What is it?
When you think of creativity, you may be drawn to the idea it involves writers, painters, and other artists. Perhaps, you think creativity is for architects and website designers.
In fact, everyone is creative. Creativity comes in many forms, and is essential for any business.
Creativity involves the ability to find solutions to problems. The process involves changing your point of view from the regular way of looking at things.
The more innovative the solutions to your business problems, the more competitive your company will be positioned. Anyone can can find the routine and obvious solutions. Creativity will mark you off, as one of the best in the business, and in the entire industry.
Everyone is creative.
Have you ever used a tool in a different way it was intended? Did you ever simply devise a different route home, because a traffic jam had blocked your regular way? Did you ever find a new way to communicate with a difficult person, when other ways never seemed to get your point across?
If so, you were being creative. It's that simple.
And that hard.
It's always difficult to break long held habits of thinking.
Most people get comfortable in the way they currently do things. In businesses, it's usually termed "That's the way it's always been down around here."
People often avoid creative solutions, because they fear the possibility, that things might go wrong. Better the tried and true methods, they think, than take any chances.
In fact, creativity reduces risk by looking at solutions to problems. Rather than living with problems of personnel, sales, management, inventory, and so on, the creative person looks for opportunities for improvement.
The glitches, problems, and failures represent challenges, not roadblocks.
The non-creative solutions in business often result from acceptance of failure. They can include office and plant closures, layoffs, selloffs, etc. Problems are seen as not having any workable solutions, and therefore failure is accepted as the only possible outcome.
Creative people view the problem, as an opportunity to try a different path, in the evolution of the business.
As you attempt to look at problems through different lenses, you begin to see potential everywhere. You view problems as a starting line, not as a dead end.
Ideas that are viewed as problems can be turned around, flipped upside down, and turned inside out. Something new can be made from them, simply by seeing them in a different way.
Creativity takes those possible losses, and turns them into profitable opportunities for everyone in the organization.
Creativity is far less risky than run of the mill thinking.
it is far less risky than accepting certain failure.
In that sense, creative thinking is tremendous insurance for you company.
