Creativity in Business
I was talking with my cousin last night about the effects on math and science of the scaling back of the arts in schools. My background being in business and hers in the arts (piano performance and pedagogy…super amazing piano teacher), our conversations always meander down some interesting paths.
As we talked, I began to realize the role that fostering creativity in general plays in the progression of the field of business. It gets renamed as “innovation”, but whatever you call it, it takes a mind that’s willing to expand and reach beyond convention and facts to push the boundaries of any field. You remove creativity and you’re left with measurement and problem solving…immeasurably important unto themselves, but left alone, they become agents of stagnation and complacency.
There is a quality of ease of experimentation and expansion that is simply more readily accessed while sitting at a piano keyboard than there is working even the simplest algebraic formulas. It’s also a much more personal experience. You pluck a string, you make a sound. You make a mistake, and you hear something new, beautiful, repulsive, strange or fun. Of course, business is well marked with failed plans that became successes, but those mistakes are generally relegated to history books and some of the highest levels of study and practice.
The very nature of business calls for structure and standardization in the early years of education, but there is boundless opportunity in developing learners as complete participants in the field.
