Curiosity, Creativity, and Innovation

Often, as educators and leaders, we like to throw around buzzwords like innovation, creativity, and curiosity. These are the products and fuel for our learners - whether they are other educators and leaders or our students.

We start to use these words almost interchangeably in conversations as we talk about our excitement in regards to a lesson, an idea, a student creation, or an "Aha moment!" we had during the day.

We don't stop to think about where we are in the progression of these terms and how that progression might affect our intentions. We may not even realize that they are all three slightly different things.

Let's start with curiosity, a key ingredient to capturing any learner's attention. In fact, we're fairly certain students actually retain more information when they're actually curious. Students who approach a topic with curiosity will retain more facts which they can then use when it comes to creating. Curiosity begets questioning and when we start to ask questions, we start to think more divergently. Divergent thinking has long been analyzed as the beginning of the creative process - the ability to "develop thoughts in different directions." Yale's School of Management Professor Richard Foster has a few other ideas as to the nature of creativity which might relate to divergent thinking, defining creativity as "to associate two previously unassociated fields." He points out that creative solutions are "insightful, novel, simple, elegant, and generative" in his lecture. The idea of creative solutions being generative also means they create new creative solutions - much like divergent thinking creates a cascade of ideas.

He separates creativity and innovation - something many fail to do, pointing out that creativity is the act of producing ideas while innovation is the act of applying those ideas. Often, educators and leaders overlook this slight difference and use the terms interchangeably.

Curiosity, then, is the fuel to creativity - it is the spark that can ignite the creative drive, the brilliant idea. It is the curious who are most likely to become the creative, I think. Once the ideas are created, they are then applied - that application is the innovation. Sometimes the creators are not the innovators. Often, it takes a nudge to get the curious to start creating.

If we stop to consider the relation of the three terms, and we realize where we can begin, it becomes easier to integrate creativity and, yes, even innovation in our classrooms. As educators and learners, we cannot throw students or our educators into the wind and suggest they immediately create. I think, instead, we need to foster their curiosity, first. It is the curious who will create because they question - and when they question they come up with strings of ideas (divergent thoughts). When they've produced these novel ideas, they can then do the innovating - or inspire others to do the innovating and apply those ideas to something.

#creativity #curiosity #innovation