Our country was founded on creativity

“ACCESS TO TALENTED and creative people is to modern business what access to coal and iron ore was to steel-making”, according to author and thought-leader, Richard Florida.

A common response we hear is that creativity is limited to a small group of people with particular talents. The misperception is that most people don’t want to be creative, couldn’t do it if asked, and would be very uncomfortable in an environment where creativity was expected of them. This belief is false. Every human is endowed with an incredible capacity for creativity and innovation. The broad agreement among economists is that economic growth comes from creative or knowledge-based occupations. And, when we stifle that creativity by old-style command and control management mindsets and practices, we risk losing talented people. According to a 2004 Economist magazine article, “The real foreign threat to the America economy is not terrorism; it’s the way we make creative and talented people stop wanting to come here.”

Doug Diehl is a nationally recognized painter known for his evocative landscape scenes of the Southwest. Doug has also started and led many small businesses and is a voracious reader of history, art and philosophy. In a recent interview during The Business of Intuition Podcast Doug shared these fascinating insights into creativity and its role in business:

• Painting a picture is similar to building a company’s vision,
• Intuition is a function of creativity,
• It’s possible to balance both the right and left sides of the brain at the same time,
• Analytical thinking can often springboard to creative thought,
• A person’s biggest hindrance is their ego and pride.