1. Inside the Entrepreneurial Mind: From Ideas to Reality
Chapter 3
Inside the Entrepreneurial Mind: From Ideas to Reality

2. 10 Barriers to Creativity
Searching for the one “right “ answer
Focusing on “being logical”
Blindly following the rules
Constantly being practical
Viewing play as frivolous

3. 10 Barriers to Creativity, p.2
Becoming overly specialized
Avoiding ambiguity
Fearing looking foolish
Fearing mistakes and failure
Believing the “I’m not creative”

4. The Creative Process - 7 Steps
Preparation - getting the mind ready for creative thinking
Investigation - develop a solid understanding of the problem, situation or decision at hand
Transformation - viewing the similarities and differences among the information collected (convergent and divergent thinking)
Incubation - time to reflect

5. The Creative Process - 7 Steps, p.2
Illumination - the “lightbulb” moment when everything “clicks”
Verification - validating an idea as realistic and useful (including experiments, simulations, test marketing, prototypes, pilot-program)
Implementation - transform ideas into reality

6. Techniques for Improving the Creative Process
Brainstorming - 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- visually displaying various relationships among ideas, improving the ability to view a problem from many sides
Force-Field Analysis - evaluating the forces that both support and oppose a proposed change, weighing advantages and disadvantages to maximize the variables that support it and minimize those that don’t.
Rapid Prototyping - creating a model of an idea to discover the flaws and make improvements in the design.

7. Intellectual Property: Protecting Your ideas
Patents - a patent is a grant from the US Patent and Trademark office to the inventor of a product, giving the exclusive right to make, use or sell the invention in this country for 20 years
Trademarks - a trademark is any distinctive word, phrase, design, symbol, name, logo, slogan or trade dress that a company uses to identify or distinguish it from other goods on the market.
Copyright - a copyright is an exclusive right that protects the creators of original works of authorship, such as literary, dramatic, musical and artistic works.