Have you ever met a five-year-old who apologized for his artwork? A six-year-old who didn’t believe her new song or game were amazing?
Children don’t question their creativity or ability, they just accept it as normal and love to share their talents with others. Then they grow up and tend to lose both their confidence and their creative edge. In fact, you might be familiar with the research George Land did in 1968; it was so amazing to me I’d like to share it here.
In 1968 he gave 1600 five-year-old children a creativity test to see how highly creative they scored. This was the same test NASA used to select innovative engineers and scientists. He retested the same children when they were 10 years old, and again at 15. He later tested 280,000 adults to see how highly creative they scored. Test results were shocking: Five-year-olds, 98%, 10-year-olds, 30%, 15-year-olds- 12%, 25-year-olds- 2%.
Where did we lose our curiosity? While we can’t reclaim what we had at five or 15, we can decide to broaden our perspective, start asking better questions and not settling for the routine or easiest answer.
In today’s business environment we don’t need more cookie cutter thinkers, we need those who believe in their worth, challenge the way it’s always been done, respectfully shake things up and hopefully have some fun in the process.
