Is Creative Thinking The Way To The Future?

The skill to develop right now

The World Economic Forum has listed creativity as the third most important skill workers will need.

Is creative thinking just the latest buzzword or is it the way to the future?

Creativity is intelligence having fun,” said Albert Einstein. Coming from one of the biggest brains of our time and someone who was also musical, that statement is more credible than it is ambiguous.

When we consider creativity, we immediately draw parallels to artists and muses who inspire art and artistic forms. But creativity is beyond putting paint to canvas, bow to violin or, in the modern context, stylus to tablet.

It’s the ability to think beyond basics, to connect the dots and fearlessly explore perspectives.

“I see it as one’s propensity to bend the rules,” says Khai Lin Sng, co-founder and CFO of private technology platform Fundnel, which helps build infrastructure for next-generation capital markets to increase access and liquidity for entrepreneurs and investors. “To me, creativity isn’t about novelty or having that eureka moment. It’s less about outcomes and more about the ability to break systems down and rethink them from the ground up.”

It may sound like a lofty concept, but it’s a fact that human beings have a built-in capacity to do just that. Research findings on cognitive development show that between the ages of three and five, an average child questions every cause and explores every possible outcome – children are in a constant state of divergent thinking. As we grow older, we lose these skills, some more than others, in part because of our personal journeys, life choices and/or lack of application in the occupations we pursue.