Inside the Entrepreneurial Mind: Creativity & Innovation EXCERPT FROM 2013 JCIN AREA A CONFAB “BUSINESS SUMMIT” BY: JC BERNARD OLUYEMI

Creativity, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship Entrepreneurship means much more than starting a new business. It denotes the whole process whereby individuals become aware of the opportunities that exist to empower themselves, develop ideas, and take personal responsibility and initiative. In a broader sense, entrepreneurship helps young men and women develop new skills and experiences that can be applied to many other challenges in life. Entrepreneurship provides young people across the realm with valuable life skills and tools to empower them to build sustainable and prosperous futures for themselves and their communities. Entrepreneurship is the willingness and ability of an individual to seek out investment opportunities, establish, and run an enterprise successfully

Creativity, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship Creativity is the ability to develop new ideas an to discover new ways of looking at problems and opportunities. Innovation is the ability to apply creative solutions to problems and opportunities to enhance or to enrich people’s lives. In a nutshell, creativity is thinking new things, innovation is doing new things, and entrepreneurship is bringing out benefits/profits from doing this new things while sustaining its continuity (growth)

Creativity – A Necessity For Survival A paradigm is a pre-conceived idea of what the world is, what it should be like, and how it should operate. Paradigms act as logjams to creativity since they are immovable blocks to creative thinking. So the usual word…the need to take a PARADIGMS SHIFT

Creative Thinking The right brain is creative and intuitive – lateral thinking The left brain is logical and rational – vertical thinking Those who use their right brain are more likely to be different and challenge traditional mindsets (paradigms), which leads to innovation Basically… Right brain = Intuitive Innovators = Being different

Barriers to Creativity Searching for the one “right” answer Most educational systems teach that there is one “right” answer to a problem. This is a boon to creativity since it acts as a block to brainstorming. Blindly following the rules Often times, creativity depends on our ability to break existing rules so we can find new ways of doing things. Constantly being practical Suspending practicality for a while frees the mind to consider creative solutions that, otherwise, might never arise.

Barriers to Creativity (cont…) Viewing play as frivolous Play gives us the opportunity to reinvent reality and to reformulate established ways of doing things. Becoming overly specialized Defining a problem as one area of specialty limits the ability to see how it might be related to other issues. Avoiding ambiguity Ambiguity encourages us to “think something different.” Ambiguous situations force us to stretch our minds beyond their normal boundaries and to consider creative options we might otherwise ignore.

Barriers to Creativity (cont…) Fearing looking foolish Creative thinking is no place for conformity. New ideas are rarely born in a conforming environment. People tend toward conformity to avoid looking foolish. Fearing mistakes and failure Trying something new often leads to failure, however, failure should not be seen as an end; but rather as pit stops toward success. Believing that “I’m not creative” One who believes they are not creative will likely behave in the same way, thus making the belief a reality. Everyone has the potential to be creative, however, one must tap into that potential first.

How to Enhance Creativity Expecting creativity One of the best ways to communicate the expectation of creativity is to give employees or team members permission to be creative. Expecting and tolerating failure Creative ideas will produce failures as well as successes. Creativity requires taking chances, and managers or directors must remove team members’ fear of failure. Encouraging curiosity Constantly asking “what if…” questions and taking a “maybe we could…” attitude allows one to break out of the assumptions that limit creativity. Viewing problems as challenges Every problem offers the opportunity for innovation. Dumping one’s problems on employees’ desks to be “fixed” does nothing to develop creativity within employees.

How to Enhance Creativity (cont…) Providing creativity training “What separates the average person from Thomas Edison, Picasso, or even Shakespeare isn’t creative capacity – it’s the ability to tap that capacity by encouraging creative impulses and then acting upon them.” Training can help everyone learn to tap their creative capacity. Providing support One must give team members the tools and resources they need to be creative. One of the most valuable resources is time. Rewarding creativity Monetary rewards, praise, recognition, and celebration can be powerful incentives. Modeling creative behavior Entrepreneurs who set examples of creative behavior, taking chances, and challenging the status quo will soon find their team members doing the same.

The Creative Process 1.Preparation :: Prepare the mind for creative thinking (formal education, work experience, etc) 2.Investigation :: Develop a solid understanding of the problem or decision 3.Transformation :: View the similarities and differences in the information collected 4.Incubation :: Give the subconscious time to reflect on the information (daydream, relax, etc) 5.Illumination :: The creation of an innovative idea 6.Verification :: Validate the idea is accurate and useful (conduct experiments, prototypes, etc) 7.Implementation :: Transform the idea into reality

Techniques for Improving the Creative Process Brainstorming is a process in which a small group of people interact with very little structure with the goal of producing a large quantity of novel and imaginative ideas. Mind-mapping is a graphical technique that encourages thinking on both sides of the brain, visually displays the various relationships among ideas, and improves the ability to view a problem from many sides. This is often referred to as “flip-flopping.”

Out-of-Box, In-the-Box, New-Box, Other-Box, No-Box Thinking Dr. Robert Alan Black, believes that there are more thinking systems than simply out- of-box and in-the-box thinking. In fact, he marks that simply jumping out of a box or tearing down the box can eliminate ideas and solutions that can come from staying in-the-box. These new thinking systems are: New-Box New-Box thinking is a controlled form of out-of-the-box thinking. Vertical thinking is comparable to digging the same hole deeper to find the treasure. Horizontal or lateral thinking can be comparable to digging new holes in many locations (new boxes). Other-Box Other-Box involves leaving yours and entering someone else’s once again with the “What’s good about it?” philosophy. For example, sending people to work in other departments to learn what the “grass on the other side” is like. No-Box No-Box might mean complete open thinking with no limits or virtual/transparent-box thinking. This thinking challenges the greatest majority of people since tremendously potential risks are involved. Anything can go wrong at any time.

Concluding Interaction 2. How are creativity, innovation, and entrepreneurship related? Creativity is thinking new things, innovation is doing new things. Successful entrepreneurs have the ability to both come up with new ideas and are able to then find ways to make them work to solve a problem or fulfill a need. 4. One entrepreneur claims, “Creativity unrelated to a business plan has no value.” What does he mean? Do you agree? This statement essentially means that an idea is essentially useless unless it is acted on and made into a reality and marketed. I definitely agree with this statement since the philosophy of an entrepreneur is “ready, aim, fire…,” not “ready, aim, aim, aim….” 6. Can creativity be taught or is it an inherent trait? Explaination. Creativity is a trait that everyone has. Therefore, everyone has the potential to be creative. Creativity cannot be necessarily taught, instead, one can be taught how to tap into their creative potential.

THANK YOU Bernard, Olayinka 26fea Behind you is infinite power, before you is endless possibilities, around you is boundless opportunity…Go! The obstacle between a man and the problems he cannot solve is not the fact that he has problems. Its because of the pictures he sees in the problems. – Henry Ford