FROM DILIP MUKERJEA

"Genius is in-born, may it never be still-born."

"Oysters, irritated by grains of sand, give birth to pearls. Brains, irritated by curiosity, give birth to ideas."

"Brainpower is the bridge to the future; it is what transports you from wishful thinking to willful doing."

"Unless you keep learning & growing, the status quo has no status."

Friday, March 2, 2012

Braindancing Bytes: 'INSIGHTS ON INNOVATION for the CREATIVE EDUCATOR', Part I, by Dilip Mukerjea

Part I: STIMULATING CREATIVITY

Are you creative enough to meet the challenges of the Third Millennium?

Creative thinking involves both hemispheres of the brain, sometimes alternating, at other times, in synchrony. Ideas hop, skip, dance, a tango often culminating in creative resonance, where great insights explode into consciousness.

The creative brain views peril as a situation bearing promise, risk as an event concealing reward, a setback as an episode for launching success.

The best ideas are a multiplicity of ideas, constantly interacting in a ballet of balance, counterbalance, and feedback loops, very much the way our sex hormones function.

Issues that are intrinsically of high interest arouse the creative individual. This person is governed and guided more by inner stimulus than by outer demand. The impulse to create comes not from external order, but via internal compulsion.

Not preoccupied with the pursuit of happiness, he or she knows happiness from immersion in creative activities. Never unduly influenced or enslaved by established knowledge, the creative individual appreciates that creativity will always be the natural enemy of dogma and conformity.

One of the most powerful ways of stimulating creativity is via the process of visualization. Internal imagery, whether clear or murky, frequently contains the kernel of a new, original idea.


There  are  enormous psychic differences between people who live creative lives and people who are commanded to be creative by a corporate mandate.

The creative personality relishes periods of privacy, but is seldom withdrawn, isolated or uncommunicative. Creativity is impelled by imagination; for ideas to spark into existence, imagination must never be reined in, or else it will shrink and shrivel. No matter what emerges, ideas need to become tangible reality.

Creative evolution involves transformational learning. This is the identification, acquisition, and application of intellectual material, so that it is converted into intellectual capital. Only then can an organization and the people within, reach their goals.

To augment the chances of your ideas being accepted, you have to be especially sensitive to the political matrix in your organization. Yet, it is never easy to extinguish the human spirit, especially one propelled by an innate sense of innovation.

In a cosmos of infinite variation and continuous creation, we have natural conditions for human ingenuity to flourish. Creativity and innovation emerge from a sense of purpose. Curiosity and diversity inspire experimentation and adaptation, whereas meaning and significance determine purpose; this is what engages our creativity.

Creative aficionados are not set back by setbacks. When they fall, they make sure it’s on their backs, knowing that if they can look up, they can get up. In truth, they believe that nothing succeeds like failure!

Systems, organisations, communities, societies, nations, are all a collection of elements that comprise an invisible group creative intelligence. Purposeful focus can harvest this intelligence. The output is a force that glistens with innovation.

[to be continued in Part II in the Next Post:]
© Dilip Mukerjea

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