Creativity and Divergent Thinking: two critical skills

creativity and divergent thinking
Click on the map to enlarge it
In a precedent post, I wrote about Sir Ken Robinson´s arguments about Creativity and Divergent Thinking. Browsing the Web this week, I came across a very interesting video,  where Polly Peterson, PhD., explains the importance of these skills, from a psychological point of view.
In the mindmap above, I summarized the key elements of this video. One of the most important arguments, in my opinion, is that Divergent Thinking is very important in contexts where multiple possibilities are needed to be taken in account.
The complexity of our global and connected world needs people who can not only find single answers to problems but people who are able to find out multiple solutions to a single problem.
Divergent Thinking is not opposite to Analytical Intelligence. There is a complementarity between the two skills. The danger is to encourage only one of the two skills, like the IQ Tests.

At the end of the video, Polly Peterson gives us some tips for improving our Creativity and Divergent Thinking Skills:

  • Achieving Expertise 
  • Willingness to take risks
  • Intrinsic Motivation
  • Encouraging both hemispheres communication with specific activities 

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