Creativity in business is the key to innovation, and in this era of rapid change, can mean the difference between your long-term business success and failure. However, in my role as a business advisor, I still find too many owners who fall into the rut of rejecting creativity to minimize change and keep costs down.
Record new ideas immediately
Great ideas can slip away just as fast
Evaluate ideas for pluses, potential, and concerns (PPC)
Save the concerns until last, and address them with a creative question.
Creativity Requires Practice
Don’t give up quickly if your creative skills seem awkward or contrived at first.
- In fact, we are all inherently creative in different and valuable ways.
- Encourage team practice, especially during creative events and on the piano.
Strive to see new problems as new opportunities
Every new problem is just the sign of a gap from where you are to where you need to be
- In business, the best changes in business are brought about by people who believe in and practice creativity
- You too can join that team
Develop habits that increase creativity
Ask multiple questions that push the limits of your thinking
Ask for new ideas
Be open to new ideas from your team and others.
Separate imaginative thinking from judgmental thinking
Collect a range of ideas first, before trying to evaluate any of them
Set a target of at least 40 ideas
The more ways you can find to accomplish your goal, the greater your chances of doing it with creativity and innovation.
Redefine every problem from multiple perspectives
In business, this means taking a customer view, vendor view, as well as your internal process view.
Look for problem connections to other disciplines.
Many times a problem gets solved in one environment, but years go by before the implications are recognized in other disciplines
- Winemakers learned to personalize their brand for added value, while other products still suffer as a commodity.
