What it involves
CREATIVITY is the ability to think outside the box, reaching new and functional conclusions suitable for solving a problem or seizing an opportunity. (Bertone, 1993)
The growing attention of companies towards creativity has become a fundamental element to keep up with scientific and technological progress. From a competitive standpoint, companies face strong competitive pressure as they manage market globalization and demanding customer requirements.
To ensure companies are not caught unprepared, it is necessary to achieve high organizational flexibility and adaptability to the continuous changes in the markets. In other words, besides preparing a favorable environment for change, organizations need to employ human resources capable of using massive doses of creativity in their work activities. It is therefore advantageous to develop a creative thinking style that generates positivity, new ideas, and is capable of breaking free from overly used and now useless patterns.
Creativity and Mindfulness
Creativity is a human intellectual expression determined by perceptual, cognitive, affective, and emotional availability, mental sharpness, and imaginative and fantasy capabilities.
Creativity is the ability to combine known mental elements in a new way; it is the creative and innovative product that arises and transitions from short-term memory traces to long-term memory traces. The judging and evaluative activity of the mind blocks the creative process.
Neuroscientists have demonstrated that Mindfulness techniques, or Mental Presence, are very useful for suspending judgment, observing what is present, and staying in the experience. In particular, “staying”:
- broadens perspective, allowing for a wider view
- increases informational content, generating an infinite number of possible hypotheses without filtering information through the rational mind
- allows observation of information and capturing the greatest number of associations and connections.
- allows integration
Benefits for the Company
The practice of Mindfulness renews our view of reality, counters automatisms, and prepares the mind to produce ideas and receive insights. To learn and invent something new, one must set aside inferences, judgments, and what has been known in the past. Mindfulness does just that: it trains the mind to clear itself of the crowd of projections and shadows that prevent a clear vision of reality.
Confirming this, recent scientific studies have shown that “open monitoring” meditation techniques, like Mindfulness, have a strong impact on creativity (L. Colzato, Leiden University). They promote so-called “divergent thinking,” a fluid cognitive style predisposed to generating new ideas. According to other researchers (J. Greenberg, K. Reiner, N. Merain), the practice of Mindfulness reduces cognitive rigidity because it trains practitioners not to be “blinded” by past experiences and learned models, fostering the development of new and creative ways to respond to reality.
Achieving an open, flexible, and creative thinking style is essential for success and distinction in today’s world. This type of path shifts the focus from doing to being, from “what” is being done to “how” it is being done.
Mindfulness practices help the mind free itself from automatic, compulsive, anxious thoughts, making it clear and capable of accessing cognitive and emotional resources, maintaining an effective balance among them, allowing those working in the corporate environment:
- to stimulate intuition (wise mind), integrating rational and emotional mind
- to be creatively open in their responses, rather than being conditioned by mental models
- to enhance their problem-solving and creativity skills, which serve as a functional prerequisite for the brainstorming phase
- (especially for those in managerial roles) to build trust through openness to listening and dialogue, creating conditions suitable for synergistic exchange and the development of creative skills
- to not be subject to the conditioning of stereotyped mental models or automatic responses, always keeping in mind, thanks to increased attentional focus, every piece of data from the context of their professional reality.
- to rely on their own intuitive wisdom.
Programs aimed at developing creativity have multiple value in improving corporate human resources, starting from involvement, motivation, and performance; aspects that positively influence the reduction of frustrations, tensions, and conflicts, with the recovery of useful resources and corporate intellectual capital.
At the same time, evidence suggests that improving corporate culture, thus better management of human resources, also improves the organizational climate.
