Topic 2

What creativity is

Creativity is a phenomenon in which something new and innovative is generated, which can be an object:

• immaterial (an idea, a scientific theory, a musical composition or a joke)

• physical (an invention, a printed literary work or a painting).

So creativity is the ability to develop new ideas or new concepts, to find alternative or possibilities, or to combine those already existing and known but in a different and innovative way, developing new solutions or advantages that did not exist before, and that may be useful in solving problems, creating new opportunities, communicating with others, and entertaining ourselves and others.

Please watch the following video to better understand what creativity is:

Critical thinking

Critical thinking consists in knowing how to analyze information, situations and experiences in an objective way, distinguishing reality from one's subjective impressions and prejudices, it means recognizing the factors that influence one's own and others' thoughts and behaviors and for this it helps to remain lucid in choices.

1. Analyze information and situations objectively, evaluating advantages and disadvantages;

2. Distinguish the reality of the facts from one's subjective impressions and one's personal prejudices and interpretations

3. Recognize the external factors that influence one's own and others' thoughts and behaviors

The fundamental strategies for developing critical thinking are:

1. Reflect: it is about making an effort to be reflective, that is, stopping to think rather than making impulsive judgments, accepting the first idea that comes to mind or what the mass media or social media propose;

2. Motivate: consists in asking questions, thus pushing the person to have good reasons in support of their opinions;

3. Search for alternatives: it consists in emphasizing the search for alternative hypotheses and different points of view.

Please watch the following videos to better understand what is critical thinking:

A useful exercise for Critical thinking

Some good rules to follow for applying critical thinking are:

1. Evaluate your opinions (Before developing critical thinking about what surrounds us, the advice is to start from yourself trying to evaluate every time you are about to make a decision about the possible advantages and disadvantages.

2. Remove the prejudice (it consists in dealing with one's own prejudices. We can all have some prejudices about a colleague or friend. Committing to evaluating the point of view of others, identifying and removing some barriers can help to have a more detached point of view on the other, favoring the development of critical thinking.

3. Accept the error (Evaluating each situation with detachment, noting the pros and cons, are excellent exercises; however, they do not completely protect against error. Every human being is wrong, even those with an excellent critical spirit. In order to prevent the ability to analyze, observe and evaluate situations from turning into presumption, it is always necessary to keep in mind that the error is just around the corner).

4. Divide the problem (It is useful to tackle a big problem by dividing it into many small problems or many small intermediate steps to be achieved. Working on small problems one step at a time allows you to easily manage even large and complex situations that may seem impossible to solve.

Creativity skills

The most important creativity skills that a social entrepreneur (person who pursues new applications that have the potential to solve community problems) needs to have to be creative are:

1. Contact with reality (because to develop a social enterprise you need to understand the reality of society well).

2. Empathy (since the social entrepreneur must know how to get in touch with people, listen to their problems, but above all understand them from their point of view).

3. Resourcefulness (which is the ability to see resources and / or solutions where others do not see them)

4. Organizing (because without the ability to organize a change cannot be achieved and therefore this ability constitutes the entrepreneurial dimension of social entrepreneurship).

Please watch the following videos to better understand what a social entrepreneur is: