Earlier this week Newsweek put out an insightful report on the decline of American creativity. The report profiles the research of professor E. Paul Torrance started some years ago and geared toward measuring the creativity of children. Through a series of tests, children are asked to perform tasks that indicate to psychologists a “Creativity Quotient” of sorts. What’s most interesting is that while the tests are obviously imperfect, the correlation between a child’s CQ and their eventual accomplishments as adults was “more than three times stronger for childhood creativity than childhood IQ.”
Furthermore, Newsweek goes on to describe the importance of “creativity” for success, the overarching theme being that the decline of creativity in the United States not only has individual consequences but implications on a macroeconomic level.
“The potential consequences are sweeping. The necessity of human ingenuity is undisputed. A recent IBM poll of 1,500 CEOs identified creativity as the No. 1 “leadership competency” of the future. Yet it’s not just about sustaining our nation’s economic growth. All around us are matters of national and international importance that are crying out for creative solutions, from saving the Gulf of Mexico to bringing peace to Afghanistan to delivering health care. Such solutions emerge from a healthy marketplace of ideas, sustained by a populace constantly contributing original ideas and receptive to the ideas of others.”
The lesson here: quit those video games and do something…anything.
http://www.newsweek.com/2010/07/10/the-creativity-crisis.html
