Creative Thinking

In today's competitive world of starting an entrepreneurial idea, it is not just having the common traits (such as vision, passion, time management and investment) which an aspiring entrepreneur must have like you, but you must also possess that creative juice especially when you first conceived and dreamed of it.

As mentioned by Carolyn Campbell, a home-office veteran entrepreneur and writer:

• that initial electric charge of creativity is often followed by bursts of energy that help you complete vital tasks and spur you on to make your business ideas become realities
• rather than being a personality trait, creativity is a way of thinking that aspiring and veteran entrepreneurs can take advantage of to build their businesses in innovative and profitable ways

So whatever business idea that you may have, be it in the field of technology, retail, service, manufacturing or education, you can try applying the following techniques:

• explore creative thinking methods - don't just rely on time-tested means to think creatively, but also to discover areas such as blind alleys to maximize your general maneuverability.
• think like an artist to make friends with failure - like an artist, an entrepreneur can begin a business with different starting methods, thinking of each different version as a different incarnation rather than as a failure.
• let creativity help your business evolve - to realize the strengths that you have and to improve on your weaknesses, an entrepreneur must be receptive to the validity of each of the stages of his own creativity.
• choose a creative theme to help launch and grow your business - this will help you attract attention and create awareness right out of your chute, and continue to expand and reinforce your original idea as your business grows.
• cross-pollinate your creativity - other ideas can sometimes become the greatest enhancers of creativity, where you need to expose yourself to new ideas and thoughts of others for cross-pollination of their own creativity.
• break away from work so your ideas can marinate - sometimes, you can change your environment to spur you on to want to return to your artwork with fresh ideas; that when you sometimes expect it the least, that's the time when you can have breakthrough ideas

So go ahead, think and express whatever creative idea that you have right now, we may never know, this could be a success story in the years to come.

Excerpt from Business Start-ups magazine, March 1997.

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