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Be creative! Here are 13 ideas to push your originality…

Creative
Photo by: Daniel Zeevi

If you work in the marketing and advertising sector creativity is a very important element. It helps you to create eye-catching messages. But also enterpreneurs need original ideas. In general we human connect with it the ability to create something new and useful.

Creativity cannot be trained, but there are certain strategies which help you can think more creatively. By those strategies you just recall what is already in your mind. Here are 5 ways for people working in marketing and advertising sector how to become more creative when they are working in a team and need to come out with some original solutions for a problem.

The 5 ways to improve your team`s creativity:

  1. Make a seminar in the darkness/ or in dawn: Studies about lightning are not united – some saying it is more productive to make the seminar in complete darkness and others argue that it is better to discuss in grayness. Whether you decide for the one or another you should discuss with your team about a problem of your department and elaborate creative problem solutions! According a study of University Dortmund darkness improves the team cohesion and the individual concentration level. Team members achieved 30 % more creative ideas. Study by the University of Hohenheim supports more the grayness theory: the ideas would be more original than for complete darkness.
  2. Hike with your crew in the wild: Take your team out of your office and make a walk into the woods. For some days would be excellent! You de-connect from your usual workplace that means no media, no technique, no routine, no automation… This should improve your creativity with 50%.
  3. Brainstorm with your crew: Collect team ideas concerning a certain topic on a clipboard. The rule is that no idea is right or wrong in the beginning. After that the team tries to categorize the ideas and to erase improper ideas. The goal is to achieve a common valuable solution.
  4. Use the method of six hats: Before the discussion you have to divide the six roles – the white hat represents objectivity, the red hat emotionality, black stands for problem orientation, yellow for optimism, green for creativity and blue for discipline. The six roles are taken by the six team members and they should try to put in the shoes of the role. After the team discussion there should be found a common solution for the problem.
  5. Implement Walt Disney`s method: here we have three roles – one team member plays the dreamer, the second is the realistic guy who informs about the costs and the third represents the critic who reflects about the weak sides of the idea. The team should take then a common decision. 

Both methods (4./5.) require to sustain the sequence of the different roles.

Now if you are an entrepreneur running your own start-up and are at the beginning on your own you maybe are interested in which conditions you can become more creative. You will be more content  and find sense in what you do. Here are 8 strategies how to push your creativity as entrepreneur: 

Here are the 8 strategies: 

  1. Positive mood: Try to use your positive feelings – you are more creative when you feel good!
  2. Deprivation:  You can visit a monastery, sit in the darkness or to climb to the top of the himalaya mountain. Darkness supports creative thinking because you do not feel observed by others and are able to think freely. The color receptors in your eyes are also deactivated in the dark so you do not concentrate on details anymore and have a wider field of vision.
  3. Know your own needs: You are your best expert when talking about yourself ! So see in which conditions you can get more creative (light vs. darkness)! It might help you to let your thoughts wander or to associate freely.
  4. Develop an intrinsic motivationDo something because of its own that means because you like what you are doing!
  5. Delimit yourself from rewards: Do something you have an idea of, you are sustained by your social circle and you are convinced what you are doing. So you will come up with original ideas all the time. You will fell in flow – a feeling you are totally absorbed by what you are doing and consequently you will be creative.
  6. Combine not matching things together:  In this way you can erupt usual thinking patterns and become creative.
  7. Surprise, surprise: When something happens to you what you do not expect you will come up with original things.
  8. Make an artistic meeting with yourselfDo once a week for some hours what you enjoy doing  e.g. paint something, make a walk in the park or watch your favorite movie. You will feel better and open your mind for new ideas.

Maybe one of the eight strategies are fitting to you. Which one do you think is more interesting for you. It is up to you how open you are to try different things out.

Literature

  • Norbert Groeber: Kreativität. Originalität diesseits des Genialen. Primus, Darmstadt 2013.
  • Mihaly Csikzentmihalyi: Flow. Das Geheimnis des Glücks. Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 2013 (16. Auflage)
  • Karl-Heinz Brodbeck: Mythos Kreativitätstechniken, www.khbrodbeck.homepage.t-online.de
  • Anna Steidle, Lioba Werth: Freedom from constraints: Darkness and dim illumination promote creativity. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 35, 2013, 67-80.
  • Ronald S. Friedman, Jens Förster: Implicit affective cues and attentional tuning: an integrate review. Psychological Bulletin, 136/5, 2010, 875-893.
  • Alice M. Isen, Kimberly A. Daubman, Gary P. Nowicki: Positive affect facilitates creative problem solving. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 52/6, 1987, 1122-1131.
  • Torsten Norlander, Anette Kjellgren, Trevor Archer: Effects of flotation versus chamber-restricted environmental stimulation technique (REST) on creativity  and realism under stress and non-stress conditions. Imagination, Cognition and Personality, 22/4, 2002, 343-359.
  • Ruth Ann Atchely, David L. Strayer, Paul Atchley: Creativity in the wild: Improving creative reasoning through immersion in natural settings. PLOS, Dezember 2012, DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0051474.

 

 

So I would be curious to hear if you tried some of the mentioned techniques out. What were your experiences?

 

 

13 thoughts on “Be creative! Here are 13 ideas to push your originality…”

    1. Dear Florine,
      thank you very much for your comment. If you like to find out more about this topic you can have a look at the articles mentioned at the bottom of my post (the literature part). Here you get a deeper insight into the different creativity techniques. A good book in the field of creativity is the following: “Lateral Thinking: Creativity Step by Step” by Edward de Bono. You can see it here: http://www.amazon.com/Lateral-Thinking-Creativity-Step/dp/0060903252/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1462031763&sr=8-1&keywords=lateral+thinking+edward+de+bono
      I hope I have answered your question. If not, please give a reply.

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