Cracking Creativity

Decoding the most valuable skill in the world

by Pernilla Hamrén

Click to read e-book

Project

Challenge

Outcome

Introducing Ahaa! A creativity training platform designed for professional applicability; moving beyond the artistic associations that impedes people from realizing their creative potential by offering fast and tailored training to solve real life problems. Crack individual training to improve your own skillset and build a portfolio based on your idea generation and unique problem solving. Try exercises across the board and in all fields and begin building a personal library of creative ideas where you get immediate scores individually, and in comparison to how others have responded.

Ahaa! is more than just a creativity training platform, it is a entrepreneurial network, where you can turn your ideas into realties. Match with recruiters or connect with collaborators based on criteria, skillset or interest. Test your ideas in the real world with our demographic soundingboards, giving you firsthand insights. Enter open challenges and contests, hosted by companies and investors who are trying to tap into innovation, allowing you to pitch and showcase your abilities directly to the market. Finally, one of your ideas could make a change in the world.

If we have learned anything from the past years, it’s how surprising and unexpected the future can be, and how quickly we need to come up with new solutions to daily challenges. Creativity unleashes the ability to conceive new ideas, so perhaps it’s no surprise that creativity is the most demanded skill in the world.

Yet 59% of the population think that they are not creative. But creativity is not some stroke of genius, we’re all born creative. It’s a cognitive function, and just like a muscle we can train it and become better at finding new solutions, and it is crucial that we do. By 2030, 1/5^th of jobs will be replaced by AI, except those that rely on core human traits, such as creativity and imagination.

The reason that people don’t think that they are creative is due to a strong prevailing stigma that people are either born creative or not. Most people associate creativity with artistic skills but creativity is not some stroke of genius; we’re all born creative. It’s a cognitive function and just like a muscle, we can train it and become better at finding new solutions.

My research revealed three main pain points: people don’t have time to be creative, they don’t want to spend the time that they have on abstract “nonsense” that don’t directly apply to them and they feel like they are not good at it. However, creativity is not as abstract, nor complex as people are led to believe. There are scientifical ways to measure creativity. So how might we make creativity more tangible, whilst addressing the apparent gap between supply and demand?

Creativity & Technology

Unlike abstract and generic creativity courses offered online that can take hours and weeks to complete, my product offers fast and tailored creativity training to solve real world problems by integrating creativity with technology.

Creativity and technology are not mutually exclusive. In fact, if 1/5^th of all jobs will be replaced by AI by 2030, it is crucial to combine creativity and technology to train for future work tasks and roles. Instead of suppressing creativity, technology has the ability to enhance specific areas of the creative process, by presenting a new platform for creativity to exist on (and come from). In addition, technology accommodates for the need of instant gratification which incentivize long term use and individual progression.

Ahaa! is also designed to cater to the consumer behaviors post Covid19. Due to the rise of lockdowns, people rapidly adopted apps as a universal tool for work, school, shopping, fitness, entertainment, education and more. In Q1 2021, consumers spent $32B on apps, which is a 40% increase year-over-year from Q1 2020, and the largest-ever quarter on record.