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Harnessing Your Creativity 149

Greenspan, chairman of the US Federal Reserve Board, wrote
recently in the Wall Street Journal:

Virtually unimaginable half a century ago was the extent to which concepts
and ideas would substitute for physical resources and human brawn in the
production of goods and services.

You can create value out of thin air if you can think creatively.
There is a myth that you are born creative, that creativity is
something you either do or do not have. While this clearly applies
to particular aspects—in music and other arts, for example—it is
untrue that you cannot learn to be more creative. It is quite possi-
ble to make creativity a way of being.
As French scientist Louis Pasteur put it at the beginning of
the nineteenth century: “Chance favors only the prepared mind.”
You need to ensure that your mind is prepared so that it is more
likely to enjoy those surges of power called inspiration.

THE CHARACTERISTICS OF CREATIVE PEOPLE

If creativity has been misunderstood, then so too has the notion of
what it is to be creative. It has been assumed that only artists, musi-
cians, and media people are creative. This is not the case.
It is axiomatic of the idea of being creative that no one per-
son’s list of characteristics will look the same as another’s. For what
it is worth, here are the kind of words and phrases I associate with
being creative:
Risk taking Willing to see many perspectives
Challenging Not overcontrolling
Happy to live with uncertainty Not too bound by social pressure
Happy to live with complexity Happy to be different
Openness In touch with emotions
Exploring Playful
Able to suspend judgment Irreverent

You can see from a list like this that this kind of quality is desirable
in many business sectors. Within organizations, creative people are