A case for creative thinking – Jake Stones on why getting inventive could change the world

Image: spacex.com

Nearly every product in your life is the result of creativity. Some things happened by chance like plastic, which was accidentally invented when chemist Leo Hendrick Baekeland was looking for a replacement to the imported insulator shellac. But most of the other stuff started out as nothing, then someone had an epiphany, or thought really hard on an idea, and hey-presto, a concept that formerly didn’t exist now does. Interestingly, it seems that our planet’s future is entirely tied to our ability to adapt and change. Meaning creativity isn’t just an interesting and somewhat healthy idea, as you’ll shortly see, but it’s also vital to our future.

At its most basic definition, ‘creativity’ means using the imagination to solve a problem or invent something new. Which presents two possible levels, or parts, of creativity.

Firstly, the problem-solving tier is understandably the easiest. It’s the equivalent of piecing together different parts of a puzzle until, slowly but surely, you have the picture you’re after. Creativity of this kind can mean realising there’s a traffic jam ahead and deciding to use some nifty back roads to skip around it, or quickly calculating what kind of meal can be made from asparagus, baked beans and tofu just before your in-laws arrive for a dinner.