Enhance Creativity

Today, more than ever creative people are in great demand. This is because organisations across the globe are in need of innovative ideas to help them survive and thrive in tough economic conditions. This trend implies that your career prospects depend to a large extent on how creative you are. 

But not everybody is endowed with great creative talent. The good news however is you can develop creativity even if you are not born with it. Innovative ideas often emerge from fresh perspectives. The key to creativity therefore lies in surrounding yourself with lots and lots of new perspectives. Here are some ideas to help you do just that:

Practise collaboration 

Association with people from different backgrounds is the best means to gather fresh perspectives. One can gain completely new insights by associating with people not just from their team or department but with many others across the organisation.  To hone your creative abilities first you must learn to collect and comprehend distinct ideas and then connect them in meaningful ways. Don't just restrict your knowledge to your field of operations alone. Learn about radically different domains. When continuously fed with fresh inputs, your brain tries to make new connections.  The more frequently you expend efforts in this direction the more creative you become.

Move out

Quite often, we find it very comfortable to continue doing what we have always been doing. But to become creative you must get out of your comfort zone as often as you can. You must frequently question the assumptions behind the current practices you are following. Ask yourself 'why', 'why not' and 'what if' to try and discover new possibilities and better means of doing things to suit changing circumstances.

Observation

Keenly observe the world around you. Start noticing how people take different approaches to problems and manage to arrive at innovative solutions. Also try to understand the needs of people around you especially your clients, colleagues, superiors and suppliers. As the saying goes, necessity is the mother of invention always. When you know exactly what people want you can come up with better ideas to fulfil their needs. Force yourself to think on the lines of bringing about changes that make your own job or your colleagues' jobs easier, design a product in such a way as to increase its utility or cost effectiveness or better still come up with revolutionary ideas that set a new trend.

Try new ideas 

Unless you experiment you will not know if your idea is good enough or not. Learning through experimentation is valuable as long as you keep the costs low. Don't feel dejected if your idea does not get the nod from your superiors or colleagues. Treat failures as learning experiences and use new dimensions discovered to refine your idea but never give up in despair. To give a boost to your creativity and gain exposure you must also take an active part in brainstorming sessions at work. Acquiring knowledge on emerging trends in various fields is also of immense help because a broad knowledge base helps you to make new connections between seemingly unrelated issues quite effortlessly. 

So, start connecting with people on a wider scale now. Increase your creativity as well as you career prospects by leaps and bounds!