Ways to harness your creativity for business

Creativity is thinking up new things, innovation is doing new things. In business you need to be creative to remain the best alternative in a competitive market.

Guiding Principles:

• Get out of your comfort zone – note that you can only grow if you are willing to feel awkward and uncomfortable when you try something new, because innovation begins at the end of your comfort zone. So be willing to take chance knowing you could fail or even people may ridicule you.
• Be open minded – An open-minded person sees life without boundaries
• Be part of/Build an ecosystem – If you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far go together. The most important aspect of sustaining innovation is to build, sustain and strengthen links among the ecosystem.
• Get the right people- People inspire you or drain you, pick them wisely. If you pick the right people, and give them the opportunity to spread their wings and put compensation as a carrier behind it, you almost don’t have to manage them. So go a head get the right people, some who have already been there or who want to go in the direction you want to go.
• Don’t be afraid of failure – Failure should be our teacher not our undertake. Failure is delay not defeat. It is a temporary detour not a dead-end. Failures are important part of life, if you don’t fail you don’t learn and if you don’t learn you don’t challenge. What defines your success is how well you rise after falling. So go ahead and challenge yourself and your ideas.
• Open up possibilities – The possibility of having a dream come true makes life interesting. And it is this possibility that keeps innovations going, not the guarantee. Be alert, be daring, be positive but most importantly be open to new possibilities. Remember possibilities comes in the form of opportunities, sometimes from the least expected. So make sure you step up when opportunity presents itself.
• Personal development time – education is the most important weapon which you can use to change the world. Personal development is: polishing talents you already have, growing, becoming more aware and gaining valuable abilities that you can use to make an impact in the world.
• Leverage technology – New technology, creates new opportunities to do a job that customers want done. In an age when only the fittest survive, adapting to technology is seen as adapting to a changing environment.
• Build connections – Communication is the human connection, the key to personal and career success. You network is your network. Build these connections before you need them. Be visible and try to be ago-person. It does not matter how small or large your innovation is, what matters is how strong your connections are. Your network can take your idea from small to big.

You can also read: How to reach new contacts and drive more sales