Creativity in Action

World Creativity and Innovation Week runs from April 15 to April 21 each year. Founded as World Creativity and Innovation Day back in 2001 by visionary and all-around amazing person, Marci Segal, it encourages people to explore new ideas, experiment with different ways of thinking, and pay attention to how creativity shows up in everyday life. The idea is simple enough; creativity and innovation aren’t rare events, they’re ongoing processes. We often think of creativity and innovation as those earthshattering, breakthrough moments, but most of the time, it’s just happening in the background while people go about their work, solve problems, and figure things out as they go. While I’m an advocate for practising creativity year-round, World Creativity and Innovation Week is a good reminder to do just this, and maybe pick up a few new ways to look at things creatively.

There’s nothing worse than being told to “be more creative” when you’re fresh out of ideas, even if that voice is coming from inside your own head! Creativity means different things to different people, and what it ends up looking like can be as different as night and day. With that in mind, when you want to intentionally get more creative, think about what it means to you and what you can do to flex that muscle.

For Authentic Blues, creativity is insight, meaning, and making sense of what matters. Ideas often emerge from reflection or from noticing how something could be more connected, more human, or more intentional. There’s a strong sense of purpose running underneath it. Innovation happens when those insights become something others can engage with in a tangible way.

To get your creativity flowing, try one of these:

• Take one idea you’ve been sitting with and put it into words that someone else could respond to. That can be a conversation, a short written reflection, or even a rough outline of a possibility.
• Share that idea before it feels finished, and pay attention to what happens when it exists outside your own thinking.
• Take a big idea and do your best to scale it down into something concrete enough that it could be tested or explored further.

Creativity for Inquiring Greens starts with thinking. It’s asking questions, noticing patterns, and following possibilities. Ideas multiply quickly, connecting in ways that don’t go from point A to point B, and don’t have a lot of structure. There’s a strong drive to understand something deeply before narrowing it down. Innovation depends on eventually choosing a direction and working with it in the real world.

When you’re out of ideas and want to get more creative, try one of these:

• Pick one idea you’ve been thinking about and explain it as clearly as possible to someone else, or even just on paper. Assume they don’t know anything about your idea.
• Actively challenge one assumption behind an idea you already have. Look at it from as many different angles as you can.
• Set a boundary around your thinking (time, resources, audience) and see how it reshapes the idea.

One of the things I hear the most from Organized Golds is that they don’t think they’re creative. But that’s not the case. Creativity is refinement, structure, and improvement. There’s a strong instinct to make things work better, clearer, or more efficiently. While it might not always get labelled as “creative,” it’s a form of creativity that’s focused on shaping and strengthening what already exists. Innovation comes through evolution: small, meaningful improvements that make something more usable or reliable over time.

When you’ve been told to “be more creative” without any other direction, try one of these to get inspired:

• Take a process or routine you use and redesign one part of it to work better. Not a full redesign, just a couple of tweaks you’ll notice in the end.
• Build a simple system around an idea that’s been floating around, but you’ve never had the chance to do anything about.
• Try solving a problem in a slightly different order than you normally would, and see if that changes the outcome.

Resourceful Oranges are often thought of as the most creative personality, but really their flavour of creativity is just more visible. It comes across as experimentation, action, and momentum. Ideas don’t stay theoretical for long; they tend to get tested quickly in real-world conditions. There’s a strong preference for learning by doing rather than planning extensively. Innovation happens when ideas meet reality and stick around to turn into something useful.

It’s never a bad time to build on your creativity. Try one of these to get the ball rolling:

• Turn an idea into something you can show rather than describe (a mock-up, rough prototype, sketch, voice note, quick demo.
• Combine two unrelated ideas you’ve already had into something new and tangible, then actually try it out.
• Build something using only what you already have available; no extra tools, no extra prep.

If there’s a common thread across all of this, it’s that creativity and innovation rarely start from the same place, but they do need to meet somewhere. Most of us aren’t short on ideas, and we’re not short on ways of working with them either. We’re usually just better at one part of the process than another. World Creativity and Innovation Week is a good excuse to notice that, and to experiment with a little outside-the-box thinking and letting your ideas travel a little further than they normally do, whether that means slowing them down, shaping them, testing them, or finally giving them a chance to exist outside your head.