wonder   #design   #observation   #empathy   #issue analysis   Learn through careful observation. Observation and intuition are critical design tools. This exercise helps you leverage both. Find clues about the context you’re designing for that may be hidden in plain sight.

In a creative thinking context, reflection often means giving an idea time to unfurl and to resist the temptation to force it – by creating space to observe and reflect with I notice, I wonder you might see new ways of thinking emerge naturally.

How to use creative thinking skills at work? 

At SessionLab, we’ve found many of the above creative thinking skills helpful when finding better ways to collaborate , handle workplace challenges or generate new ideas . Here are just a few small examples of things we’ve done that have benefited from thinking creatively as a team.

Using creative thinking to facilitate a site redesign

Using creative thinking to improve team communication, using creative thinking to improve collaboration.

Remember that creative thinking needn’t be explosive or radical to be useful – a simple shift in mindset or perspective can be all you need to create meaningful and impactful change.

When we began working on a site-wide redesign, we had to deploy a large number of creative thinking skills to make the process smooth and effective.

When first determining how to approach the project and scope the work, we reviewed how we had worked together on large projects in the past. While we saw there was room to improve, finding the best way to proceed and make the changes we needed was no easy task.

Challenging the entire process from start to finish with a creative thinking mindset and trying to stay open to alternative methods where possible was what unlocked the process for us. By reconsidering how we were running meetings, sharing feedback, and collaborating, we were able to identify where we were going wrong and then try alternative approaches more freely.

When it came to implementing solutions, we were also sure to  stay open to experimentation while challenging our core assumptions of what would work and wouldn’t. This really helped us refine the working process and tailor it to our particular team and goals.

Another example came with finding a new approach when work stalled on a specific page. For our features page, we began by following the standard approach we had developed – writing the copy and structuring the page first before then following with illustrations and images.

In this case, our existing approach got us to an impasse : it felt difficult for our designer to be creative and find the best way to translate ideas into images if the copy had already been defined and the structure felt too rigid. What we decided to do was to reverse the workflow completely and allow the designer to create design elements before we wrote the copy and implemented too rigid a structure.  

Throughout the project, creative thinking allowed us to challenge whether the existing way we did something was the right one and gave us scope to experiment and be open when finding solutions. Not only did this help us solve the immediate problems as they arose but they helped us come up with a great new design too! 

Creative thinking can come in extremely handy when it comes to communicating. If one form of communication or working process isn’t working, approaching the discussion with a creative thinking mindset can help resolve the immediate issue and create lasting change in how we converse and work together too. 

Like many virtual teams, we faced the challenge of some meetings feeling unproductive . The issues ranged from overrunning, crosstalk, not everyone feeling heard or able to contribute, or getting lost in ancillary discussions that were not productive or necessary. In an online setting, it can be hard to keep everyone on track and for things to run smoothly without accidentally talking over one another or causing frustration. 

When it came to crosstalk, we wanted to avoid the frustration of interruption and disruption but also wanted to ensure people did not feel like they couldn’t contribute . Using the finger rules technique in a remote setting allowed people to easily show when they wanted to speak and what they wanted to discuss without disrupting the flow of the meeting.

We also found that the reason some daily meetings felt unproductive was because the meetings were for the purpose of daily updates and there didn’t always feel like there was a lot to say, thus leading to frustration or unproductive time being spent in these meetings.

In this example, we moved to a weekly format while also ensuring that we continue daily check-ins on Slack. This approach meant that we cut down on unnecessary meetings while still ensuring everyone’s needs were met .

This method is an example of creatively approaching a communication problem by thinking outside of the box and being prepared to challenge core assumptions . While we all wanted to stay informed, it really helped to reconsider the methods for staying informed and whether our current approach was the best way to achieve what we needed. It was also useful to reassess how we approached meeting agendas and goal-setting – follow the link for more on that if you’re having difficulty with unproductive meetings!

Remember that creative thinking needn’t be explosive or radical to be useful – a simple shift in mindset or perspective can be all you need to create meaningful and impactful change .

Remember that looking to others and being inspired by how they did things can be as transformative as trying to reinvent the wheel!

A final example is how we approached collaborating on creating the new design. While all projects at SessionLab feature collaboration between multiple parties, in this case we wanted to create space for everyone on the team to contribute.

We found that when trying to collectively brainstorm in a live, remote session, it became difficult for everyone to contribute and reflect on what was being shared by other members of the team effectively .

Some people had been able to prepare less than others, other people were less aware of all the circumstances of the project, or others were less able to switch gears during their working day. This led to some contributions being missed, a messier working process, and a feeling of being rushed – all of which lead to less effective outcomes than we might have hoped for.

In this case, we thought of how asynchronous work , reflection time, and some small process changes might help solve the problems we were running into. We wanted to be able to respond to what was being shared more effectively while also creating space for everyone to contribute in a way that was most productive for them.

Starting the brainstorming session in personal MURAL boards asynchronously and on our own time meant everyone was able to ideate at the time that was best for them and without any distractions . By then encouraging review and reflection on other people’s boards ahead of the main session, we were able to properly take in ideas and let them develop without feeling hurried.

This approach reduced the amount of time we actively spent working together in a meeting while improving the quality of the work . It helped people engage with the process, reduced potential frustration, and also meant we were more able to respond fully to the suggestions of others. This was a great example of how thinking creatively and learning from others can help create better outcomes and a more streamlined process. 

It’s also worth noting that reflecting on our conversation with Anja Svetina Nabergoj regarding asynchronous learning and finding inspiration there was part of what helped this process along. Remember that looking to others and being inspired by how they did things can be as transformative as trying to reinvent the wheel!

Creative workshops and meetings made easy

Whether you find that creative thinking doesn’t come naturally, if your skills need some attention, or even if you just want to try new ways of working, it can be difficult to know where to begin .

Thinking about the creative thinking skills above and considering which you might be missing or could benefit from purposeful attention is a great place to start, though there are also some concrete ways you can approach the process and improve your creative thinking abilities in a pinch. Let’s see how! 

Be present and aware of how you feel

Create space for new ideas, look to others for inspiration, throw yourself into new things, encourage creative thinking in others.

All skills get better with practice and creative thinking is no exception. Whether it’s active listening, experimentation or any other creative thinking style, it’s okay to not get it right the first time . The very act of being open to new approaches and perspectives is itself a way to improve your creative thinking skill set. However you try to implement creative thinking, know that exploration, iteration, and practice are fundamental parts of the process.

Try starting small and practice your creative thinking skills in your interpersonal relationships and collaborative projects. Take note of how it goes and try building up to larger and larger implementations of your creative thinking approaches. 

A key part of cultivating or improving any new skill is to be fully present and aware when utilizing that skill. Consider how a sculptor needs to be aware of their materials, how they handle the material and place them on the board in order to be truly successful. Being present in the moment is important for any collaborative process, but is an especially vital aspect of creative thinking.

If you find yourself frustrated, excited, engaged, or stuck, make a mental note of how you are feeling and consider how you might do things differently. Staying present and actively engaging with how a situation makes you feel before responding is one of the most effective ways of cultivating and improving your creative thinking – be sure to give it a go! 

As with many aspects of creativity, it’s not always effective to force it. Good ideas and finding new approaches can take time and an important part of the creative thinking process is creating space not only for reflection but to rest and allow things to surface. This might mean building more quiet, mindful time into your routine, reading and finding new inspiration, or simply learning to take a break. 

While this can be difficult to get into the habit of, it does get easier with time. Try blocking out reflective time in your calendar or letting others know that you are taking the time in order to make it stick and avoid interruptions. Reflective space is important and useful, and by treating it as such, you can help ensure it happens and doesn’t get discarded or forgotten about.

One of the biggest barriers to thinking creatively is simply not being open to what is in front of you. Whether it’s rushing to use an existing solution without investigating alternatives, failing to listen or be present when something new is being presented, or sticking with your existing assumptions, a failure to stay open and reserve judgment can kill creative thinking.

Try to stay open and apply creative thinking without pressure or being overly critical in order to improve those skills and let more creative approaches surface in the future. 

One of the best ways to find new perspectives and alternative ways of thinking is by looking to others. Whether it’s finding inspiration from other creative thinkers via conversation, reading and researching new sources, or simply listening and observing, looking outside of yourself is one of the most effective ways you can jolt your creative thinking. 

Try finding sources outside of your normal circles, whatever the medium. It can be very easy to get into creative bubbles that might unwittingly exclude new forms of thinking. By broadening your social, creative and critical circles , you can be exposed to all kinds of potentially inspiring or creatively engaging ways of thinking and doing.

It’s hard to create space and an opportunity for new ways of thinking if you stick to the same routines and activities. You’ll often find that trying new things and exposing yourself to new hobbies, skills and approaches can be massively engaging and exciting too.

An important aspect of creative thinking is applying the learnings from one discipline or approach to another. If a developer were to throw themselves into learning how to dance, they might learn something they can apply to their role as a developer.

An open and honest desire to explore new experiences in and outside of your working life is a vital ingredient in the creative thinking process. Try saying yes to doing new things wherever you can find them – being alive to possibility and engaging in the world is a great way of supercharging your creativity! 

Creativity is even better when shared. Whether it’s crowdsourcing new ideas, iterating together, or helping others build their creative thinking skills, sharing the experience is often a useful and generative process for all involved.

Try bringing a group together to explore thinking creatively together or run a workshop on developing creative thinking skills in the workplace. Not only will it help your participants with their own creative discovery, but it will also help you develop your own creative skills. 

Over to you

As facilitators and advocates of the power of workshops, we’re passionate about how creative thinking can improve many aspects of a group’s personal and working lives. At its heart, creative thinking is an empathic, generative act, and by bringing those concepts to the fore, we believe everyone can see better outcomes when solving problems, generating ideas or communicating with others. 

We hope we’ve given you some great examples of creative thinking at work and how you might discover and nurture your own creative thinking skills . That said, this list is by no means exhaustive and there are many more ways you might try thinking creatively. Think of this post as a jumping-off point for further exploration and creative development!

Do you have any concepts or approaches you’ve used to become a better creative thinker? Did you find any of the creative thinking methods above particularly helpful? We’d love to hear about your experience in the comments below!

Very nice information. Thanks for posting such an informative blog. Creative thinking is an unconventional thinking that looks at an issue from different perspectives. Innovative thinking is a thinking that converts / commercializes a creative idea into practical application.

The Fosbury Flop is a very good example of a creative idea and trend when we apply “the learnings from one discipline or approach [Engineering] to another [High Jump].”

thanks alot…very informative and thoroug

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What Is Creative Thinking And Why It Is Important

When learning is purposeful, creativity blossoms. When creativity blossoms, thinking emanates. When thinking emanates, knowledge is fully lit. When knowledge…

When learning is purposeful, creativity blossoms. When creativity blossoms, thinking emanates. When thinking emanates, knowledge is fully lit. When knowledge is lit, economy flourishes.  – A.P.J. Abdul Kalam

How often do you take time out from your day-to-day pressures and tedious meetings to glance out of the window and dream? How often do you deviate from the mundane routine and let your imagination run wild?

Unless you break free from ‘short-term’ and ‘shortcut,’ your thinking will not deepen. Unless you set your mind free to dream and ideate, your creativity will not blossom.

So to start with, take time out to understand what is creative thinking and why is it important.

What is creative thinking?

Creativity is the ability to generate a thought or an idea that is completely new, appealing, and useful. Creative thinking is a skill that enables you to come up with original and unconventional ideas.

Creative thinking expresses itself in a multitude of ways. A graphic artist creates a brilliant logo. A lawyer discovers an out-of-the-box strategy to defend her client. A photographer captures an extraordinary frame when out in the field. A product designer solves a problem with his innovative product.

Who says creative thinking is limited only to the artists, painters, designers, or writers? Creative skills give an edge to all professionals. It drives innovation and progress in almost every field. The eureka moment of cracking an idea can be experienced by anyone and everyone.

It is clear that exceptionally creative people are found in STEM fields—Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics—as well. Designing an app, assembling a robot, creating an Artificial Intelligence application, and developing an online social network requires high levels of creative thinking.

Types of Creative Thinking

The celebrated author and psychologist Edward de Bono has said that creativity involves breaking out of established patterns in order to look at things in a different way. What are these different ways? Let’s go a little deeper.

Divergent Thinking:  Exploring multiple perspectives with flexibility, fluency, and originality to find a solution for a problem.

Lateral Thinking: Exploring new ideas, thinking outside the box, avoiding clichés

Aesthetic Thinking: Visual or spatial thinking with the use of structure, colors, composition to achieve aesthetic beauty

Systems Thinking: Identifying an interrelation between things and viewing them from a 360-degree perspective

Inspirational Thinking: Lightbulb moments inspired by great personalities or insightful thoughts

Abstract Thinking: Thinking in terms of objects, principles and experiences that may not be physically or materially present

Design Thinking: Applying strategy, problem-solving and decision-making to the process of design

Once you know what is creative thinking, you can stay a step ahead by applying that knowledge to the way you carry out your communications. Research indicates that the companies that believe in fostering creative thinking outperform their competitors in every functional area.

Creativity is one of the most in-demand skills in the world. Have you seen those superhero movies with great VFX technology? The visuals are spectacular. The technology is state-of-the-art. But without a powerful creative concept and storyboard, the entire movie can be a flop show. That’s where creative thinking plays a role.

A person who knows the importance of creative thinking is open-minded in approach. Their assumptions are unbiased, they possess the problem-solving ability, and are impactful verbal and written communicators.  They are able to analyze a brief and distill it to its essence.

Harappa Education’s   Unleashing Creativity course explains how to cultivate a creative mindset. It acquaints you with creative approaches to problem-solving. Through the course, you will also learn how to exercise your creativity in groups.

The importance of creative thinking

It is indispensable.

The world has taken a technological leap. Today, robots click photographs. Yet, some photographs stand out because they reflect the mind and intent of a talented professional.

Jobs in many industries have been replaced by automation. Still, creative thinkers are in high demand because originality is irreplaceable. Creative thinking is indispensable.

It gives you freedom

You must have noticed how a child’s imagination soars boundlessly. Children are naturally creative thinkers because they haven’t been bound by the ways of the world just yet.  Creative thinking thrives when individuals and groups are free of artificially-imposed constraints.

Set your mind free to explore other perspectives, ‘the other side’. Then, deploy your ideas into your endeavors and see the difference. You must have heard how famous filmmakers and music directors go to hill stations or remote places to brainstorm, write and compose. To get work done, many writers prefer the quiet of country-side living to the clutter of cities.

It improves the problem-solving process

Sunil was his boss’s favorite assistant because he was an efficient problem-solver. With his creative thinking skills, he always found a solution to any unforeseen problem.

The importance of creative thinking in problem-solving is crucial. It enables you to face a challenge and think about it from all angles.

It adds to leadership qualities

Throughout history, inspiring leaders from various walks of life have been included in creative thinker examples. They achieve the highest level of excellence on the back of extraordinary ideas that have the potential to change the course of history, art, or a nation.

Take, for instance, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Mahatma Gandhi, JRD Tata, Swami Vivekanand, Satyajit Ray. These creative minds have left indelible imprints in their chosen area of work.

It boosts productivity

Steve Jobs is considered one of the striking creative thinker examples. The Apple co-founder had a vision that transformed people’s lives with several mini-revolutions: beginning with the personal computer and then going on to the iPod and, later, the iPhone.

Steven Spielberg’s work heralded a new era in filmmaking. Albert Einstein pushed the boundaries of accepted thinking with his own ideas.  ‘Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere,’ he said.

A workplace that encourages creativity is a productive workplace. Encouraging creativity leads to more innovative ideas, less fear of failure, and greater emotional investment.

It makes people happier

Giving people a free hand to apply their creative thinking makes them happy. It gives them a sense of being unshackled from barriers.  Such liberation yields more constructive results in the workplace. You must have noticed that you work better in a place where you are appreciated and valued.

Filmmaker Walt Disney chased his dream to make people happy through entertainment.  He came up with a word that typifies his vision: Imagineering, that is imagination plus engineering. For Disney, it was fun to attempt the impossible. Yet another one of the fascinating creative thinker examples!

It leads to personal growth

Those who have bigger dreams and long-term goals should never underestimate the importance of creative thinking. It pushes you out of your comfort zone and transports you into a creative zone.

The more you create, the more you grow in terms of mindset as well as skill sets. Also, when you commit time to pursue your passions, the quality of your life goes up.

All creative thinker examples prove that such ability empowers and elevates your career graph. In the process, you obtain valuable insights about yourself.

You discover your habits, dreams, desires, and impulses. You learn to value yourself and express it in your creative output.

For it to be a high-reward endeavor, build your creative skills systematically. It’s true that some people are born with inherent creative strengths. But it’s also true that creativity can be sown and nurtured with strategy and practice.

How to enhance your creative thinking?

Pay attention to your strengths and try to incorporate more of them in your life

Tap into your inner child and explore the qualities of freshness, purity of thought and spontaneity of expression

Do not restrict yourself to a habitual pattern. Think differently. Take a different route to communicate your thoughts. Never go by stereotypes

Enjoy yourself in natural settings and set your imagination free to explore and experiment

Be curious and inquisitive about your surroundings

Don’t hesitate to take risks to further your abilities

Get rid of the negative attitudes that are blocking your creativity

Indulge in brainstorming to inspire new ideas

Accept that a problem can have multiple solutions and explore every possibility

Harappa’s Unleashing Creativity course equips you with the Design Thinking framework that encourages thinking about the end-user while developing products and services.

Through the course, you will also gain the confidence to find solutions, drive innovation, and use an iterative approach to generate, test and refine new ideas.

Yes, the creative woods are lovely, dark, and deep. So get ready for a long and wonderful journey of many, many miles!

Explore our Harappa Diaries section to know more about topics related to the Think habit such as  What is Critical Thinking ,  Design Thinking  &  What is an Argument .

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The Compounding Value of Climate Competitiveness

• Members of younger generations demonstrate a near-universal awareness of and concern about the worsening climate crisis.
• To direct their concern into real-world action, schools can teach them to adopt “climate competitiveness,” a strategy based on developing simple yet effective solutions to social and planetary challenges.
• Schools can achieve this goal by showing students how they can generate positive societal impact throughout their lives and careers—starting with the experiential projects they work on during their degree programs.

When our daughter was eight years old, she was fascinated by the biological world. Once, as we were walking deep in our backyard woods, we found the skull of a deer. She was full of questions: “Dad, what happens to the tongue?” and “Dad, when does the retina signal its last message to the brain?”

Later that night, she and I had a similarly thoughtful conversation, as we explained to each other why we had chosen “8” as our favorite number. I argued that I loved how it looked like the relentless spin of a Mobius strip. She said, “It’s my favorite because I know that the number 8 meant ‘infinity’ from the start. That’s why it’s stronger than all other numbers.”

I thought to myself, “How has she become so steady in her interests and perspective?” Today, my daughter is a doctor, but even now after her professional medical training, she remains an honest and nuanced observer of what is happening around her—including what is happening with the planet. I have found that she and others of her generation are nearly universally aware of and concerned about the effects of climate change on the natural world.

Perhaps that’s why I have become such a staunch champion of the idea of climate competitiveness. It’s an idea that I think will be central to business success and human well-being in the future, and one that should be part of every business curriculum.

What Is Climate Competitiveness?

At its core, climate competitiveness is about using all the tools of capitalism, science, and technology to address larger societal and environmental demands. It’s about developing solutions that, for example, keep the handicapped mobile, the elderly engaged, the government well-informed, and the providers of goods and services focused on the net good of the human population and planet.

As I argue in my book  Wealth and Climate Competitiveness : The New Narrative on Business and Society , when businesses and individuals are climate competitive, they blend their proprietary scientific and market-based knowledge to create social and environmental solutions years ahead of when governments might address issues via taxes or regulations.

By the start of the 21st century, 20th-century assumptions were giving way to new presumptions that strike a better balance between building wealth and protecting the interests of the global commonwealth.

I have visited business schools in many parts of the world, and while many address sustainability, I find that it’s rare for schools to place a strategic response to climate change and social purpose on a par with profit maximization. However, I believe climate competitiveness is an essential strategy that students must learn so that they can help strengthen and improve the relationship between business and society.

A Return to a Classic Value

Throughout my own education, I have been made aware of the tensions between business and society—from my high school courses all the way through to my doctoral dissertation under literary historian  M.H. Abrams at Cornell University. For years, our educational systems have promoted the wrong-headed assumption that business and society are at odds.

But by the start of the 21st century, when my daughter and my students were going to school, a new social contract began to emerge. It was as if 20th-century assumptions were giving way to new presumptions that strike a better balance between building wealth and protecting the interests of the global commonwealth.

The irony is that, in many ways, we are returning to a classic worldview of competition and the social good. Just think back to Benjamin Franklin , one of America’s founding fathers. In the 1700s, he and others conceived the first public libraries and the first sidewalks for pedestrians. Franklin invented bifocals to help people see the world better and lightning rods to protect people’s homes from damage during storms. In essence, Franklin was an early socially conscious entrepreneur.

We are heading in the right direction, but as a whole, higher education institutions have yet to place Franklin’s ideal at the front and center of their curricula. To secure our collective future, today’s generation must learn to adopt a more Ben Franklin-like approach to business—to develop what I like to call “ doing-more-with-less ” innovations that can work anywhere in the world.

By implementing simple solutions that support a more resilient, self-sufficient, and sustainable society, business leaders will put their organizations and communities years ahead of those less focused on social solutions.

Lessons in Globalization

Journalist James Fallows dramatizes self-reliance and simple practicality in his book Our Towns , in which he and his wife visit and describe hundreds of small American communities where wealth and the commonwealth coexist in harmony.

I saw this same mindset in action when my firm hired young leaders from Madagascar, Northern Australia, and Ireland. These individuals came to work with their sleeves rolled up, prepared to take action on both protecting the climate and staying ahead of the competition. This dedication to the planet was not limited to their working lives—they also demonstrated climate competitiveness in their own reduced consumption of resources and commitment to social causes.

Societies in many parts of the world are working to restore the balance between building wealth and preserving social well-being. While this dedication is less true in urban America, I have found that the new generation of future leaders can envision a different path forward.

For individuals and organizations in every nation, climate competitiveness balances innovation with competitive frugality. It enables families and firms to compound value without squandering resources.

Let me present this generational shift in the context of our global, industrialized society. In my 2007 book World Inc. , I discuss the many ways that globalization has led to a deeper understanding of the implications of conscious capitalism, or “social response capitalism.” As I explored this idea, I met with decision-makers worldwide who realized what this new approach to business could mean, not only to the future of their organizations but to the lives of millions.

They understood that, for individuals and organizations in every nation, climate competitiveness balances innovation with competitive frugality. It enables families and firms to compound value without squandering resources.

Here, we face a paradox: For members of the young generation to enhance their creativity and thinking skills, they need to consume resources, particularly through early global travel. So, ironically, while I argue that the world needs to embrace greater simplicity in its collective decision-making and habits, I also recognize the need for excess.

But there is a problem with excessive excess. Unlike many professionals who are part of older generations, my daughter and most of her peers see little advantage to owning and maintaining multiple homes or accruing surplus possessions. By the time my daughter graduated from medical school, she and her classmates placed more value on pursuing meaningful careers and maintaining a lifelong ecosystem of friends and associated firms.

Five Changes for Business Curricula

What lessons can business educators extrapolate from these tales about my daughter? From her, I have learned that institutions can best prepare graduates for success by ensuring they take five lessons to heart:

• Their efforts matter to the world.  Show students the importance of contributing to society throughout their lives. This starts in educational settings, through ethical case studies, job shadowing, and course projects. In fact, I believe that at least a third to a half of any degree program should include experiential learning in real-world settings. Students can learn more in one year participating in applied learning than in three years of learning theory in the classroom.
• No community or individual lives in a vacuum.  Highlight the intersections between individual communities and the larger global community. Here, business students can learn a great deal from studying subjects such as cultural anthropology that help them look beyond their own biases and lived experiences.
• Business success and the social good can work together.  Invite to the classroom executives and managers of large organizations whose leadership focuses on strengthening the relationship between business growth and the social good.
• Great leaders innovate with the larger society in mind.  Remind students at all levels, during every term, that after graduation they will have obligations to be innovative thinkers and influential leaders who are mindful and responsive to social needs.
• They have much to learn from those around them.  Reinforce the idea that, once students enter the workforce, their determination, adaptability, and willingness to appreciate and learn from the experiences of others will matter more than the degrees and certifications listed on their résumés.

Providing ‘Creative Force’ to the World

As a graduate student, I once traveled to the campus of the University of California Berkeley. There, I was waiting in line for a meal from a food truck when I saw a mural that students had painted on the side of the adjacent building. The painting depicted a long line of students crossing the stage at their commencement; as they each accepted their degrees and descended from the stage, their heads morphed from round to square. By the time they embarked on the road to their careers, their heads were as square as televisions.

The message of this painting haunted me then, and it haunts me today. What it represents—the commodification of knowledge and talent—is the opposite of the effect that global education should have in modern society and business.

Higher education institutions should take every step to produce graduates who are individuals, each ready to contribute unique talents and creativity to the world. The beauty of global education is not necessarily about inspiring outright revolution, but about increasing the creative force of future leaders.

Henry David Thoreau once said, “A minority is powerless while it conforms to the majority, … but it is irresistible when it clogs by its whole weight.” Younger generations seem to understand this lesson of social history instinctively. That said, many young people—my daughter included—would prefer to use productive action rather than resistance to change the world for the better.

My hope is that educational institutions—especially those educating future global business leaders—will help their students effectively marshal and direct their creative talents toward positive change and societal impact. As they graduate and assume leadership roles, the beneficial effects of the solutions they implement will only continue to build over time. When educational institutions help reinforce the natural inclination of young people to address social problems, they will prepare this next generation of leaders to work toward the progress they want to see in the world.

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• corporate social responsibility
• cultural intelligence
• societal impact
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Why writing by hand beats typing for thinking and learning

Jonathan Lambert

If you're like many digitally savvy Americans, it has likely been a while since you've spent much time writing by hand.

The laborious process of tracing out our thoughts, letter by letter, on the page is becoming a relic of the past in our screen-dominated world, where text messages and thumb-typed grocery lists have replaced handwritten letters and sticky notes. Electronic keyboards offer obvious efficiency benefits that have undoubtedly boosted our productivity — imagine having to write all your emails longhand.

To keep up, many schools are introducing computers as early as preschool, meaning some kids may learn the basics of typing before writing by hand.

But giving up this slower, more tactile way of expressing ourselves may come at a significant cost, according to a growing body of research that's uncovering the surprising cognitive benefits of taking pen to paper, or even stylus to iPad — for both children and adults.

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In kids, studies show that tracing out ABCs, as opposed to typing them, leads to better and longer-lasting recognition and understanding of letters. Writing by hand also improves memory and recall of words, laying down the foundations of literacy and learning. In adults, taking notes by hand during a lecture, instead of typing, can lead to better conceptual understanding of material.

"There's actually some very important things going on during the embodied experience of writing by hand," says Ramesh Balasubramaniam , a neuroscientist at the University of California, Merced. "It has important cognitive benefits."

While those benefits have long been recognized by some (for instance, many authors, including Jennifer Egan and Neil Gaiman , draft their stories by hand to stoke creativity), scientists have only recently started investigating why writing by hand has these effects.

A slew of recent brain imaging research suggests handwriting's power stems from the relative complexity of the process and how it forces different brain systems to work together to reproduce the shapes of letters in our heads onto the page.

Your brain on handwriting

Both handwriting and typing involve moving our hands and fingers to create words on a page. But handwriting, it turns out, requires a lot more fine-tuned coordination between the motor and visual systems. This seems to more deeply engage the brain in ways that support learning.

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"Handwriting is probably among the most complex motor skills that the brain is capable of," says Marieke Longcamp , a cognitive neuroscientist at Aix-Marseille Université.

Gripping a pen nimbly enough to write is a complicated task, as it requires your brain to continuously monitor the pressure that each finger exerts on the pen. Then, your motor system has to delicately modify that pressure to re-create each letter of the words in your head on the page.

"Your fingers have to each do something different to produce a recognizable letter," says Sophia Vinci-Booher , an educational neuroscientist at Vanderbilt University. Adding to the complexity, your visual system must continuously process that letter as it's formed. With each stroke, your brain compares the unfolding script with mental models of the letters and words, making adjustments to fingers in real time to create the letters' shapes, says Vinci-Booher.

That's not true for typing.

To type "tap" your fingers don't have to trace out the form of the letters — they just make three relatively simple and uniform movements. In comparison, it takes a lot more brainpower, as well as cross-talk between brain areas, to write than type.

Recent brain imaging studies bolster this idea. A study published in January found that when students write by hand, brain areas involved in motor and visual information processing " sync up " with areas crucial to memory formation, firing at frequencies associated with learning.

"We don't see that [synchronized activity] in typewriting at all," says Audrey van der Meer , a psychologist and study co-author at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. She suggests that writing by hand is a neurobiologically richer process and that this richness may confer some cognitive benefits.

Other experts agree. "There seems to be something fundamental about engaging your body to produce these shapes," says Robert Wiley , a cognitive psychologist at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro. "It lets you make associations between your body and what you're seeing and hearing," he says, which might give the mind more footholds for accessing a given concept or idea.

Those extra footholds are especially important for learning in kids, but they may give adults a leg up too. Wiley and others worry that ditching handwriting for typing could have serious consequences for how we all learn and think.

What might be lost as handwriting wanes

The clearest consequence of screens and keyboards replacing pen and paper might be on kids' ability to learn the building blocks of literacy — letters.

"Letter recognition in early childhood is actually one of the best predictors of later reading and math attainment," says Vinci-Booher. Her work suggests the process of learning to write letters by hand is crucial for learning to read them.

"When kids write letters, they're just messy," she says. As kids practice writing "A," each iteration is different, and that variability helps solidify their conceptual understanding of the letter.

Research suggests kids learn to recognize letters better when seeing variable handwritten examples, compared with uniform typed examples.

This helps develop areas of the brain used during reading in older children and adults, Vinci-Booher found.

"This could be one of the ways that early experiences actually translate to long-term life outcomes," she says. "These visually demanding, fine motor actions bake in neural communication patterns that are really important for learning later on."

Ditching handwriting instruction could mean that those skills don't get developed as well, which could impair kids' ability to learn down the road.

"If young children are not receiving any handwriting training, which is very good brain stimulation, then their brains simply won't reach their full potential," says van der Meer. "It's scary to think of the potential consequences."

Many states are trying to avoid these risks by mandating cursive instruction. This year, California started requiring elementary school students to learn cursive , and similar bills are moving through state legislatures in several states, including Indiana, Kentucky, South Carolina and Wisconsin. (So far, evidence suggests that it's the writing by hand that matters, not whether it's print or cursive.)

Slowing down and processing information

For adults, one of the main benefits of writing by hand is that it simply forces us to slow down.

During a meeting or lecture, it's possible to type what you're hearing verbatim. But often, "you're not actually processing that information — you're just typing in the blind," says van der Meer. "If you take notes by hand, you can't write everything down," she says.

The relative slowness of the medium forces you to process the information, writing key words or phrases and using drawing or arrows to work through ideas, she says. "You make the information your own," she says, which helps it stick in the brain.

Such connections and integration are still possible when typing, but they need to be made more intentionally. And sometimes, efficiency wins out. "When you're writing a long essay, it's obviously much more practical to use a keyboard," says van der Meer.

Still, given our long history of using our hands to mark meaning in the world, some scientists worry about the more diffuse consequences of offloading our thinking to computers.

"We're foisting a lot of our knowledge, extending our cognition, to other devices, so it's only natural that we've started using these other agents to do our writing for us," says Balasubramaniam.

It's possible that this might free up our minds to do other kinds of hard thinking, he says. Or we might be sacrificing a fundamental process that's crucial for the kinds of immersive cognitive experiences that enable us to learn and think at our full potential.

Balasubramaniam stresses, however, that we don't have to ditch digital tools to harness the power of handwriting. So far, research suggests that scribbling with a stylus on a screen activates the same brain pathways as etching ink on paper. It's the movement that counts, he says, not its final form.

Jonathan Lambert is a Washington, D.C.-based freelance journalist who covers science, health and policy.

• handwriting

Enhancing students’ critical thinking and creative thinking: An integrated mind mapping and robot-based learning approach

• Published: 16 May 2024

Cite this article

• Min-Chi Chiu 1 , 2 &
• Gwo-Jen Hwang   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-5155-276X 3 , 4  

Fostering students’ critical thinking and creative thinking is an important aim in education. For example, art courses not only focus on artwork creation, but also on theoretical knowledge for identifying artworks. In the conventional lecture-based instruction mode for theoretical knowledge delivery, students’ learning outcomes could be affected owing to the lack of student-teacher interactions, and hence researchers have started to employ interactive learning technologies, such as robots, to cope with this problem. However, without proper guidance and support, students’ learning outcomes in such an interactive learning mode could be limited. To improve students’ learning effectiveness, this study proposed a mind mapping-assisted robot (MM-R) approach for an art course. A quasi-experimental design was adopted to explore the effects of the proposed learning approach on students’ performance in art appreciation, digital painting creation, creative thinking tendency, and critical thinking awareness. A total of 48 students from two classes in a university in central Taiwan were recruited to participate in this study. One class was the experimental group ( n  = 25) adopting the MM-R approach, while the other class was the control group ( n  = 23) adopting the conventional robot (C-R) approach. The results indicated that the integration of the MM-R approach improved students’ learning achievement, performance in digital painting creation, creative thinking tendency, and critical thinking awareness.

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This study is supported in part by the National Science and Technology Council of Taiwan under contract numbers NSTC 112-2410-H-011-012-MY3 and MOST 111-2410-H-011 -007 -MY3. The study is also supported by the “Empower Vocational Education Research Center” of National Taiwan University of Science and Technology (NTUST) from the Featured Areas Research Center Program within the framework of the Higher Education Sprout Project by the Ministry of Education (MOE) in Taiwan.

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Min-Chi Chiu

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Graduate Institute of Digital Learning and Education, National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, Taipei, Taiwan

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All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection and analysis were performed by Min-Chi Chiu. Project administration were performed by Gwo-Jen Hwang and Min-Chi Chiu. Methodology and supervision were performed Gwo-Jen Hwang and Min-Chi Chiu. The first draft of the manuscript was written by Min-Chi Chiu. All authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Chiu, MC., Hwang, GJ. Enhancing students’ critical thinking and creative thinking: An integrated mind mapping and robot-based learning approach. Educ Inf Technol (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-024-12752-6

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Received : 14 August 2023

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Published : 16 May 2024

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-024-12752-6

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