5 keys to unlocking creativity

… and why it’s good to keep working out at the creativity gym

Imagine:

· An artist sitting in front of her easel, mind focused as she faces a blank canvas and thinks hard and long about where and how she will make her first mark….

· A games designer, hunched over his keyboard, frantically stabbing the keys as he creates the storyboard sketch for a new interactive game to run on smartphones….

· A team of engineers huddled around a simple mock-up of a new product, pulling it into shape, scribbling notes on the flip chart behind them as they gradually refine the idea, giving shape to what will eventually become the baby buggy of the future, but which now looks like the undercarriage of a very old and rickety aeroplane….

· A nurse on the night shift, sitting alone at her desk in the hospital ward, quietly taking time to sketch out an idea she has had for a new way to handle the medication trolley to make sure she and her colleagues don’t inadvertently give the wrong dose (or worse, the wrong tablets) to her patients….

· An aid worker, sitting with a group of refugees, talking about the mobile phone app she is hoping to develop to help solve the problem of reconnecting missing members of families reconnect after they have fled a war zone….