Be Creative
To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong!
Opening Case Study:
Creativity at its Best: Ekta Kapoor
Ekta Kapoor can be aptly called as the reigning queen of Indian television industry. The serials produced by her company Balaji Telefilms are a great hit with the masses and dominate all the major T.V. channels in India. Born on June 7, 1975, Ekta Kapoor is daughter of former Bollywood superstar Jeetendra and sister of current Bollywood hero Tusshar Kapoor. Ekta Kapoor did her schooling from Bombay Scottish School and later on joined Mithibai College. She was not interested in academics and on the advice of her father ventured into TV-serial production at the age of 19. And soon she changed the face of Indian television industry through her creativity and completely dominated it. Today, Ekta Kapoor is the creative director of Balaji Telefilms. Her company has produced more than 25 serials and each one is being shown, on an average, four times a week on different television channels. Ekta Kapoor’s serials have captured the imagination of masses. She broke all previous records of TV serial production and popularity in India. For her entrepreneurial skills and achievements Ekta Kapoor was awarded with Ernst & Young (E&Y) Startup Entrepreneur Of The Year award in 2001.
Creativity is a great motivator. It makes entrepreneurs interested in what they are doing. It raises hope that there can be a worthwhile idea. In the words of Steve Jobs, “Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things. ”Majority of would-be entrepreneurs consider their primary idea and motivation requires the most important creative thinking. Skilled entrepreneurs will suggest you that the preliminary idea is the effortless part, and it’s the afterward execution, and the competitive business marketing that are the real creative challenges.
At the heart of any successful enterprise is a creative idea. Thinking creatively is a hard-hitting balance to achieve, owing to the fact that a large section of starting and running a business needs analytical, logical thinking. As a matter of fact, our education and training to rationally connect related concepts diminishes our ability to add the creative touch, although we were all born without that bias. Maybe that is the reason why “thinking outside the box” is so exceptional. Creative ideas don’t come on command. Inspiration needs to strike in order to accelerate the creative genius.
In his recent book “Creative Thinking,” Michael Michalko recommends the subsequent suggestions on how to cultivate and fabricate your creative business competencies:
Step 1: Try to find common prototypes in dissimilar subjects. Because of cultured habits and set patterns, new ideas sound similar to old ones. Creative thinkers get results by combining dissimilar subjects, like investors and competitors. For instance, startups looking for funding can think of asking strategic partners, rather than just venture capitalists.
Step 2: Transform the way you look at things, and the things you look at transform. Stereotyped philosophy obstructs clear vision and crowd out imagination. Sometimes it’s helpful to imagine contradictory approaches, or working with opposites. Many businesses have found that raising the price of a product to give it status can win more customers than a price war.
Step 3: Think the unthinkable. We all need ways to let loose our imaginations to discover the outer limits of options, so that we can think past the typical solutions. In business, this may be as simple as swapping a product line that is still profitable, or a recent startup making a takeover bid for a large company
Step 4: Intention is the starting point of creative thoughts. Intention has a method of bringing to our awareness those things that our brains consider important. One way to prime for creativity is to produce an understanding of what you want to achieve.
Step 5: Alter the way you speak, and you revolutionize the way you think. Many entrepreneurs concentrate on deficiencies, and express their thoughts and ideas with negatives, such as no, never, and don’t. Make a cognizant choice to become a positive-thinking person by creating positive speaking patterns. Ten customer recommendations are superior to “no complaints.”
Step 6: You become what you imagine to be. Attitudes control behavior, but behavior also inspires attitudes. Reality has repeatedly been revealed to be conventional to beliefs, whether they are positive or negative. In business on the Internet today, successful startups can showcase themselves to be a creative and mature company.
Step 7: Innovation, ideation, thinking outside the box, interference, creative thinking – whatever you want to call the process of developing successful new business approaches – it is something that you must explore every day in your business. You have to let go of things that are holding you back, and take chances in business, particularly after that first great idea.
Step 8: You cannot force yourself to think a new idea. But you can train your imagination, like a muscle with daily exercise, to conceptually blend dissimilar concepts from different contexts, leading to original ideas and insights. How long has it been since you have conceived and implemented a really creative idea in your business?
For a skilled entrepreneur, being a bright creative thinker who follows through and gets things done is important. Everybody loves an entrepreneur who treats everyone he works with, big and small, as a valued collaborator and potential ally. Creativity is not limited to the artistic sphere – entrepreneurial vision allows an entrepreneur to summon new prospects out of thin air, and has the business savvy to make his dreams a reality.
An entrepreneur’s success depends on his ability to master three critical skill-sets:
Creativity – producing new ideas, assessing them effectively, taking action to turn them into new products and services.
Alliance – networking and operating with partners, clients, and other major players in your network, which will probably be scattered across the globe and contain more ‘virtual’ relationships than face-to-face ones.
Entrepreneurship – recognizing prospects in the marketplace and using business skills to turn ideas into products into profits.
Of course, entrepreneurs have always depended on their creativity to generate wealth, but the modern creative entrepreneur goes past. John Howkins identifies creative entrepreneurs as people who utilize creativity to unlock the wealth that lies within themselves’ rather than external capital.
The value they create lies not in their physical products, but in subtle assets such as their brand, reputation, network and intellectual property. They are skilled at projecting a preferred image and creating a successful individual brand, both online and offline. They also understand the principles of intellectual property law and use copyrights, trademarks, patents and licenses to exploit the full potential of their ideas.
It pays to be an Entrepreneur Now
As the young generation is finding out the wonders of creative entrepreneurship, the steady job and predictable career path are now historical relics. The only genuine security lies in taking an entrepreneurial approach to our own careers, by taking accountability for enhancing our skills, building our network and reputation, and creating opportunities for ourselves. Taking a nine to five job can be a great learning experience and a valuable investment in yourself – just don’t be under the impression that it will be there forever. Of course this is grand news to a layman who is looking forward to gain independence and always has dreamed of having his own venture, because the new economy is founded on creativity.
Creative Entrepreneurship is about putting on your thinking hats and answering the question: How can my skills of creativity, collaboration and entrepreneurship contribute to my success as a creative entrepreneur?