Thinking Outside the Box
Creativity and Entrepreneurship
An
entrepreneur, by virtue of being an entrepreneur, is creative.
Having said that, of course there are business owners who are “stuck”
in a rut; have not changed their ways for years; have become complacent in their
management style and no longer have the creative juices needed to continue to
build an exciting enterprise. But
they will not be the ones that are at the top of their field and if they
recognize themselves here, they can certainly reverse the flow.
Where does
creativity come from? For many of
us, it comes when we are backed into a corner.
A bill is due and we have no money, a project that was due was moved up a
week and we have no time – we become very creative then.
But creativity also comes from “thinking outside the box”.
It comes from being outside our comfort zone and constantly having
everything we take for granted, shaken up. Successful
entrepreneurs thrive on being uncomfortable and in fact, get very worried if
they are feeling too comfortable because it means they are starting to take some
things for granted – that can mean missed opportunities and that is not what
they want to see.
Think about
what happens when you get too comfortable. If
you take the same route to work every morning, what happens?
Most of us work almost on auto pilot.
We kind of “blank out” everything around us because we have traveled
that way for years. Or we get up
every morning and go through the same routine before we go to work.
We could probably do it while we are still half asleep!
Try taking a different route to work or try reversing the order in which
you do your morning routine, or try having desert for breakfast and cereal for
supper. Shake up your day and see
what happens. The first thing you
will notice is that you will be looking at the road signs, noticing the traffic
more, noticing the billboard that you hadn’t seen before – in other words
– you become more aware and as you become more aware, your senses open up to
the opportunities around you.
Successful
entrepreneurs do this without thinking. They
intuitively know that if they haven’t thought of something new lately, they
have to shake up their world a bit again. And
that is the ultimate goal anyway – feeling comfortable with being
uncomfortable. That is when you know
you are “living outside the box”, not just dreaming it.
If you have a
thought to share with us on your experiences with creativity, enter them below
and and we will post them for you!
