Creativity and business success

It is known that 82% of companies consider creativity a driving force for business success.

According to a study by Adobe and Forrester Consulting, “companies that use creativity to the maximum, outperform their competitors and similar companies in key performance indicators, including revenue growth, market share and recruitment.

Exceeding the competition is what every businessman wants. Solving a problem or developing an advertising company – creativity is valuable in everything. But how do you learn to be creative at the right time?

How to learn to be creative at the right time

The bad news at first is that a person cannot know in advance when he or she will have a brilliant idea. This can happen while showering, walking the dog or, naturally, in the office while working on a problem.

The good news is that you can learn to be creative. You can’t predict when you’ll have a brilliant idea in advance; but you can prepare the ground for it.

Non-standard thinking and your business

Everyone whose profession requires creativity knows that there are techniques to stimulate creativity and they are very effective. Good ideas seldom come from scratch.

Good ideas require time, patience and a certain openness of the mind, or unconventional thinking, as the well-known psychologist Edward de Bono calls it. Non-standard thinking is the opposite of logical, critical thinking.

Instead of moving from one point to another, non-standard thinking allows your mind to move in all directions, in all directions.

It is important not to tell the facts, to consider what is there, it is important to realize what can be. The main difficulty of non-standard thinking – to get rid of the inner voice of common sense, the main purpose – to look at existing things from a new perspective.

De Bono and his colleagues have developed several techniques to activate your brain’s ability to think outside the box.

Method 6-3-5, or Brainwriting

Don’t worry, I won’t tell you about the good old brainstorming method, which requires you to write down any ideas (ABSOLUTELY!) that come to your mind on a given topic (although I personally find this method very effective). I have something more complicated (and funny!) for you: Method 6-3-5, or Brainwriting.

This is a group technique that will make your team members generate ideas faster (and better) than ever before.

The rules are quite simple: six (or less) people write down three ideas in five minutes. As soon as time runs out, everyone passes on their idea sheets to the person on the right, and the whole process is repeated again.

Any ideas fit, there is nothing right or wrong, there is no ownership of the ideas. Everyone can use the idea of a partner, change it at will. As a result, you will get 108 ideas in 36 minutes. At least one of them will be worthy of acceptance or further development.

Six thinking hats

This method is a little more complex and may even seem strange. However, it can be a very effective tool for problem solving and innovation development.

The basic idea is this: your brain is used to thinking in a certain way, using a certain mode. To create something new, you need to consider using different modes of thinking.

According to de Bono, there are six modes of thinking, each of which correlates with a particular color – these are metaphorical hats of thinking.

In the course of the discussion, all the participants put on hats of the same color at the same time and look at the problem from the same angle. After a certain period of time, the participants of the discussion “change hats” and, accordingly, all together consider the problem from a different perspective.

As a result, the problem is discussed from all possible points of view and everyone realizes how biased their own thinking was.

Morphological matrix

The use of the morphological matrix is an analytical way to become creative. In fact, you solve the problem by highlighting its main elements. By highlighting the main elements of the problem, you think about all the possible parameters of each element and create a table.

Suppose you need to develop a new type of ice cream. Until now, you have been selling ice cream to young children, parents and teenagers – these are the basic elements. One of the parameters can be taste (ice cream, for example, can be sweet, salty or spicy).

Another parameter may be the consistency (with pieces, soft, creamy). By entering the relevant data in the table, you make up different combinations of parameters and their values until you finally get the best solution to your problem.

Here’s what we’ve got: your new ice cream for children will be sweet, soft and bright. Or maybe you want to add a little more spice? It’s up to you! Morphological matrix will allow you to create connections, which you did not think about before.