Ciarán Duffy

What does creativity mean to you?

Creativity means being brave with your ideas — having the tenacity to explore them, the willingness to inform and adapt them, and the courage to share them with others, until your ideas come to fruition — stronger than than ever before. 

What attracted you to B!G Mentoring and what are you most looking forward to?

Mentoring keeps me on my toes, learning, and exploring with the next generation of creative problem solvers. It’s a great way for me to stay inspired. I’m excited to dive into new problem spaces with students, and witness new ideas being born. 

Why is creativity and innovation important in your line of work?

Building digital products in the humanitarian and global health sectors means collaborating with a wide range of people, cultures, and skillsets. From social workers in Iraq, to engineers in Poland, from clinicians in Haiti, to mobile operators in Zambia, they all play an important role in informing and implementing big ideas.  

Creative and innovative working methods are a superpower in these domains, where the technical complexity of digital products, pales in comparison to the complexity of the humans and organisations behind them. Creative methods for collaboration and co-design can help teams navigate complexity, manage uncertainty, and get sh*t done!

What do you now know about creativity that you wish you would have known earlier in your career or when you were a student in secondary school?

Creativity doesn’t belong to the arty students, or the musical students, it’s a mindset you can employ in any subject, or any aspect of your life. Creativity is the ability to step into a problem, take a look around it, go on a walking tour of it, and get inspired. It’s about about being motivated by problems, and turning obstacles into opportunities. Creativity is about remixing and informing ideas, tossing out what doesn’t work, and turning up does — until you’re left with something unique and powerful.

Last but not least! The B!G ‘Whatif!’ If the power of creativity was unleashed in every person, young and old and in between, what do you think Ireland would look like?

‘Ah sure look!’ would be replaced in our lexicon by ‘What if we…’