"The 6 Mythis of Creativity"

Questions for Active Readers page 108

- Describe the "6 Myths of Creativity"

1. Creativity comes from Creative Styles
It is not true that some people are creative and some aren't. Everybody is capable of being creative at some point. It also relies in a certain kind of things like experience, talent and the capacity to put through uncreative dry spells. You have to like what you are doing, your job in order to be creative.

2. Money is a Creativity Motivator
When people are more worried about their paid or their compensation they are less creative. They put their minds and effort in how much and when they are going to get paid then their creation. People are creative when they put all of their interest in their work. If the task is beyond their skill levels, they can get frustrated; if its below their skill level, they can get bored. It just has to be a balance.

3. Time Pressure Fuels Creativity
It has been shown that working under pressure cuts creativity. People need to focus on their work with time and tranquility. Creativity takes time, so they can organize all their ideas and put them all together. It's also been shown that when there is pressure involved their creativity not only goes away for a days but it takes the next two days to come again.

4. Fear Forces Breakthroughs
People tend to be more creative when they are happy about something or are in a good mood. Creativity is correlated with joy and love and it doesn't work with anger, fear, and anxiety. When you have a good day, the next day will be better. This is because your creativity mood has a better chance to be creative the next day. The environment also influences in your creativeness.

5. Competition beats Collaboration
When there is competition involved there is no collaboration. They stop sharing their ideas. This could be a problem because no one it is able to pull all the ideas together. It takes more than one person to do it.

6. A Streamlined Organization is a Creative Organization
Downsizing is a reason for creativity to suffer. It takes the stimulant for creativeness, even five months after it.

-How did Teresa Amabile, the Harvard Business School professor who studies creativity in the workplace, design her research? What kinds of information was she looking for? What seems especially surprising or interesting about her approach to research?
She design her research in a ways of contradicting all the myths that exist for creativity. She explain all the factors that could interfere with creativity. It was interest to know that there are some myths that are not true and she prove them with studies and souvenirs that she made to an audience

-Who is the audience?
For those that think that not everybody has creativity. I was one of those who thought that creativity was not on me. But now i can realize that it depend on your mood and environment and how you handle it.