Creativity and Innovation

To be creative means to think differently about something. It can mean to have a new and novel thought, or it could mean to utilise something that you haven’t aligned before.

If I were to follow the process of management where I ordered stock, put it on the shelf and then sold it to a customer I would be following a traditional pathway of retail. How can I apply creativity to this process? I could sell it online or offer a VIP night and invite customers from my database, I could align it with sales of other products, this product goes with that product.

These are examples of creativity – using novel approaches to the traditional format, I may not have been the first person to use the new methods that I will employ but nonetheless they are creative approaches.

If I apply my mind and then reach out to others, then I may find further concepts or ideas that can provide a greater impact. The important thing is not to be dissuaded into thinking that my processes are not creative, in fact, they may just be the starting point. I have always likened the search for a creative solution to turning the pages of a ream of paper filled with ideas over, one by one, the answer may not be on page 15 it may be on page 323. The important part is to keep turning the pages until you find the answer you are looking for, and then when you have found a workable solution keep searching to see what else turns up.

One of the best processes for finding a creative solution is to brainstorm using a mind map, during my university study in Fine Art we would start with a topic and then branch out writing down a single word that related to that topic and then a word that related to that new word would branch off it, importantly we would not qualify how that word related just that it popped into our heads and we recorded it.

At the conclusion of writing down all the words that we felt related to each other and the topic we could review and group those words, we might even start a mind map that began with one of the new words we listed, the amazing thing that occurred was the diversity of thoughts we had from that one topic. At the completion of the brainstorming, several ideas and directions would normally appear, if we didn’t find anything that resonated with us, we could always revisit the process from the start.

Incidentally, when I was asked to use this process, I would always complain and say why do I need to do this, I am creative. As it turned out I found value in performing the task each time, so I guess sometimes when we are forced to do something it really is for our benefit.

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