The Blog

The founder of THECUBE, a coworking space, went to speak at Kingston University for their Enterprise Society, the objective of the talk was to prove that creativity is an essential tool for producing exciting and innovative enterprises.
Creativity according to Wikipedia a mental process involving the discovery of new ideas or concepts, or new associations of the existing ideas or concepts. This definition refers to creativity as a process not as an industry or type of personality. In the business world we are divided by people that are business gurus or creative geniuses, when in reality the two should go hand in hand.
 
For example, a  lawyer having to tweak and bend the law in favour of their client, surely is going through a creative process, in other words, they are developing new ideas or associations on how to interpret the law. Another example is American investor Warren Buffet, again he has proven successful above and beyond anyone in his field due to the way he looks at investment – he has developed new concepts and processes that have gained him amazing wealth.
 
So if creativity can be seen and defined as a process, how can entrepreneurs use it to develop their business?  First let’s define business and enterprise in order to set the path for creative thinking.
 
In a recent article on Forbes.com Dr. Steven Berglas describes the difference between business and enterprise in relation to Noah’s Arc. A business man would look at it in a linear manner. As an indication that he should get his gutters fixed in preparation for the heavy rainfall, whereas an entrepreneur would go home and start drafting a plan to create inflatable rafts.
 
An entrepreneur is a person that creates a business from observing their environment, whether they are predicting a trend or looking to just react. They are paying attention to their environment and then engaging in a creative process to produce new ideas and concepts based on their observations. So the question is would you rather start an enterprise or a business? Do you want to add to the advancement of humanity or just create cash flow? We think that a great enterprise can be both a great commercial entity and social contributor. Look at companies like Apple, Google, Microsoft, IDEO, Berkshire Hathaway – they are all innovative, creative, and commercial enterprises.
 
In Tim Brown’s new book he makes an example of how IDEO received a brief from a Japanese bike company. Their usual target market are wealthy hard core cyclists that like to buy expensive and highly technical bikes. As soon as the down turn started they saw a dip in the market, so their first reaction was to create another more expensive, better equipped bike, so when they went to IDEO with this brief they were surprised to learn that IDEO’s reaction was to go back to the drawing board. Study how the general population relates to bikes. What they found out is that people stopped riding their bikes despite loving them in their youth. This gave IDEO the idea to open a whole new market, creating a bike that was needed little maintenance, comfortable, and economically priced. This new market proved lucrative, innovative, and exciting, all do to a bit of creative thinking.
 
Incorporating the creative process into enterprise is easy, first you need to be an observer.
What is going around the current world, your peer group, economy?  Enterprise doesn’t have to be hard – it’s a simple as a child in the suburbs starting a refreshing lemonade stand in reaction to seeing thirsty and hot neighbourhood kids.
 
Secondly brainstorm a reaction to a problem that you have observed. Ask the following questions; how do you solve the problem? Will it be a service/product? What makes your solution relevant? Are other doing something similar, can you make it better? How will people use it, what is the psychology behind it?
Thirdly begin to turn your thoughts into varied ideas, highlight the best ones and quickly get rid of the bad ones. Begin to narrow it down to that ONE idea, which fits your solution in every way. It is at this point that your idea can be an enterprise.