Creativity And Problem-Solving

Creativity is important for problem-solving as it involves looking at something in many different ways.

For creativity to be successful in problem-solving you need to have:

- knowledge

- skills which are used to manipulate the knowledge

- attitude that encourages people to challenge the status quo and think differently

- a non-threatening environment, ie OK for what might appear to be crazy ideas to surface. Sometimes crazy ideas will encourage people to think differently

- curiosity, ie willing to explore new ground

- never satisfied, ie always looking for alternative, better ways

- idea generation, ie quantity more important that quality; starts broad and later narrowed down

- a 'thick hide', ie to handle criticism and negative comments

(source: Tim Patston, 2022)