Sunday, February 22, 2015

Creativity & Innovation in Indian Social Life


Innovation and Creativity is a prerequisite for all aspects of life - irrespective of the field. In a hyper competitive world, creativity and innovation has become a key factor for success. Even in politics - leaders like Narendra Modi or Arvind Kejeriwal are getting elected because they ran a very creative campaign.

Just focusing on operational issues: Planning, Organization and optimizing processes is just not enough to succeed.

Today in Indian Society, Innovation and Creativity has taken roots in every aspect of social life: Education (eLearning, peer-learning) Work habits (Mobile-enabled-Uber workforce, work-from-home),  Parenting (Focused parenting workshops, quality time) and even sex (alternate lifestyles, 50 shades of Grey), and virtually every field of human endeavor.

As a result, we are seeing rapid social innovations in all fields. The established norms of social life of the previous/past generations are being questioned and changed to meet newer social challenges.
Consensus decision making & emphasis on conformity is being replaced by creative & competitive decision making.

Every individual are learning to break the existing norms, break from existing institutions and create new norms, rules of their own in order to work in the ways most appropriate to their hyper-competitive,  idiosyncratic lifestyles..

In a knowledge driven economy, people are being encouraged to be creative right from childhood. Little children in schools and preschools are being encouraged to "think on their own" and do things creatively. As this generation grows up, they are innovating and challenging established norms and making the society accept new and creative lifestyles.

In the last decade alone, we have seen more changes to the social norms than in several centuries. For example, if nuclear families was the fist major change in social norms. Now gay lifestyles, single & swinging lifestyle, or childless marriages are being accepted. Legalization of Marijuana is another example of such acceptance. Society is now accepting and adapting to this rapid change.

Creative & Innovative changes to Social life is no longer treated as products of "outsiders". Creative individuals are no longer from rich backgrounds - who have access to large resources at their disposal.

Creativity and Innovation has become pervasive in all aspects of life and all social institutions are adapting to it and in the process, we are seeing a rapid increase in the rate at which progress is made. Society and social institutions are now ready to facilitate the creative process and embrace change.

Today, society at large, is ready to pursue ideas that goes against consensus opinion - regardless of the field. People are making informed decisions and taking risks. Risk of failure does not seem to hinder them. People are seeking new means to succeed and are investing in knowledge, information in form of Internet & Instant communications & Social Networks.

Stigma of failure and the risks of failure is also being minimized by the rapidly growing economy. People who failed are now getting a second chance and new opportunities to try again.

The Risk-reward system is building tolerance for disagreement and people are harnessing it into a good to action:  "So you think I'm wrong.  Well, let me show you...." , "You say, it can't be.  Prove it to me...."

Indian society today is not making arguments that are for-or-against the idea, but rather what can be done with it!

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