Five Reasons Why Entrepreneurs Need To Think Out of the Box
Creativity isn't just about coming up with ideas.Creative thinking is a major part of good business acumen, without which your business could just go into the stagnation mode
By Saurabh Kabra •
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
You're reading Entrepreneur India, an international franchise of Entrepreneur Media.
Gone are the days when being an entrepreneur only meant analytically thinking and making decisions based only on the basis of hard facts. Welcome to the new-age creative thinking.
Entrepreneurship and creativity go hand in hand. For an entrepreneur, creativity is the key to producing new ideas and processes.Creativity isn't just about coming up with ideas.Creative thinking is a major part of good business acumen, without which your business could just go into the stagnation mode.
Here are a few good reasons why entrepreneurs need to be creative to be successful:
Working Without Boundaries:
While too many cooks spoil the broth, it is also imperative to be open to various recipes of different cooks and break the traditional pattern of thinking and allow free flow of ideas without creating any boundaries. No one knows where the next big idea will come from, but it definitely won't come from: the land of "we've always done it this way."
This is important in order to get new perspectives towards problems. Shaping environments where creativity can flourish turns work into a place without boundaries. This is important in order to get new perspectives towards problems.
Thinking the Unthinkable
Thinking outside the box is crucial, because why compete in the market when you can build your own industry, providing consumers with something they need or want but never had before? Thus imagination is needed to cross the boundary of "usual" and "normal" to think outside the box. This enables entrepreneurs to think beyond the traditional solutions, come up with something new, interesting, versatile, and yet have success potential.
Finding Similar Patterns in Different Areas
A lot of entrepreneurs end up getting a little too comfortable with their day-to-day business. Creativity enables people to connect dissimilar and unrelated subjects and make successful entrepreneurial ideas. Merging different fields creates interesting intersections that creates new niches. Most people are afraid of bringing different disciplines together, but most interesting ideas come from colliding different fields. Never settle. Even if you're happy with your business. Always keep thinking about how you can improve your process, your product, your knowledge. Keep your eyes and ears open for new ideas, new ways to run your business.
Fostering Innovation
An idea which is unique is an invention, but an idea which is unique as well as useful is rightly called innovation. In order to innovate, one needs to think creatively, and well look at the same thing with a different perspective, which is where we marry usefulness with a unique idea.
Although it may be difficult to see this from the beginning, especially when your offering is still just an idea, things will get much clearer as the consecutive steps unfold and the idea starts turning into a reality. This is when you will realize the difference between invention and innovation.
Removingthe Fear of Failure
Entrepreneurship demands creative thinking, yet many are too fearful to pursue our most creative ideas. It is a creative path and the biggest hurdle is fear that can feel unbeatable sometimes. It is important to accept and even honour creative failures. Taking failures in a positive spirit and not viewing them as a hindrance to creative success, but as a powerful conduit that gets you closer to your goal next time around is the right attitude to make peace with failure.