When you’re sitting in your office, looking at the bottom line and developing new strategies and presentations on how to improve sales and drive revenue, sometimes it can feel as though there is no use for creativity in your corporate job. But let me tell you that it is far from the case. Many of the right-brained, numbers driven jobs that used to be American are getting outsourced to other countries where the language barrier doesn’t affect production and costs are much lower.
This is creating what some are calling a “Creative Economy.” While all of these other services are being taken to other countries, the innovative and entrepreneurial spirit is very much being nurtured in today’s economy. Creative, out of the box thinking is quickly becoming a huge asset to even executive level employees. The great thing about this shift is that, as a woman, you have an advantage since creative thinking is typically right in women’s comfort zone. Here are a few reasons why women and creativity go together so well.
We’re emotional. A lot of what inspires creativity is the emotional reactions that we have to ideas and concepts. Because we are innately more in touch with our emotions than our male counterparts, it’s much easier for us to begin the creative process of exploring the connections in our heart that make a creative idea resonate.
We have a natural intuition. Call it your “gut” or your “instinct,” but women have an innate ability to sense when something creative is good or bad. Because we don’t ignore our intuition over logic or reason, sometimes the results can be a unique idea that results in wild success despite what numbers and data might suggest.
We thrive in a group dynamic. So often, creativity and the creative process are the result of a group of people bouncing ideas off of one another. For centuries, women have spent the better part of their time in groups and feel more comfortable “talking out” ideas in a group of their peers. Men, on the other hand, naturally try and compete with other members of the group. Just like the saying goes, “It takes a village to raise a child,” it takes a group of people to make a creative idea successful.
So next time you find yourself repressing your creative urges, stop. Remember that in order to be a good business person in this economy, you have to retain those wonderful creative qualities. It’s what will make women and business so successful in the years to come.
