A Reflective Journal on Creativity, Innovation, and Design Course

This reflective journal documents a student's journey through a course on Creativity, Innovation, and Design. The student reflects on initial expectations, the core concepts learned, and the impact of these concepts on understanding organizational growth and problem-solving. Key takeaways include the importance of the creative process, critical thinking, and effective communication in fostering innovation within teams and organizations. The journal highlights the significance of team cohesion, conflict management, and the practical application of design thinking. The student also addresses common myths surrounding creativity and emphasizes the crucial role of innovation in ensuring organizational survival and market awareness. The journal concludes with reflections on the skills acquired and their future application in professional settings.

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CREATIVITY, INNOVATION AND DESIGN
By Student’s Name
The Name of the Class (Course)
Professor (Tutor)
The Name of the School (University)
The City and State
Date

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The course creativity, innovation, and design is a course that imparts skills on how to
use creativity and design skills to come up with different forms of innovation. It encourages
creativity and a different way of approaching and solving real-world problems. Design
thinking is a problem-solving approach. Therefore, ideas developed through this approach are
customarily applied to customers to enable them to understand their value in the marketplace
(Scull, 2013). This is simply because innovation is crucial and matters to everyone whether
employed or doing business. I was so excited to have taken this course up because i wanted to
really understand how human creativity works and how it impacts organisations on their
growth and solve problems as well through human creativity.
At the beginning of the course, I realized that it was a unique class from the others
that i had attended. I expected to learn the relationship between creativity, design and
innovation and how it impacts business growth and sustainability; I also expected to learn
some of the things that inhibit innovation and creativity in individuals as well as teams and
organizations. I also hoped to learn some of the characteristics that make organizations
successful and how a business might emulate such traits, and I also expected to learn
communication skills in business and professional contexts. I also expected to learn how to
assess risk and uncertainty in an organization. I would say, all my expectations were met
because I understood the core concepts of creativity, design and innovation and the role it
plays in teams and organizations. I also learned more skills that go hand in hand with the
process of creativity, design thinking and innovation.
Additionally, I learned that “organizations that do not innovate do not survive”. For
them to innovate they have to go through a process which involves the creative process,
critical thinking then finally innovation (Dalton, 2018). During the creative process, you
allow your mind to go wild, to think of an idea that will work. At this point in an
organization, it is important to accommodate everyone’s concept or suggestion because the

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mind is on the move. Hence, every opinion is welcome, and once you have all the
suggestions and ideas, you can proceed to the critical thinking.
During the critical thinking process, this is where ideas that are felt worthwhile are
picked and scrutinized before being implemented (Castelle, 2018). It is at this point where
various discussions are held, and the creativity idea turned into a product or service. The
product is then released to the market, and the innovation process is said to have happened
once the product is out in the market. It is important to note that during this whole process,
communication is of essence (Wijewardena, 2018). This is because in a team or an
organization, there exist different personalities and it is important to understand one another
for efficient communication in an organization.
When conflicts arise during such a process, it is crucial as well to manage them in
order to avoid chaos and a lot of negative energy during such operations. So when conflicts
arise, you can decide to bring in a third party to settle the conflict to avoid possible biasness
(Alio, 2014). It is also important to note that the team is fundamental during this process
hence maintaining team cohesion is of importance. Therefore, it is important to keep the team
united at all costs during this crucial period.
In the future, I feel like these skills will help me whenever i am tasked to conduct
such exercises in an organization. Effective communication, this enables your team not to
have false information or get misled during the process and also to pass the correct
information at any given time. Maintaining the cohesion of the team, is also crucial in that,
whenever the organization is divided, the creative minds of the members will be lost and thus
getting innovations will be quite a challenge (Tohidi and Jabbari, 2013). Innovation is crucial
for any person whether employed or into business, effective communication and planning is

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an essential tool when preparing to go through the process of creativity, design thinking, and
innovation.
During the whole semester, I also realized creativity has its myths which have
misguided people. However, it is important to note that creativity, design thinking, and
innovation is a crucial tool when it comes to individuals and organizations. The concept
awakens the people's minds and gives them insights on what the market value looks like. It
also helps the organization stay afloat and also be aware of the current competitors. I must
say this class opened up my mind in terms of having to be creative, think critically and also
the implementation of the final product. Most importantly are the skills I learned from this
whole process and how to communicate effectively.

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References
Alio, D. (2014). 'Creativity, Innovation and Design'. [online] Princeton University Press,
USA. Available at: https://www.princeton.edu/news/2014/07/10/creativity-innovation-and-
design [Accessed 1 Oct. 2018].
Castelle, T. (2018). Design Thinking and Creativity for Innovation. [online] edX. The
University of Queensland, Australia. Available at: https://www.edx.org/course/design-
thinking-and-creativity-for-innovation [Accessed 1 Oct. 2018].
Dalton, B. (2018). Creativity, Innovation and Design. [ebook] University of Technology
Sydney, Australia. Available at: https://summer.skku.edu/_res/summer/etc/Creativity.pdf
[Accessed 1 Oct. 2018].
Scull, J. (2013). Explaining The Process Of Creativity, Innovation And Change. [online]
Medium. Available at: https://medium.com/@jules000120/explaning-the-process-of-
creativity-innovation-and-change-6033930fe9d9 [Accessed 1 Oct. 2018].
Tohidi, H. and Jabbari, M. (2013). The important of Innovation and its Crucial Role in
Growth, Survival and Success of Organizations. Procedia Technology, Elsevier, London. 1,
pp.535-538.
Wijewardena, N. (2018). Creativity, Innovation and Design - RMIT University, Australia.
[online] Www1.rmit.edu.au. Available at: http://www1.rmit.edu.au/courses/051470
[Accessed 1 Oct. 2018].