Cultivating Creativity
A review of Creative Confidence:
Unleashing the Creative Potential Within Us All, by Tom Kelly & David Kelley
After reading this book, I realised that I am a very creative and innovative person 🙂
I’ve always wanted to be more creative. So, when I had the opportunity in February to take a Design Thinking and Innovation course at the University of Cambridge for annual electives at Cambridge Judge Business School, I jumped at the chance. Our lecturer Matt Marsh asked us to read Creative Confidence: Unleashing the Creative Potential Within Us All, written by Tom and David Kelley.
This book is not only inspiring but also actionable.
Tom and David, experts in innovation, design and creativity, show us that we all are creative and innovative and that these terms aren’t reserved for designers or arty types. The Kelley brothers bring us the principles and strategies to tap into our creative potential both at work and on a personal level, revolutionising how we approach and solve problems.
Here are my key take-aways to becoming fearlessly creative:
1. Action. One step at a time, is a sure-fire way to become confident of your creativity.
2. Actually making. ‘The thing’ allows us to test and discover what needs tweaking.
3. ‘Failure’ isn’t a failure. Each time we miss the mark (and we’re going to miss several times), we’re giving ourselves crucial opportunities to learn and refine.
4. Cultivate empathy. When we walk in our customer’s shoes, we have insight into what they need AND what they don’t yet know that they need.
5. Ambiguity is OK. The ‘grey area’ is where many of our most valuable ideas emerge.
6. Be optimistic. If we believe it’s doable, then sooner or later, we can do it. Of course, the opposite is also true (but much, much sooner).
7. The power of multiple iterations. Early, regular customer feedback powers us to course-correct, refine and finally reach your knock-out solution.
Meanwhile, here’s what they have to say on the topic at the Harvard Business Review:
“Design thinking can be described as a discipline that uses the designer’s sensibility and methods to match people’s needs with what is technologically feasible and a viable business strategy that can convert into customer value and market opportunity.”
Read the original article
After reading this book,
I realised that I am a very creative and innovative person: ‘creative’ means producing or using original and unusual ideas, and ‘innovative’ means using new methods or ideas. Each time I generated innovative sales and marketing activities with my teams. For example, creating technical roadshows in China and India attracted more than 5,000 delegates, the first Abcam Immunofluorescence imaging competition, etc.
When I joined Abcam, the leadership team always encouraged us to be more creative and innovative. Our products were not entirely new, but the way we provided them was extraordinarily creative and innovative fifteen years ago. This made Abcam a market leader, thanks to our fresh approach to sharing customer feedback, information and ordering online, and exceptional delivery speed, offering one day delivery in main cities in the Life Science market.
We don’t need to create something entirely new to be creative and innovative from the beginning.
Instead, creativity and innovation can be built step by step, preparing the way for a big leap. If we don’t have a ground-breaking product, we can build innovative services. We can start to think differently about serving our customers in a creative way. As leaders, we can build an innovative team or company using the same technique.
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Let’s talk about increasing your and your team’s creativity and innovation. Connect with me today! Get started on building a strategy and roadmap to achieving your business goals faster!