Creativity is a skill, not a mystery

As a society, we still treat creativity and idea generation as a mystery. New ideas come from "creative", or "non-linear" people. Under this understanding, people are either gifted with creativity or they are not in a very binary way. This statement is so widely believed to be correct; it is hard to overstate how wrong it is.

Creativity is just another skill that is learned through practice, and new ideas come about through predictable situations to people whose only special trait is confidence in their own creativity.

We will get back to creative people in a second, but first, I have highlighted two particular situations where I believe a lot of new ideas come from: new perspectives and deeper problem understandings.

The birth of an idea that comes out of a different perspective is generally a very social event. They come when you subject yourself to unrelated work being done by other really smart people via their writing, websites, new articles, or peer reviewed journals. These ideas often hit you like a brick in the head when you see something unrelated but applicable to your work. (As an aside, this is a fundamental reason why we, as a nation, fund non-applied research. It should terrify everyone that this funding is disappearing)

When this type of idea is born, you find yourself saying “wait, you do what? That is possible?”. When you hear about what someone else is doing in, usually, a completely unrelated field, your perspective of what is possible shifts. Suddenly you have a new idea and you did not need to be a technical genius, or have a mysterious fairy plant ideas in your head.

Understanding your technical challenges better in order to create ideas seems obvious and overly simplistic. That is precisely why it is so difficult to really create valuable ideas by this method. Our inherent fear of failure leads us to subconsciously retreat from truly deep understandings of technical problems. 

It is very uncommon to run into someone who knows more about your technology then you. As such, in 99% of encounters with someone questioning your technology, you will be able to deflect the question by talking on a high level without really getting to deep into the technology. While this is all right for day-to-day encounters, it can lead to a shallow understanding of the actual problems with your own technology if internally relied upon.  In other words: just because you can convince others your technology is viable, does not mean it is.

In order to generate ideas, you need to come face to face with the problems of your technology. If you treat each problem as a crisis that has the potential of completely derailing your work and you refuse to allow yourself to explain away the issues like you might do to an investor, then you absolutely will come up with new ideas. Even if the original problem was not the crisis you convinced yourself it was, the ideas you will generate may be hold significant value all the same.  

Both of these methods require one thing above all else: creative confidence.

When changing perspective, you need to have the confidence to look outside of your comfort zone to other industries for inspiration. You need to have the confidence to look like an idiot when you take those new ideas and tell them to other people; if there is one universal truth about generating new ideas, it is that you will often look like a moron doing it.

When facing each technical problem as a crisis, retaining the creative confidence to believe throughout that your will generate a new, better idea, is a requirement. In other words you must simultaneous maintain a belief that nothing you currently have done will work, but that you will eventually find a solution to each problem. In this instance, creative confidence is not only helpful, but necessary to maintain your sanity and general health. 

Just like normal confidence, creative confidence is not something that everybody has or that everybody is born with the same amount of. But, it is something we can all build. David Kelley has an amazing TED talk about how we can all build our own creative confidence through practice and positive reinforcement just like any other skill. The first step, however, is rejecting the idea that creativity is mystically out of reach.