CREATIVITY AND INNOVATION by Naomi Urriola

naomiurriola — 2025-06-01 15:28:37 UTC

A demanding and changing educational environment requires education professionals to be aware of the constant changes in both the environment and student profiles.
Educational innovation, therefore, is a necessary condition for carrying out certain types of teaching.

naomiurriola — 2025-06-01 15:35:40 UTC

Understand the concepts of creativity and innovation applied to teaching.
▪ Assimilate the main tools and strategies of creativity and innovation.
▪ Provide a framework of competencies based on creativity and innovation, in the form of learning and innovation profiles/roles.

naomiurriola — 2025-06-01 15:43:48 UTC

2. Being creative is not being funny. Having the grace to tell jokes or the spontaneity to make others laugh is not being creative.
3. Being witty is not being creative. Finding relationships between seemingly unrelated objects or coming up with quick explanations is not creativity either. It is an element that helps in the process, but not the only one nor necessarily the most decisive.
4. Being creative is not having a taste for arts or crafts. Drawing or literature helps develop creativity; likewise, making models or near-perfect crafts can be part of an artistic aptitude, but it does not necessarily require creativity to execute them properly.
5. Being restless or hyperactive is not being creative. These people have the need to be busy and unbusy quickly, so their minds work faster and they may have a different vision, but creativity involves many more skills and discipline.
Creativity, what is it?
The use of this concept is quite modern: the term creativity was not included in the Oxford English Dictionary until 1875, and the term creativity was introduced for the first time in the Dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy in 1984.
As with many other basic concepts, we can find as many different definitions of creativity as there are authors who have approached the investigation of its theory.
Many authors have stated that it is an elusive, nebulous concept, extremely difficult to precisely encapsulate in a single definition (something that, on the other hand, could be said of any concept of an abstract nature). Creativity is among the most complex human behaviors; it is influenced by a wide range of evolutionary, social, and educational experiences, and manifests itself differently in each domain of knowledge.

naomiurriola — 2025-06-01 15:50:57 UTC

Innovation is about doing things. It's about the application, the process, the implementation of a creative idea. In the business world, an idea is only truly innovative if it is introduced into a market and survives. The proof is time in the market, or more precisely, the repeat loyalty of a user or customer.

naomiurriola — 2025-06-01 15:54:44 UTC

Research: Activities whose objective is the acquisition of new knowledge that may be useful for the creation of new products, processes, or services or contribute to significantly improving existing ones.
- Development: Acquisition, combination, configuration, and use of existing knowledge and techniques, whether scientific, technological, business, or other, with a view to developing plans and structures or designs for new, modified, or improved products, processes, or services. This includes the development of projects, designs, plans, and other types of documentation, as long as they are not intended for commercial use, as well as the development of prototypes and pilot projects.
Innovation, as we will see, goes further. It uses knowledge and a plan, but prioritizes application and viability in a real-life environment.

naomiurriola — 2025-06-01 15:58:40 UTC

1. The action and effect of innovating (which in turn defines changing or altering something, introducing new things).
2. The creation or modification of a product and its introduction to a market.
In the strictest sense, however, ideas can only be innovative if, thanks to them, new products, services, or procedures are implemented, which truly find successful application, becoming established through diffusion.
The term innovation, in any case, is a buzzword, and as is often the case with words that become trendy, it is used very differently and takes on multiple meanings depending on the context. In the world of business, universities, and organizations, it is constantly used as an element of value and differentiation. Therefore, we believe it is necessary to situate the very concept of innovation and establish the meaning we give it within the university context.

naomiurriola — 2025-06-01 16:01:29 UTC

Educational innovation is understood as a set of ideas, processes, and strategies, more or less systematized, through which we seek to introduce and bring about changes in current practices. (…) Its purpose is to alter the current reality, modifying concepts and attitudes, altering methods and interventions, and improving or transforming, as appropriate, teaching and learning processes.

naomiurriola — 2025-06-01 16:06:24 UTC

Through these faces, we can surely recognize innovative profiles in our environment and, why not, aspire to become one of them.
In Kelley's topology, the ten "guardians of innovation" are classified into three key roles:
- Those who learn.
- Those who organize.
- Those who create.
Each brings their own levers, tools, capabilities, and point of view.

naomiurriola — 2025-06-01 16:13:36 UTC

1. The Anthropologist
The anthropologist doesn't stay still; he or she ventures into the field to observe how
people interact with products, services, and experiences in order to arrive at new innovations.
2. The Experimenter
Celebrates the process, not the tool. They have a curious mind and are open to serendipitous discoveries. They test and retest possible scenarios to make ideas tangible.
3. The Cross-Pollinator
Makes associations and connections between seemingly unrelated ideas or concepts to break new ground. Armed with a broad range of interests, an avid curiosity, and an aptitude for learning and teaching, the Cross-Pollinator brings great ideas from the outside world to life in your organization.
4. The obstacle course jumper
5. The collaborator
6. The director
7. The experience architect
8. The set designer
9. The caregiver
10. The narrator

naomiurriola — 2025-06-01 16:29:37 UTC

Improvement is conservative in that it remains on a path already begun that has produced positive results. Improvement processes can be planned, and results can be predicted fairly accurately.
On the other hand, innovation is not just about improving a process or product; it involves generating real change. It involves investing in a service, process, or resource that introduces differentiated value elements and also entails an additional level of quality. It involves taking risks since neither the path nor the results to be obtained are known in advance. This is a very important aspect, as many organizations adopt extremely conservative positions, precisely because they consider risk to be a threat.