Creativity

Creativity comes in different forms. Whether it is work related with thinking outside the box, or an artistic approach, creativity is a continuous part of daily life. My earliest memory of being creative was in grammar school. I started drawing Disney movie characters such as Simba from The Lion King. Another form of creativity I later discovered was writing stories. Further down the road I discovered that I also had to use creative thinking in my work. While growing up the biggest creative influence on me was from Shania Twain. The intent of this paper is to describe what makes me creative and how I demonstrate it, what has lead me to recognize creativity in others and if there are any differences in myself and a creative genius.

I personally believe that creativity should be present in everyone's daily lives. For me in my work life I am constantly in the creative thinking process. I am often thrown into situations that require thinking outside the box. I work for HDS Retail North America which is a specialty retailer servicing travelers throughout the United States and Canada. I have worked in several different positions in the three years I have been employed with this company. Currently I am running their Virgin Music store in Philadelphia's 30th Street Station. This concept store was a challenge for me to achieve the budget. With limited resources that music stores such as FYE, Tower Records, or Virgin Mega Store take for granted I had to creatively think of ways to attract repeat customers into our often high priced store. One idea that worked out effectively was to give each sales associate a specific sales target to achieve during their shifts in effect leading to creating outstanding customer service and increasing the sales with add on sales. When I am not working I enjoy creative writing. It allows me to escape every day events and problems and place me into the lives of the characters and storyline that I create in my mind. Every now and then I also enjoy drawing and painting. These things are not able to be produced on demand. I need to be in a specific mood to do them in.

While growing up the biggest creative influence in my life was from Shania Twain. She is not only a singer, but also a song writer, performer, creative and marketing genius. Shania hit the Nashville music scene in 1993 when she was signed to the Mercury Nashville label on Universal Music Group. While negotiating her contract with Universal she held 100% of the creative control of her image. She released a self titled album that year that was a flop with only one co-written song, later selling 1 million copies. The music video that was released along with the album's first single caught the eye of rock producer Robert "Mutt" Lange. Twain and Lange collaborated