Yoran Solomon wrote an article for Inc. where he provides 7 key ideas that might help you improve your creativity in the upcoming year. Here are his 7 quotes to inspire creativity.

Great ideas are NOT accidental

A proper environment to produce ideas is necessary, and the great news is that you can create such environment as it is a process.

You don’t need to drive innovation, but you must allow it

According to Solomon, employees do not need to be driven to be creative. But they must be allowed to be creative which, for the most part, they are not. How can this be achieved? By letting people experiment and prevent making it too costly for them to fail.

When you debate, you experiment with ideas

It is just like an experiment. Providing and taking feedback, in other words, debating, is a great way to improve creativity.

Do not say you’re not creative. Say you do not want to try

Creativity is acquired, learned, and exercised, much more than transferred through DNA. So do not let yourself off the hook by saying you were not born creative. Do what it takes to become creative!

There is no I in team, but there are two in Innovation and two in Creativity. It’s all about people, and how you motivate them to be creative

Company innovation is based on team creativity which, in turn, relies on individual creativity. Having a team of individually-creative members is critical, and the company must motivate employees to be such.

I would rather turn my strengths into greatness, than turn my weaknesses into mediocrity

Creative people are those who are great at something. To really stand out, improve your strengths. Not your weaknesses. Mediocrity will get you nowhere. Greatness will.

When you speak, you cannot learn anything new

Many of your ideas will build on somebody else’s ideas. But to do that, you need to increase your listen-to-speak ratio. Listen with intent. Listen as if your next big idea (or the foundation for it) are about to be revealed to you.

Source: Inc.