CREATIVITY AND MENTAL BLOCKS - CASE STUDY: THE PERCEPTIONS OF ENCOPEL STATIONERY EMPLOYEES ON ASPECTS OF CREATIVITY

Abstract

The Covid 19 pandemic has brought many socioeconomic changes in the world. To adapt to these changes, there has been a growing search for the adoption of digital services and innovations, accelerating the technological revolution. Unleashing an urgent demand for professionals with high skills and competencies, including in terms of creativity. However, there are mental blocks and other factors that create misperceptions about creativity and hinder its development. A project was carried out, with action research methodology, with the employees of the company Encopel Papelaria, which sought to analyze whether the participants considered themselves creative or not. If they were aware of the existence of mental blocks to creativity and if, in self-analysis, they identified in themselves the occurrence of some blockage. Through the case study, collection, and analysis of quality-quantitative data, the article aims to demonstrate the perceptions of employees about creativity and factors that can hinder the development of this skill. Data analysis revealed that almost 80% of the participants were unaware of mental blocks and almost all of them identified in themselves the incidence of at least one mental block. This may indicate that this, perhaps, is the reason why almost half of them did not consider themselves creative. That is, they had some blockage or factor that interferes in the perception of aspects of creativity, as well as in its development. Through theoretical bibliographic analyses, the article aims to describe the concepts of creativity and the factors related to its development and importance, especially at present.