Creativity is everywhere!
We are all creative in many ways, even if we aren’t artistically talented. As I wrote in my first book: “Creativity is not the monopoly of the artist.”
Creativity is a word that means different things to different people. To solve this problem, David proposes we acknowledge two kinds of creativity: “a-Creativity” and “i-Creativity”. He explains this in his keynote speech at TEDx Napoli, which begins with the words:
“Creativity loves a crisis. Especially at times of crisis we need creativity. Indeed some of the most creative solutions in human endeavour have come about because of a crisis.
But what do we mean exactly, by ‘Creativity’?
There is artistic creativity: the visual arts, music, literature, design, architecture, film and video, TV and radio, crafts and advertising, for example. These are the kinds of artistic creativity on which the concept of the ‘creative industries’ is based. Examples of artistic creativity are numerous and obvious: the art of Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, the literature of Shakespeare, the music of Mozart. More recently there have been modern classics in design, architecture and cinema.
But there is also a more general kind of creativity, which we might call ‘ingenuity’, ‘innovation’, ‘invention’, ‘lateral thinking’, or simply ‘problem solving’. We can find this kind of creativity in all fields of human activity: for example in science, education, politics, finance, engineering, agriculture, health care and warfare.
Here are just a few illustrations of creativity outside the arts…”
… [Continue by reading the downloadable article or watching the video from TEDx Napoli. See links below.]
Whilst some businesses in the creative, cultural and digital industries are not particularly creative in the way they do business, enterprises and organisations in other sectors, private and public, show an amazing creativity in their innovative business models. They devise new and more effective ways of doing things, innovate in terms of systems and structures, generate income in new ways, and engage their clients by using new approaches.
There are examples of this i-Creativity in my TEDx talk in Napoli and my speech at ANATO National Congress in Colombia.
We can use artistic creativity of various kinds (a-Creativity) in the studio and then ingenuity and lateral thinking (i-Creativity) in the business office. This powerful combination can create amazing products and services AND clever ways to put them into a highly effective and profitable system to generate income.
If we embrace both kinds of creativity and put them together to build a business, it’s a powerful combination.
We can each of us do both perhaps, or sometimes two business partners or a larger team play different roles, each complementing the other, bringing different kinds of creativity together to support each other. In this way, the total is greater than the sum of the parts.
But first and foremost, it is an attitude, an approach to business in the creative industries that embraces both creativity and business, accepting and indeed rejoicing in the contribution that each of them make to a winning business formula.
This combination of creative talent plus smart business thinking is what I call “T-Shirts and Suits”.
What to do next:
– Explore ways in which your creativity can be applied to the business side of things.
– Learn from enterprises and organisations that are doing business in new ways, then adapt effective techniques to fit with your own circumstances, values and objectives.
Bonus content
TEDx talk video. The video of my TEDx talk in Napoli about a-Creativity and i-Creativity is online here.
Article: “a-Creativity: i-Creativity”. Download the article based on the speech here.
Videos of David speaking at a conference in Colombia about creativity, creative business models, and examples from a range of other industries online here.