Thursday, February 10, 2011

Help Wanted: Kids with Creativity

Last spring, IBM ran a most impressive study of 1500 CEO's from 60 countries.  One of the key points identified from their study is that in order to compete in the world today - and tomorrow - our leaders will need a strong sense of creativity.  And they don't mean people who can color inside the lines.

From the study, we learned that creative leaders:

 
Creative leaders are higly innovative and use that to change business models.

Expect to make more new business model changes to realize their strategies
(Maybe this is the child who makes a birthday card by using scraps of paper, tearing and gluing and stapling and taping, all the while looking for things around the house that might help embellish the card as well.)

Are highly innovative and use that to change business models
(Possibly the 3 year old that appears to live in the block center.  He encourages his friends to join him in making a tower, but upon realizing (visioning) they don't have enough blocks, suggests they build a boat instead.)

Invite discruptive innovation, and invite others to join them
(Perhaps the preschooler who gets up during circle time to see the bird at the window, calls to their friends to join, and suggests they make an INSIDE bird feeder so the birds can come into the class.)

Are courageous and visonary enough to change the status quo
(Have you ever seen a boy in a pink tutu?)

I've attached the article for you. It's time to rethink how we teach our children.


1 comment:

Tina said...

Great points! We need to let kids be creative and not fill their every waking moment with planned activity.