Creativity, or creative thinking, is a concept we often come across in our everyday conversations.
How creative thinking can save your business
We hear of creative people, admire creative objects of art or read creative books. One of the most important traits of a leader, creativity, is essentially the ability to think of a radical new solution to the problems that you might face in your business.
In the next paragraphs, I will further expand on this topic by tackling its various implications in the business world. Contrary to a widely held belief, creativity does not only belong to the design team, but it is actually one of the most important qualities a leader or an entrepreneur must have.
How does creativity come to the rescue when your business is in jeopardy, you may ask? There are several ways in which creative thinking can improve your organization.
Creative thinking and Productivity
Although productivity can take many shapes, creativity can be a driving force behind efficiency. This can mean improving processes in an unexpected way, adding innovative management techniques and keeping novelty as a fuel for continuous growth.
Production stage creativity can also increase the yield of products and thus trigger financial gain by simplifying complicated procedures that slow down performance overall. By creatively avoiding getting tangled in convoluted policies, entrepreneurs make way for streamlined strategies that nourish productivity.
Also, by encouraging employees to cultivate their own inventive inclinations, visionary initiatives can spring from their imagination and can help you save your business.
Innovation and Profits
Creating new ideas for competitive advantage is definitely something to be encouraged.
The whole process of entrepreneurship is rooted in creation and exploration of new ideas. When an entrepreneur is able to generate a new idea that is feasible as well as efficient, it gives him an edge over the competition.
Moreover, meeting needs in revolutionary ways can attract more customers. Bringing a couple of creative twists to an already existing product is bound to make it more noticeable on the market and more attention translates to more profits.
Creativity can also be linked to anticipation so that you can be one step in front of your competitors at all times. Ingenuity in foreseeing the future patterns in customer behavior and in market trends is also born out of creativity.
By anticipating business tendencies, you can effectively plot out a scheme that will put you in a position of power.
Forcing Creativity
Misfortune can force businesses to try out new techniques and thus be creative – but don’t wait until then.
As an entrepreneur, strive to get out of our comfort zone as often as possible in order to put yourself and your team in difficulty. This, in turn, will spark unbelievable unconventional ideas that can prevent your company from being out of business.
Uncomfortable situations can be created by using different marketing techniques, collaborating with unexpected partners or simply by reorganizing your team. Switching things up can be beneficial to your creative side because it trains your mind to be adaptable and find new ways of coping with problems. This way, when issues do appear, you and your team will be prepared to face up to the challenge creatively.
Lastly, don’t get stuck in your ways just because you’ve been doing the same thing for the last years.
No idea is good forever. Embrace change and be the one who initiates it.
Employee Happiness
“While most of us accept what we see or adapt to our environments, an engineer wonders ‘Why?’ Why are things the way they are? Why can’t we change them? This passion for solving problems drives a lot of our creative thinking at Google. We aspire to be a company that tackles issues that affect billions of people, whether they’re small, everyday concerns or huge, global-scale problems.”
— Lorraine Twohill, Google VP of Global Marketing.
Apart from their intensive endorsement of creativity and curiosity, the members of the senior board at Google are also concerned with employee satisfaction at the workplace. Consequently, offices become creative spaces for the people who work in them and those who are hired by the company often enjoy very many perks such as beautifully decorated interiors, relaxed workspaces, and playful environments. This is only one component of Google’s strategy to stimulate originality and inventiveness. The company’s entire organizational culture is meticulously studied and adjusted in order to spark the best and brightest ideas through ground-breaking methods that also aim at sustaining the happiness of the employees.
“Casual collisions are what we try and create in the work environment. You can’t schedule innovation, you can’t schedule idea generation and so when we create our facilities around the world we’re really looking for little opportunities for engineers or creative people to come together.”- Laszlo Bock, SVP, People Operations at Google
Maintaining a joyful atmosphere through creative ways will undoubtedly contribute to the overall happiness of your team and their excitement can turn into the rescue of your business.
Lastly, creativity improves the process of solving problems. It doesn’t matter if we’re talking about developing a new strategy or an innovative way to stay ahead of the competition. Creative problem solving gives that competitive edge that any business is striving to achieve. Combining that with job satisfaction, productive behavior and innovative thinking, creativity should be relied on to bring your business back on track.
What methods do you use to spark creativity? How did the tips described above help you? Let us know in the comment section below!
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