I am fascinated by human creativity and how our upbringing and schooling causes us to gradually lose touch with our innate creative abilities. I recently came across Harvard Business’ series on The Future of Creativity and I think it provides an insight discussion on how we are going to rise to enormous challenges of 21st century.

It seems many of the old rules and ways of thinking that were were taught in school, no longer apply. Mandatory school was created for the convenience of adults to babysit  children and make them more easily “managed” as workers and citizens by industrial society. But the sad result is that so many children have natural talents and gifts that don’t fit into the fixed model that the school system caters to.

Today, while our traditional school systems are stressing standardization, the psychology of reward and fear, and routine patterns of thinking, the workplace is demanding more conceptual thinking, self-directed motivation and the ability to be flexible in all kinds of different situations.

The series involves a number of interviews with fascinating thinkers by Andrew Keen, the author of The Cult of the Amateur.

Daniel Pink on Creativity in the Information Age

Daniel Pink talks about the shift from left to right, not in politics, but in how we use our brains. The industrial age required procedural left-brain thinking but now to fix the problems created by the industrial age and compete in the fast-moving Information Age we need a more creative, right-brain way of approaching and solving our problems.