Let us talk about The Business Case for Immigrant Creativity. I began interested in this topic a while ago, when blogging for the Huffington Post. Today, however, this is more important than ever, so I decided to put it very briefly, for all interested parties to get a feel of it.
I also intend to post a vlog about it on my own YouTube channel “The Bridge for Women Worldwide.“
Here and now you will learn what factors can boost our creativity, and HOW. A former Fulbright scholar, I researched it using the materials I collected about immigrants when blogging for the HuffPost for 6 years.
Now – what do you think? Is creativity genetic? Can we cultivate it somehow? Is creativity dealt to us at random or are there any regularities about it? Let us consider modern research. I will put it very briefly for you.
First: what factors can boost creativity?
Solid research on creativity explains that some people are more creative than others because they can see the world from multiple perspectives, or “live in two worlds.” This gives them double vision.
Second, a psychologist Nigel Barber (The Secret of Creativity: an Oblique Perspective | Psychology Today) in his article, “Secret of Creativity: An Oblique Perspective,” stated that being an immigrant is Number one of the 3 most frequent triggers of this “double vision.” Why? Because immigrants naturally bring this bicultural perspective into everything they do.
FYI, the other two causes that trigger creativity are: A) being gay/lesbian, and B) being seriously sick/challenged as a child. So, there are 3 factors/causes that trigger Creativity.
Considering how many migrants live in the today’s world—and how migration accelerates globally, we see that the most popular factor conditioning human creativity comes with being an immigrant. It is natural for immigrants to see things through several filters and find multiple, or even opposing, connotations in the same event.
As mentioned before, I wrote the Business Case for Immigrant Creativity and first published it in the Huffington Post on July 7, 2013, and then – in a blog on my book’s website www.fionacitkin.com In these blogs, I presented several roots v outcomes of immigrant creativity, for instance:
ONE. Immigrants bring double-culture-bound richness of associations PLUS ability to connect the images that seem dissimilar to locals. As a result, their unusual mental links enhance productivity & performance.
TWO. Immigrants’ different education systems emphasize different specific knowledge + underlying logic + thinking processes. As a result, they offer different decision-making styles, holistic/analytical/synthetic vs the US pragmatic style.
THREE. Immigrants’ cultures often prefer to develop relationships before tasks. As a result, they can quickly connect with different people, thus enhancing their team’s creativity.
FOUR. And finally, immigrants face trials and tribulations in the new land. As a result, their habitual perseverance leads them to stick with their “crazy” ideas, bringing them to fruition. It is appropriate here to recall the name of the Zoom founder, Eric Yuan, because his visa application was denied 8 times. But Eric persevered, and today he’s an inventor on 11 issued and 20 pending patents. It is a good illustration of immigrant perseverance and creativity, right?
This all supports Nigel Barber’s remark that creativity is more environmental than genetic — so we are NOT born with it, and talent probably cannot be cloned easily. But the good news is that we can cultivate creativity, train it—and learn from it. This sounds reassuring, right?
One does not have to be a rocket scientist to see that creativity today is about the United States’ sustainability in a global economy. So, this business case for immigrant creativity explains what we get “importing” talented men and women: if we want to be safer and stronger — we need to diversify our human capital!
You are welcome to learn more from my vlogs and interviews with prominent American women on this topic and more in over 30 of my talk-show. Let us connect: subscribe to my YouTube channel “The Bridge for Women Worldwide.” Oh, not to forget – after subscribing to our Channel please click the tiny bell next to the Subscribe button, to get notifications of the new postings—thanks in advance!