Creativity or Connectivity; When looking for inspiration, it's all a matter of perspective

Inspiration can come from all sorts of places, contemporaries, social media, the wider internet, a story someone has told you, new tech and ideas, even just by literally doing nothing, sitting in a place and being fully present, conscious of what is happening around you and observing the goings on of those occupying that space.

The truth is, creative inspiration can come from anywhere, the difference between people who seem to be overflowing with creative ideas and the rest is that the former don't just sit around waiting for a spark of creativity to strike them like some mysterious force from the unknown, in the words of Stephen King "Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work."

So if getting inspiration for a project is an active process involving effort, observation and exposure to different types of information, is creativity something that is inherent, something that you either have or you don't have or is it something that can be learned? A process rather than a property of an individuals character.

Personally, I think all people have creative potential, the thing is they haven't yet been taught a creative process which would allow them to more effectively build upon preexisting ideas and technology in novel ways. Those who don't feel like they are achieving their creative potential either need to increase their exposure to ideas and information or make adjustments to their process.

I think Jacque Fresco, American futurist, industrial designer and self-professed social engineer best known for 'The Venus Project' put it best when he said in an interview:

"Creativity is taking known elements and putting them together in different ways. In other words when you go to the movies and see a martian you think 'gee those Hollywood people people have good imaginations', no they don't, a martian has a grasshoppers head and a crabs claws. All thinking is putting known elements together"

Really great creations arise when someone can bring together elements from an array of seemingly unrelated fields, something that has drawn from a variety of different sources and information will seem so far from the ideas that influenced its creation that the object will appear to be revolutionary, innovative and often times once it has been made, quite obvious.

"Bad artists imitate, great artists steal" in the words of Pablo Picasso.. Or was it Banksy?

Either way the message is the same, the more you can draw inspiration from others and what has been proven to work before, the better the work you produce. No matter if that's in art, engineering or design.

Creative mindsets can be applied to almost all areas of life when challenges arise, often times its essential when tackling problems which haven't been encountered before.

But that's it, creativity is a state of mind, something that arises from altering your perspective on things and asking questions on the subject which will open you up to different ways of looking at it allowing you to approach the challenges with an assortment of options in how they might be overcome and letting the process guide you through to the final and, hopefully, best solution.