Written by: Priya Bains, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
As a small or medium business owner, you know the importance of having a well-defined target market, a strong brand, consistent marketing, and a clear outcome. However, there's another crucial element that often goes unmentioned: creativity and innovation. These two elements work together to drive your business to new heights.
So, what exactly are creativity and innovation? Creativity involves identifying problems, generating new ideas, and choosing the best solution from a list of possibilities. Innovation takes those ideas and turns them into reality, despite any obstacles that may arise.
Contrary to popular belief, innovation doesn't always mean creating something entirely new. It could be developing new products, processes, or procedures within your existing business, or applying ideas from one industry to another. For example, Uber transformed the taxi industry by utilizing technology to simplify payments and provide real-time updates on drivers' locations.
As a creative individual, you may find that ideas come to you naturally and intuitively. But turning those ideas into a successful business is a challenge. Here are some tips to help you:
Amp Up Your Commitment
Creativity and innovation are a way of life, not just a short-term goal. To successfully incorporate these skills into your business, you need to be ready for a continuous journey of learning and exploration.
To use creativity and innovation to scale your business to multiple six or seven figures you must be ready to follow your curiosity, develop your knowledge, and allow ideas to assimilate. That means you must be ready to commit to the long game. Creativity and innovation are not about overnight success. They are a way of life.
Get In The Zone of Your Genius
A strength overdone is a weakness. We gravitate towards behaviors that are easy for us to engage in. If you’re highly extroverted, you may love talking to people and making small talk with strangers. This can be a great advantage but you can also discover that you have too many days where you accomplish very little or nothing at all. In contrast, if you’re introverted you might find that you spend a lot of time alone reading and creating and fail to attract customers because you don’t like to engage with others. There are many other ways that strengths can turn into weaknesses. These are easy examples, as they are quite familiar to most people.
Your values can also affect how you approach daily life. They can impact your work environment, relationships, and motivators. If you often find that you feel unfulfilled it’s likely you are not meeting the needs tied to one of your core values or you have values in conflict. For example, you may love making money and have a high need for security. This will likely limit the risk-taking behaviors that will lead you to create, innovate, and invest and leave you spinning your wheels.
Ignite Your Inspiration
Strategically follow your interests and curiosity to spark new ideas and keep your creativity flowing. When an idea pops make sure to act. Increase the breadth or depth of your understanding of a particular subject area and bring it to life as soon as possible to avoid feeling overwhelmed. There are several tools that can help you capture your ideas and create a plan of action. But, if you don’t intend to act on an idea make sure you intentionally forget it.
Do Deep Work
Fully dedicate yourself to your work. Create deep focus by avoiding distractions and becoming immersed in the process. Allow yourself to become completely engaged and lost in your work to flood your brain with relevant information and ideas.
Unlock Creative Flow
After deep work, take time to rest and play. This will allow your brain to subconsciously incorporate information related to identified problems, generate ideas resulting from your deep work session, and begin to identify solutions that you can implement.
Drive Toward an Outcome
Throughout the process have a clear but EVOLVING understanding of the problem you want to solve and the outcome you want to achieve.
Consider a few different factors: How much time, energy, and investment are you able to devote to the problem? What are reasonable interim outcomes to achieve given the resources currently available to you? What resources, skillsets, and knowledge will you need to acquire as you scale? How will the problem environment shift and evolve as you change your perspective and approach? What are the external factors, outside your control, that can impact your problem space? Engaging your creativity is especially important when you’re dealing with environmental changes that you cannot control.
As you start to approach problems in this way you will feel less overwhelmed and better equipped to use your knowledge and creativity to create a bigger impact. Even if the impact you make is small compared to the scale of a problem, you’ll know you’ve made a dent and a contribution and that’s all that matters.
Creativity and innovation are the keys to unlocking success in any business. By embracing these principles, you can use your passion and ideas to grow beyond your current imagination. If you want to learn more I’ve created a complimentary training which you can access by clicking HERE.
Priya Bains, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Priya Bains is a seasoned consultant and coach with over 20 years of experience, a Ph.D in Industrial Organizational Psychology and a Bachelors in Clinical and Biopsychology. She helps creative business owners innovate and scale their businesses with ease by incorporating research-based practices in motivation, goal-setting, creativity, productivity, and team and leadership management. Priya's approach is designed to minimize friction and overwhelm, ensuring her clients reach their goals with confidence.
