Here's a personal belief I have about creativity and innovation. 💡

We are all born creative. 👩🏽‍🎨

Just watch what kids do, the questions they ask, the curiosity they have, the exploration and experiments they make.

It's in our education system where our creativity is first suppressed. 📚

Yes, some schools buck the trend – Steiner, Montessori, and others.

But by and large, our schools discourage exploration, discourage, trying something different, discourage challenging and questioning what they are taught.

I don't blame the teachers. They have KPIs to meet, a curriculum to cover, assessments to mark…

And then comes further education and vocation.

Most degrees have a black and white approach with little room for free-thinking. 🎓

Yes, some degrees cover design thinking and creative problem solving, but they are few and far between. And some organisations are just outwardly averse to innovation.

Here's the good news. 

In my twenty-plus years of working in the field of helping people innovate, I'm yet to come across someone who hasn't been able to rediscover their latent creativity or learn to innovate.

The simplest way to rekindle creativity and spark innovation ⚡️ is to start a sentence with the words "What if…?"

"What if… I tried doing it this way instead?"
"What if… we had to eliminate this component?"
"What if… I combined this to…?"
"What if… I substituted this with something else?"
"What if… we reversed the process?"

You're not broken.

You are an innovative, creative person who can change things for the better.

What are you waiting for? Start using the ‘What if…’ approach today!

Cheers,
Nils

PS: If you’re looking to reinvent your business I have a FREE Business Reinvention Checklist for you to get started.
You can download it here:
https://ideaswithlegs.com/reinvention-check