Creative Thinking: Strategies to Enhance Creative Capital in Society
Our world is facing multiple crises that demand increasingly innovative solutions. This is happening just when the creative capacity of our society as a whole has steadily decreased (The Creativity Crisis by Kyung Hee Kim). The challenge is to develop more creative capital. The drive to be curious supports our ability to generate ideas that are new and valuable while the drive to conform allows us to spread those ideas. Students will study not only creativity, but characteristics of conformity that maximize the spread ideas. Creative ‘muscle’ is strengthened when people are curious, ask questions, speculate more, and test theories rather than passively observe. Creative capital increases when groups of people have an easy and attractive way to do that. The goal of this course is not only to teach individuals creative techniques, but to teach how to spread creative thinking by making creativity as contagious as a weaponized virus, as addictive as an opioid drug, as habitual as your afternoon snack.