CREATIVITY,

INNOVATION,

AND

ENTREPRENEURSHIP
Creativity – the ability to develop new ideas and to
discover new ways of looking at problems and
opportunities

Innovation – the ability to apply creative solutions

to those problems and opportunities to enhance or
to enrich people’s lives.

*Creativity is thinking new things.

*Innovation is doing new things.

 *Creative ideas often arise when
entrepreneurs look at something old and
think something new and different.

*Entrepreneurship is the result of a

disciplined, systematic process of applying
creativity and innovation to needs and
opportunities in the marketplace.

*Innovation must be a control process

because most ideas don’t work & most
innovations fail.
 CREATIVITY

– A NECESSITY FOR

SURVIVAL
 *When developing creative solutions to
modern problems, entrepreneurs must go
beyond merely using whatever has worked in
the past.

*Entrepreneurs must always be on

guard against traditional assumptions &
perspectives about how it should operate.
Creative

Thinking
It all starts in the brain.
The brain has two
hemispheres.

Left brain
—guided by
linear vertical thinking.
 Right brain
— unconventional,
unsystematic and
unstructured thinking.

—the heartof the

creative process.
Those who have learned to develop their
right-brained thinking skills tend to:

°Always asks the question,

“ Is there a better way?”
°Challenge custom, routine, and tradition.
°Be reflective, often staring out windows,
deep in thought.
°Play mental games
°Realize that there may be
more than one “ right answer”.

°See mistakes and failures as mere

“pit stops” on the way to success.

°Relate seemingly unrelated ideas

to a problem to generate innovative solutions.

°Have “ helicopter skills”.

 BARRIERS
TO
CREATIVITY
A Whack on the Side of the Head,
Roger von Oech

1.Searching for the one “right” answer

…there may be (and usually are)

several “right” answers
2. Focusing on “being logical”

…discourages the use of one the mind’s

most powerful creations: intuition

3. Blindly following the rules

Sometimes creativity depends on our

ability to break the existing rules so that we
can see new ways of doing things.

Ex. Sholes & Company

4. Constantly being practical

Imagining impractical answers to

‘what if” questions can be powerful
stepping-stones to creative ideas.

Ex. Thomas Edison

5. Viewing play as frivolous

A playful attitude is fundamental to

creative thinking.

There is a close relationship between

the “haha” of humor and the “aha” of
discovery.

Play gives us the opportunity to

reinvent reality and to reformulate
established ways of doing things.
Children learn when they play, and so can
entrepreneurs.

Watch children playing and you will

see them invent games, create new ways of
looking at old things, and learn what works
(and what doesn’t) in their games.

For instance, a group of fund-raisers

discussed the arrangements for an
upcoming annual fund-raising banquet…
6. Becoming overly specialized
Creative thinkers tend to be explorers,
searching for ideas outside their areas of
specialty

7. Avoiding ambiguity
Ambiguity can be a powerful creative
stimulus, it encourages us to “think
something different”
Ex. Tom and Sally’s Handmade
Chocolates
8. Fearing looking foolish

Creative thinking is no place for

conformity.

Entrepreneurs look at old ways of

doing things and ask, “Is there a better
way?” By destroying the old, they create
the new.
9. Fearing mistakes

Creative people realize that trying

something new often leads to failure;
however, they do not see failure as an end.

It represents a learning experience on

the way to success.

Ex. Charles F. Kettering

10. Believing that “I’m not creative

…merely an excuse for inaction

Everyone has within himself or herself

the potential to be creative; not everyone
will tap that potential, however.
 ENHANCING
CREATIVITY
Enhancing Organizational Creativity
Enhancing Individual Creativity
 Enhancing Organizational
Creativity
• Right organizational environment can
encourage people to develop & cultivate
them
• Ensuring that workers have the
FREEDOM and the INCENTIVE to be
creative is one of the best ways to achieve
innovation
 EXPECTING CREATIVITY
• One of the best ways to communicate the
expectation of creativity is to give
employees permission to be creative

• Ex. Brainstorming board

 TOLERANCE FAILURE
• Creativity requires chances and managers
must remove employees’ fear of failure
 ENCOURAING CURIOSITY
• Entrepreneurs and their employees
constantly should ask “what if…” questions
and to take a “maybe we could…” attitude
• Doing so breaks out the assumptions that
limit creativity
 VIEWING PROBLEM AS
CHALLENGES
• Every problem offers the opportunity for
INNOVATION
• Instead of the Entrepreneur fix all the
problems, let the employees take part in
finding the solutions
(EMPOWERMENT)
 PROVIDING THE
CREATIVITY TRAINING
• Everyone has the capacity to be creative,
but developing that creativity requires
training
• Training: books seminars
workshops
professional meetings
..helps everyone learn to tap their creativity
 PROVIDING SUPPORT
• Entrepreneurs must give employees the
tools and the resources they need to be
creative
• Entrepreneurs should remember that
creativity often requires nonwork phases,
and allowing employees time to
“daydream”
• Ex. 15% of time on pet projects
 REWARDING CREATIVITY
• Encourage creativity by rewarding it when
it occurs
• Financial rewards
• Non-monetary – more powerful

• Ex. Idea lottery

 MODELING CREATIVE
BEHAVIOR
• Creativity is “caught” as much as it is
“taught”
• Entrepreneurs set examples of creative
behavior, taking chances, and challenging
the status quo (will soon find their
employees doing the same)
 ENHANCING
INDIVIDUAL CREATIVIY
 ALLOW YOURSELF
TO BE CREATIVE
• One of the biggest obstacles creativity
occurs when a person believes that he or
she is not creative
• Give yourself the permission to be creative
is the first step toward establishing a
pattern of creative thinking
 GIVE YOUR MIND
FRESH INPUT EVERYDAY
• Stimulate your mind
• Do something different each day:
“listen” to a radio station
take a walk through a park or shopping
center
Pick up a magazine you have never read
 KEEP A JOURNAL
• Create ideas are too valuable to waste so
always keep a journal to record them as
soon as you get them
READ BOOKS OR TAKE A CLASS
ON CREATIVITY
• Creative thinking is a technique that
anyone can learn
• Understanding and applying the principles
of creativity can improve the ability to
develop new ideas
 TAKE SOME TIME OFF
• Relaxation is a vital to the creative process
• It is often this time, while the subconcious
works a problem, that the mind generates
many creative solutions
 THE
CREATIVE
PROCESS
The Creative Process

Joe Designer Inc.

Step i. Preparation. It involves creative

thinking and might include formal
education, on-the-job training, work
experience and taking advantage of
other learning opportunities.
How to prepare the mind for creative
thinking?

Have the attitude of a student. Educating is

a never ending process.
Read a lot.
Clip articles and create a file
Discuss your ideas with other people
Join associations and attend meetings
Study other countries and their culture and
then travel there.
Develop listening skills
Step ii. Investigation. Develop an
understanding of the problem or decision.

Step iii. Transformation. Viewing the

similarities and differences in the
information collected. Requires two types
of thinking: convergent and divergent.
Convergent thinking is the ability to see
the similarities and connections among
various data and events. Divergent
thinking is the ability to see the differences
among various data and events.
How to increase the ability to
transform information to purposeful
idea?

Evaluate parts of the situation and

grasp the “big picture” . look for
patterns.
Rearrange the elements of the
situation.
Remember that several approaches
might be successful.
Step iv. Incubation. Reflect on the
information gathered. It occurs while the
individual is away from the problem and is
engage in an unrelated activity.
How to enhance the incubation phase of
the creative process?
Walk away from the situation.
Take time to daydream.
Relax and play regularly.
Dream about the problem or opportunity..
Work on the problem in a different
environment.
Step v. Illumination. This occurs during the
incubation stage. All the previous stages
come together to produce the “Eureka
factor”- the creation of the innovative idea.

Step vi. Verification. Validating the idea as

accurate and useful. It may include
experiments, running simulations, test
marketing a product or service and others to
verify if it will work or practical to
implement.
TECHNIQUES FOR IMPROVING
THE CREATIVE PROCESS
• Brainstorming- interaction of people to produce
imaginative ideas.

 Guidelines for a successful brainstorming:

 Keep the group small.
 Have a well-defined problem.
 Limit the session to 40-60 minutes.
 Appoint someone to be the
recorder.
 Use a seating pattern.
 Encourage all ideas from the team.
 Establish
:
a goal of quantity of
ideas over quality of ideas.
 Forbid evaluation or criticism of
any idea during brainstorming
session.
 Encourage participants to use
“idea hitchhiking”.
• Mind-mapping- graphical
technique that encourages
thinking on both sides of the
brain.

 Mind-mapping process
 Write down or sketch the picture
that symbolizes the problem in the
center of the blank page.
 Write down every idea that comes
into your mind.
 Don’t try to force creativity when
the flow of ideas slows to trickle.
 Allow your mind to rest for a few
minutes and then begin to integrate
the ideas on the page into a mind
map.
• Rapid Prototyping- process of creating
a model of an idea to see its flaws and
to make improvements in the design.

 3 principles of rapid prototyping:

 Rough
 Rapid
 Right