You only need 3 things to be creative

According to Teresa Amabile, you ‘only’ need three ingredients to be creative:

1. Knowledge
2. Tools
3. Motivation

Great, you say, I know quite a few things, I have some tools in my shed and I am motivated to bits. Bring it on!

Not so fast! Let’s look at those three in more detail:

1. Knowledge:
   You need to have some expertise, or surround yourself with some experts, on the subject you want to be creative on. The expertise can be technical procedural and/or intellectual.
   You cannot be productively creative on a subject you know nothing about. You sure can generate a lot of great ideas. But unless you have someone who knows something about the subject, you will create products/services that fail (unless you are like, really really lucky).
2. Tools:
   We’re not talking your average garden tools here. What you need are creativity tools that allow you to a) accurately define the problem, b) generate lots of ideas, c) select the ones that you can work on and d) implement those into projects/products/services etc.
   The tools allow you to think creatively which then again allow you to imaginatively and flexibly approach problems.
3. Motivation:
   Motivation is a coin that has two sides: intrinsic (coming from inside: your passion, your interest to do this, your gift for the subject matter) and extrinsic (coming from outside, such as rewards, money, fame etc). Studies have shown that intrinsic motivation is more effective when it comes to being creative and innovative. Which is what makes it difficult for businesses as it’s a motivation that is much harder to generate.

In just one day, Create and Connect can teach you some tools that will start making a difference in your private life or business. You can become more creative at once.

Sign up for one of our next Creative Thinking Trainings.

For details about the Creativity Trio, read Amabile’s article ‘How to kill creativity.’