Forever Skills

PART 1CREATIVITY SKILLS

‘THE BEST WAY TO PREDICT THE FUTURE IS TO CREATE IT.’

Peter Drucker (or possibly Abraham Lincoln or maybe Alan Kaye)

The first of our Forever Skills clusters is Creativity.

Unfortunately, even though we’ve identified this as a critical cluster of Forever Skills, most people don’t actually believe they are creative.

It’s likely you’re one of them. Research done by Adobe in 2012 found that eight in ten people felt that unlocking creativity is critical to economic growth, and almost two thirds believed creativity is valuable to society. Yet, only a paltry one in four believed they are living up to their own creative potential.

Adobe’s research correlates with our own experience. We regularly ask conference attendees and boardrooms filled with people to raise their hands if they think of themselves as creative. Usually, out of the tens, hundreds or even thousands of audience members, only a few will put up their hands.

In a world where robots are predicted to dominate the replicable processes in our work, leaving the more creative tasks to us humans, this is not a good result.

Creative skills are particularly important because they help us solve problems, find new ways to do things, challenge the status quo and ultimately move the human race forward. Creativity, therefore, is a key area of Forever Skills and it’s one we all need to develop.

The question is, Why don’t we think we’re creative?

Perhaps it’s because we seem to think creativity is something ...