If you have spent the last few years slowly but steadily building up your own business, you may now find yourself in a position to take things to the next level.
Preparing to grow your enterprise, and potentially expand to accommodate new products, services, and new locations – perhaps even overseas – is sure to be a thrilling prospect. However, it also requires a great deal of planning, foresight, and some other vital qualities: creativity being one of the most important.
With the help of creative thinking, you can come up with new innovations that can help to fuel your business’s growth and scale up your operations. Failing to make the most of your innate creativity – and that of your workforce – could mean that your business falls behind others in your sector and becomes known for its lack of ingenuity.
To avoid this troubling scenario, read on to discover how important creative thinking is in the business world – particularly when it comes to driving innovation. You will also find out how you can boost your levels of creativity so you can help your venture take the next step toward a brighter and bigger future. Let’s dive right in and get started.
The benefits of getting creative
There are numerous advantages to employing creative thinking in the day-to-day running of your business. Not only can it help you to come up with new and more appealing products or services, but it can also assist you with the human resources side of managing an enterprise, by helping you find methods and solutions that improve both your customer service and the overall working environment for your staff.
Here are a few of the most significant advantages you can expect to reap from utilising creative thinking in your professional life.
Being creative encourages you to take considered risks
When you strive to think creatively, it becomes easier to come up with new solutions and ideas that could make a major contribution to the success of your business. It also helps you to take considered risks for the benefit of your enterprise.
For example, you may decide that you need an extra injection of cash to help fund the creation of a new product line, or a refurbishment of your premises. This may prompt you to look into secured business loans, with the help of an online business finance platform such as Capalona.
Taking out a secured business loan is a form of managed risk that can help you to achieve a particular goal with the funding it will bring you. Without creative thinking, and the drive and ingenuity it brings with it, you may not otherwise dare to take this kind of risk and reap the potential rewards.
Creative thinking helps you spot fresh opportunities
Another significant advantage of prioritising creative thinking in the running of your business is that it can help you to spy potential business opportunities that you or your competitors may not otherwise have thought of.
While these opportunities may initially seem like a bit of a stretch to pursue, by employing your creativity and ingenuity, you might just find that they are well worth the effort. By thinking outside the box, you could open up your business to exciting new partnerships, locations, products, and investors that could help you boost your turnover and cement your position in your sector.
Creativity can give you the competitive edge
Taking a creative approach to your business can make all the difference between trailing behind your competitors – and gaining the competitive edge over them.
Fostering a creative working environment will allow you and your team to come up with innovative solutions that can help your business to stand out from the crowd and muscle your way to the top of the market, even if you started from humble beginnings compared to some of your competitors.
Creativity and innovation: How they work in business
Creativity and innovation are best friends; in fact, you can’t have one without the other. Some of the biggest, wealthiest, and most renowned companies in the world have built their success upon a foundation of these two qualities – from Uber, Microsoft, and Apple, to Tesla and Amazon.
Through their dogged pursuit of new innovations (which they managed to achieve with the aid of creative thinking), these companies have amassed millions of dollars, millions of customers, and a solid reputation that even the occasional scandal has failed to irreversibly tarnish.
Of course, along the way, they encountered major stumbling blocks, and, in some cases, these world-famous companies came close to financial ruin. However, with the help of creativity and the innovations that resulted, they have become what they are today: global powerhouses, renowned for their constant drive to enhance and perfect their products.
If you are keen to follow in their footsteps, it’s important to familiarise yourself with the processes involved in innovation, which can be broken down into four main categories:
Ideation
During this initial stage, the creativity of you and your team should be allowed to flow unchecked, to help you come up with as many ideas and solutions as you can. With the help of techniques such as brainstorming meetings, market analysis, and giving your employees the freedom to share their own thoughts and ideas, you will hopefully be able to come up with a range of potential innovations that could benefit your business.
Development
Once you and your team have come up with a number of possible solutions and ideas to pursue, it’s time to develop them further. During this phase of innovation, you will be fleshing out the bare bones of your initial proposals and working out which ones will be most beneficial – and most achievable. After all, you don’t want to throw away your hard-earned money and resources pursuing an idea which, even though it may have seemed inspiring initially, quickly reveals itself to be a damp squib.
As part of this development process, you will need to embark on some market research, to work out whether a particular idea would have a ready audience. You will also need to think about important technical issues, such as the cost of production, the sustainability of the materials you may need to make the product, and what sort timeframe will be involved in its creation and launch.
Implementation
The implementation stage of the innovation process is where you work on creating and honing your new product or service. During this phase, you will be focusing on ironing out any kinks in the design, making any necessary modifications, and rolling it out to consumers.
Diffusion
Diffusion is the fourth and final phase of innovation, when you begin distributing your product. This can be a tense period, as you won’t be able to tell whether or not your latest innovation will become popular among consumers. During this stage, a carefully constructed marketing campaign is key, and can help make all the difference between a product becoming a runaway success – or failing to make a splash.
Encouraging creativity and innovation in the workplace
As the leader of your company, it’s important for you to foster these vital qualities among your employees, and to give every member of your team the opportunity to share their ideas. After all, you never know when the next big idea will come along – or whose mind it will spring from.
But how do you go about creating an environment where creativity and innovation are encouraged? Here are some helpful tips.
Reward open-mindedness
Approaching the business world – or, indeed, any aspect of life – with an open mind is crucial, for a number of reasons; including the fact that being open-minded also makes you more likely to be creative. Be sure to encourage and reward open-minded thinking at work, by urging your co-workers to be receptive to listening to each other’s ideas, no matter how unorthodox they may be.
If your staff know that they can broach a quirky idea without the fear of being judged, they will be more likely to speak up and share their thoughts – which could end up becoming your next best-selling innovation.
Hold brainstorming sessions
Of course, it’s not enough to simply encourage your team members to think creatively; you also need to provide them with a platform where they can share their ideas on a regular basis. Holding brainstorming sessions according to a weekly or monthly schedule will help you and your staff to generate fresh new ideas and share opinions, thoughts, and solutions in an open and lively atmosphere.
Consider adopting a flexible working model
The biggest enemies of creativity are fatigue and boredom. If your staff are feeling burnt-out or lack motivation, then it may be a good idea to offer them a flexible – i.e. hybrid – working model, which allows them to work from home as well as at the office.
This kind of flexibility will offer them a healthier work-life balance, which, in turn, will probably help them to feel more inspired and creative – and, crucially, more productive.
The bottom line
As you can see, the importance of creativity and innovation in the workplace cannot be understated. These two qualities are powerful drivers of business growth, and if you create a working environment where they can flourish, you are likely to see positive results for your company in the near future.
