In IT, we tend to privilege knowledge and we test the hire candidates accordingly. What do they know about object oriented programming, authentication and security, frameworks and languages. While this has merit in itself, is it enough?
Knowledge is indeed important as for any candidate, there musy be things to know. If you hire a .Net developer, he/she must know C# (or VB.Net but who uses it?) and common libraries. Like any builder you would hire must know how to make a wall and which tools to use.
But then, and that’s the point I wish to make, knowledge can only bring you so far. Sure any developer can connect to a database and then manipulate the data and that would be enough for a lot of projects. But creativity opens an entire new playing field for developers.
When you’re creative, you can find solutions to problems, discover efficiency, and in general, imagine ways of doing things that are not necessarily what would be the most common way of doing things. I think in our field, creativity is underestimated in comparison with knowledge. A creative developer will be more versatile and able to find his way around difficult problems and find solutions that can be revolutionary.
I’m still beginning to think of writing about creativity in IT, maybe it’ll be aong post or maybe it’ll be very short. Who knows.