Tips on How to be Innovative and Creative at Work!

The innovative and creative mindset mixed with some technical skills is a deadly combination, bound to appeal to the majority of employers you will meet. The question of how to be innovative triggers a two-sided story. Some may say that if you do not have the X factor, the forward-thinking attitude, you cannot develop it manually. While people who can naturally generate unique ideas are lucky, there are tips on how to be innovative at work. 

Is innovation training really worth it?

People frequently regard innovation training as unnecessary or even pointless. Instead, they focus on polishing their hard skills. It is more straightforward and measurable to say that one knows SQL, or has long-term experience working with various software applications. If you say that you have learned how to become creative, can someone challenge you on that statement? As opposed to hard skills, soft ones are revealed over time, through projects, initiative, and other actions that represent your originality. 

Nevertheless, even if you do have the necessary hard skills but lack creativity and innovative thinking, you will struggle to generate ideas for projects. Of course, if your job follows very strict guidelines and you regularly implement orders from people above you, it is possible that the lack of forward-thinking won’t be an issue. In such a case, why bother learning how to be innovative? The innovative attitude could also mean that you, as a programmer, aim to find novel solutions to prevalent issues, to make your code more readable, or to add advanced features that enhance security or workflow. 

Recognizing an innovative personality

It might be challenging to identify whether a person is an innovator or not. However, several personality traits are closely related to the question of how to be innovative. 

Specialists indicate that innovative people usually express a strong desire for autonomy, are imaginative, curious, energetic, and confident. They are open to new experiences and flexible in their thinking patterns and idea generation. 

Furthermore, innovative thinkers are usually the rebels, the breakers of the current models, and approaches. After all, innovations are meant for revolutionizing the existing social or technical processes. For example, a traditional vacuum cleaner is slowly being replaced by robot vacuums. In this case, you can see the advantage of choosing to learn how to be innovative at work: your technical skills can help you bring creative ideas to life.

What will you learn in this course?

In this course on how to become creative and innovative, I will provide you with some historical background regarding the ways creativity has been treated. As I have already mentioned, I will also discuss the standard personality of forward-thinkers, and present the obstacles that might be preventing you from taking the initiative. By learning how to enhance your innovative thinking, you will quickly start recognizing valuable opportunities. Overall, being creative gives you the power to break out of the vicious cycle of repetitive and tedious tasks!