The creative is the place where no one else has ever been. You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. What you’ll discover will be wonderful. –Alan Alda

One very powerful way to increase your creative abilities is to broaden your personal knowledge, skills, and experiences. You can do this by simply learning about anything and everything you have an opportunity to learn about. Embrace the diverse world we live in and be interested in all things.

The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go. — Dr. Seuss

This works because the more knowledge, skills, and experiences you have about a broad range of things in this world, the more creative and innovative you can be. From this broad base of understandings, you can draw ideas, combine ideas, and plan successful implementations.

If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got. — Henry Ford

by Robert Epstein, Steven M. Schmidt, and Regina Warfel. University of California, San Diego –

Dr. Robert Epstein gave this challenge:

“New ideas emerge when old ones become interconnected; that’s where all creativity comes from. Aha! That means that one way to prime the creativity pumps to produce interesting and novel material is to broaden one’s knowledge — the broader the better. In an organization, that means encouraging people to get training far outside their current areas of expertise. This also works for individuals at home. Don’t take yet another course on French cooking; take a course on cartooning, or on 12th century architecture, or on nuclear physics! The more diverse your knowledge, the more creative your ideas will be.”

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Watch this video presentation about how a fashion designer broadens himself to find creative ideas.