News & Updates:

Like the website?
Recommend Us To a Friend

6 • Other Characteristics

In addition to the five basic qualities, researchers have also been able to define a few secondary characteristics that are significant to business executives:

Redefinition Skill. This is the ability to shift ideas, conceptions, objects, or people—to use them in new ways. It is important because all creativity does not call for the invention of new or original problem solutions. Much of it, particularly in business, calls for an imaginative use of old ideas or things in a new setting or situation.

Abstracting Ability. This is an analytical ability, which shows up in the capacity to break down complex or difficult problems into their more easily handled components, while, at the same time, keeping track of the interrelationships of the parts. The presence of this ability may, by itself, be a strong indicator of creative potential. When a noncreative person is given a complicated problem, he tends to become bewildered or confused by the whole big mess—he often wastes a great deal of time just trying to figure out where to start. But a more creative person will start wherever he can by biting off any convenient-size chunk and go­ing to work on it.

Synthesizing Ability. This characteristic is the ability to pull seemingly unrelated ideas or objects into a working whole. As we have already seen, synthesized ideas may make up the bulk of the ideas used and needed in business. And this ability to see through the appearances of ideas or objects, which simply confuse or mislead less creative minds, and to see true relationships and possibilities for combinations, is invaluable to an idea man.

Organizational Ability. The popular conception of highly creative people is that they are, if anything, slightly ^organized in their thinking. Actually, while this may be true in relation to their personal lives, modes of dress, eating habits, and other surface signs, which the person intent upon more important things may not even be conscious of, it is not true in their thinking patterns on the problems they are trying to solve. This ability shows itself strongly in the way such people can organize a problem; find the place to start; drive themselves into idea production; and then follow through completely and without waste motion to a successful conclusion of their efforts.

So these, in broadly generalized descriptions, are the things we know about creative people. These are the qualities you should strive to develop or improve in your own thinking if you really want to improve your own imaginative output. But re­member that possession of these traits alone cannot make you a creative person. They will merely give you the capabilities toward that end.

You can draw an analogy by considering an automobile driver. The good driver knows that for safe driving he needs good tires, good brakes, good eyesight, a steering wheel, and a knowledge of driving laws. But he also knows that all these things will not necessarily make him a safe driver. He also needs a proper attitude —a way of driving to make himself a careful driver. And it is the same with creativity. Mere knowledge of the principles underlying creative thought or creative personalities, and a familiarity with techniques and methods used by other idea men, will not make you a creative person. You also need the attitude.

Related terms include business opportunity and small business opportunity magazine.