how are creative and critical thinking both needed in entrepreneurship

Critical Thinking Crucial to Entrepreneurship

Apr 18, 2022

The students we serve, sometimes called Generation Next, are typically between 18 and 25 years of age and have grown up with personal computers, cell phones, the internet, text messaging and social media. They are taking their place in a world where the only constant is rapid change.  

Our entrepreneurship programs are focused on developing knowledge and critical thinking skills in an action-based, learn-by-doing setting. We see a new age of diversity coming — more diversity of backgrounds, more women and more younger people.

Characteristics we see in successful entrepreneurs which shape our thinking on programs and initiatives are:

• A sense of curiosity that allows them to continually challenge the status quo, explore different options and innovate
• A willingness to refine and validate their idea to determine whether it has potential
• The ability to adapt and keep moving forward when unexpected events occur
• The decisiveness to make challenging decisions and see them through
• The ability to build a team with complementary talents focused on a common goal
• A high risk tolerance and the ability to balance risk and reward
• Persistence, grit and the ability to deal with and learn from failure
• Critical thinking skills and a long-term focus which allows them to start, grow and sustain a business

In 1899, Charles Dewell, head of the U.S. Patent Office, recommended to President McKinley that the office should be closed because “Everything that can be invented has been invented.” History has proven and will continue to prove that vision to be woefully incorrect. Our take on the future has innovation and an increasingly diverse population of entrepreneurs playing a significant role in providing products and services across a broad range of solutions in health care, data analytics, artificial intelligence, additive manufacturing, digital commerce, ease of use, social media, social and environmental responsibility, location-independent solutions serviced by more remote workers, as well as online learning, just to name a few.  

Our job is to help develop the critical thinking skills to enable Auburn students to lead and excel in these fields and many others.

Lou Bifano Director New Venture Accelerator

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Article • 11 min read

Entrepreneurial Skills

The skills you need to start a great business.

By the Mind Tools Content Team

Are you thinking about setting up your own business? If the answer is yes, you're not alone. The pandemic may have laid waste to great swathes of industry, but it's fueled an extraordinary surge in startups and new small businesses, as those laid off from affected firms explore new opportunities.

Reports from the U.S., Japan and across Europe show record-breaking levels of business registrations. [1] For example, figures from the U.S. Census Bureau show that new business registrations in July 2020 were 95 percent higher than during the same period in 2019. [2]

But what does it take to be a successful entrepreneur? Whether you've seen an exciting gap in the market, or feel forced to reassess your career following job loss, this article explores the skills you need to make it as an entrepreneur. It also signposts resources that you can use to develop the skills required for success.

What Are Entrepreneurial Skills?

Entrepreneurial skills are those normally associated with being an entrepreneur, although anyone can develop them.

Being an entrepreneur usually means starting and building your own successful business, but people with entrepreneurial skills can thrive within larger organizations, too.

Many researchers have studied entrepreneurial skills, but found no definitive answers. Some common themes are:

• Personal characteristics.
• Interpersonal skills.
• Critical and creative-thinking skills.
• Practical skills and knowledge.

Regardless of how you define it, entrepreneurship isn't easy. So be prepared to do the "hard yards," even after you've learned the skills we describe below.

The following sections examine each skill area in more detail, and look at some of the questions you'll need to ask yourself if you want to become a successful entrepreneur.

The Personal Characteristics of an Entrepreneur

Do you have the mindset to be a successful entrepreneur? For example, entrepreneurs tend to be strongly innovative in outlook, and they may take risks that others would avoid.

Examine your own personal characteristics, values and beliefs, and ask yourself these questions:

• Optimism: Are you an optimistic thinker? Optimism is an asset, and it will help you through the tough times that many entrepreneurs experience as they find a business model that works for them.
• Initiative: Do you have initiative, and instinctively start problem-solving or business-improvement projects?
• Drive and persistence: Are you self-motivated and energetic? And are you prepared to work hard, for a very long time, to realize your goals?
• Risk tolerance: Are you able to take risks, and make decisions when facts are uncertain?
• Resilience: Are you resilient, so that you can pick yourself up when things don't go as planned? And do you learn and grow from your mistakes and failures? (If you avoid taking action because you're afraid of failing, our article, Overcoming Fear of Failure , can help you to face your fears and move forward.)

Entrepreneurial Interpersonal Skills

As an entrepreneur, you'll likely have to work closely with others – so it's essential that you're able to build good relationships with your team, customers, suppliers, shareholders, investors, and other stakeholders.

Some people are more gifted in this area than others, but you can learn and improve these skills.

Evaluate your people skills by taking our How Good Are Your People Skills? self-test.

The types of interpersonal skills you'll need include:

• Leadership and motivation: Can you lead and motivate others to follow you and deliver your vision? And are you able to delegate work to other people? As an entrepreneur, you'll have to depend on others to get beyond the early stages of your business – there's just too much to do by yourself!
• Communication skills: Are you skilled in all types of communication? You need to be able to communicate well to sell your vision of the future to a wide variety of audiences, including investors, potential clients and team members.
• Listening: Do you hear what others are telling you? Your ability to listen and absorb information and opinions can make or break you as an entrepreneur. Make sure that you're skilled at active and empathic listening .
• Personal relationships: Do you have good "people skills"? Are you self-aware, good at regulating your emotions, and able to respond positively to feedback or criticism? Our article, Emotional Intelligence , offers a range of strategies for developing these crucial attributes.
• Negotiation: Are you a strong negotiator? Not only do you need to negotiate favorable prices, but you'll also need to resolve differences between people in a positive, mutually beneficial way.
• Ethics: Do you deal with people based on respect, integrity, fairness, and trust? Can you lead ethically? You'll find it difficult to build a happy, productive business if you deal with staff, customers or suppliers in a shabby way.

Many startups are single-owner ventures, or small numbers of friends or family members looking to make it together. For information on how to work or manage in these micro- or family enterprises, see these useful Mind Tools resources:

• How to Manage People in a Micro Business
• Working in a Family Business
• Managing in a Family Business
• Working for a Small Business

Critical and Creative-Thinking Skills for Entrepreneurs

As an entrepreneur, you need to come up with fresh ideas, and make good decisions about opportunities and potential projects.

Many people think that you're either born creative or you're not. But creativity is a skill that you can develop, and there are many tools available to inspire you.

• Creative thinking: Are you able to see situations from a variety of perspectives to generate original ideas? Tools like the Reframing Matrix can help you to do this.
• Problem solving: You'll need sound strategies for solving business problems that will inevitably arise. Tools such as Cause & Effect Analysis , the 5 Whys technique, and CATWOE are a good place to start.
• Recognizing opportunities: Do you recognize opportunities when they present themselves? Can you spot a trend? And are you able to create a workable plan to take advantage of the opportunities you identify?

Practical Entrepreneurial Skills and Knowledge

Entrepreneurs also need solid practical skills and knowledge to produce goods or services effectively, and to run a company.

• Goal setting: Setting SMART goals (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound) will focus your efforts and allow you to use your time and resources more effectively.
• Planning and organizing: Do you have the talents, skills and abilities necessary to achieve your goals? Can you coordinate people to achieve these efficiently and effectively? Strong project-management skills are important, as are basic organization skills. And you'll need a coherent, well thought-out business plan , and the appropriate financial forecasts .
• Decision making: Your business decisions should be based on good information, evidence, and weighing up the potential consequences. Core decision-making tools include Decision Tree Analysis, Grid Analysis, and Six Thinking Hats .

Take our self-test, How Good Is Your Decision Making? , to learn more.

You need knowledge in many different areas when you're starting or running a business, so be prepared for some serious learning!

Be sure to include:

• Business knowledge: Ensure that you have a working knowledge of the main functional areas of a business: sales, marketing, finance, and operations. If you can't fulfilll all these functions yourself, you'll need to hire others to work with you, and manage them competently.
• Entrepreneurial knowledge: How will you fund your business, and how much capital do you need to raise? Finding a business model that works for you can require a long period of experimentation and hard work.
• Opportunity-Specific Knowledge: Do you understand the market you're attempting to enter, and do you know what you need to do to bring your product or service to market?
• Venture-Specific Knowledge: Do you know what it takes to make this type of business successful? And do you understand the specifics of the business that you want to start?

You can also learn from others who've worked on projects similar to the ones that you're contemplating, or find a mentor – someone else who's been there before and is willing to coach you.

As an entrepreneur, you must also learn the rules and regulations that apply in the territory or territories that you're operating in. These websites may be useful:

• Australia – Business.gov.au
• Canada – Canada Business Network
• India – startupindia
• United Kingdom – GOV.UK
• United States – U.S. Small Business Administration

Working in a business like the one you want to launch is a great way to learn the ropes. But be aware of non-compete clauses in your employment contract. In some jurisdictions, these clauses can be very restrictive. You don't want to risk your future projects by violating the rights of another entrepreneur or organization.

Is Entrepreneurship Right for You?

Before you proceed with your plan to become an entrepreneur, assess your skills against all of the questions and considerations above. Use a Personal SWOT Analysis to examine your Strengths and Weaknesses, your Opportunities, and the Threats that you may face.

Be honest with yourself about your motivations and the level of commitment you're prepared to give to your project. This could prevent you from making a costly mistake.

As you work through your analysis, you may feel that you're ready to plunge into your exciting new venture. Alternatively, you may decide to wait and further develop your skills. You may even decide that entrepreneurship isn't for you after all.

Becoming an entrepreneur is an important career decision, so avoid the temptation to act impulsively. Do your homework. Reflect on your needs, your objectives, and your financial and personal circumstances. Entrepreneurialism can take a huge amount of time and dedication, so make sure that it feels right.

While there's no single set of traits or skills for being a successful entrepreneur, there are many that you can learn to help you succeed.

These can be divided into four broad categories:

Examine your own strengths and weaknesses in these areas and assess the time and commitment you'll need to get "up to speed."

Take time to decide whether this is the right path for you.

[1] Forbes (2021). Pandemic Fuels Global Growth Of Entrepreneurship And Startup Frenzy [online]. Available here . [Accessed May 23, 2022.]

[2] U.S. Census Bureau. Business Formation Statistics [online]. Available here . [Accessed May 23, 2022.]

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Critical Thinking Skills for Entrepreneurs

The average person is barely equipped with foundational knowledge on how to start a business, which is why the most successful entrepreneurs will tell you that it takes more than just ideas or even intelligence to turn that idea into an operating company. It's all about critical thinking.

Here, we'll look at the fundamental critical thinking skills every entrepreneur needs to succeed. These perceptions- and understanding-changing skills can be acquired through a thorough education or life experience, so there's no reason not to learn them.

Learn understanding not concepts:

This is the most important foundational skill of critical thinking. It allows you to process complex information and arrive at sound decisions. Understanding comes from analyzing data, discovering new perspectives, and finding hidden meanings in a meaningful way.

Practical experience teaches you to ask hard questions, think outside the box, and connect complex dots. There is no faster way to develop understanding than learning from mistakes and challenging your beliefs through debate.

Experiment, take risks, and challenge your own beliefs:

This is the testing phase of critical thinking, where you put your understanding to the test. That means you create two different conclusions and let the audience decide which one sounds more convincing. You can challenge your beliefs in real time if you know how to phrase your arguments correctly.

It's important to deal with ambiguity and uncertainty as well. You should be prepared for when things don't work out as you'd expect. A good example is emotional intelligence, where you get to choose between different options, like choosing between anger and relief.

Know what you don't know:           

When you were just an observer, you could choose between two sides. When you become an observer and create a new perspective, you are no longer the judge; you are the subject. The consequence is that you need to acknowledge that you don't know things.

Recognizing your ignorance will help you understand the unknown parts of any problem. It also helps you in your decision-making because you'll be able to consider new options and understand risks a lot better than if you felt invincible.

Do you feel like you are struggling with putting "strategy" and "business growth concepts" in place that make a difference? Doing it all is overwhelming! Let’s have a honest discussion about your business and see if the Power of 10 can help you. Click  “HERE”  to have a great conversation with our team today.

Written By The Strategic Advisor Board - Chris O'Byrne C. 2017-2021 Strategic Advisor Board / M&C All Rights Reserved www.strategicadvisorboard.com / [email protected]

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4 Entrepreneurial Creativity: The Role of Learning Processes and Work Environment Supports

Michele Rigolizzo is a Doctoral Student at Harvard Business School.

Teresa Amabile is the Edsel Bryant Ford Professor of Business Administration in the Entrepreneurial Management Unit at Harvard Business School.

• Published: 09 July 2015
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This chapter argues that the creative process is supported, at each stage, by certain learning behaviors and that both creative behaviors and learning behaviors depend on particular social-environmental conditions at each stage. Focusing on entrepreneurial creativity within startups and established organizations, the chapter describes four stages: problem identification; preparation; idea generation; idea evaluation and implementation. It explains how creativity-relevant and domain-relevant skills are distinct and how each skill set becomes more or less important depending on the uncertainty inherent in a given stage. The chapter also discusses the role of intrinsic motivation and the impact of various forces on the motivation for entrepreneurial creativity. With examples drawn from cases of entrepreneurial individuals and companies, links are made between creativity, learning, and the ways in which social-environmental factors influence the motivation for these behaviors differentially at different points in the creative process.

Introduction

Individuals are constantly seeking creative outlets. Hobbies—the activities we choose to engage in for fun—are often very creative activities. Even at work, organizations advertise innovation as a way to attract top talent. Why, then, is it important or even necessary to motivate creativity? Creativity—the generation of new, useful ideas—may be inherently rewarding, but it is also easily stifled and highly sensitive to social-environmental conditions ( Amabile, Conti, Coon, Lazenby, & Herron, 1996 ). In this chapter, we argue that creativity is a staged process supported by learning behaviors. Both creative behaviors and learning behaviors differ somewhat across the stages of the creative process, and the optimal social environments for motivating them are stage dependent ( Amabile, 1997 ; Nembhard & Edmondson, 2006 ).

As humans learn new skills, we assess our environment, process new information, develop solutions, and evaluate their use. Creative performance involves a similar process that is directed toward the production and evaluation of novel and useful ideas rather than skills. Entrepreneurial undertakings require rapid learning in service of nimble creativity in order to succeed in dynamic and complex business environments. In essence, entrepreneurial creativity is the development of novel and useful products, services, or business models in the establishment of a new venture ( Amabile, 1997 ). The entrepreneurial creative process and its associated learning behaviors do not differ from those involved in other forms of creativity (for example, in science or the arts). However, in entrepreneurial ventures, implementation of the end product serves as a touchstone for each stage of the creative process, providing guidance and correction as ideas are developed, tested, rejected, and finally come to fruition. Learning is heavily involved throughout. Therefore, by understanding the process of creativity through the lens of learning, entrepreneurs (and entrepreneurial managers in more established organizations) can make purposeful decisions about how to motivate employees and, most importantly, how to avoid extinguishing the creative spark.

Creativity depends on three internal components within the individual, and one external component, the social environment ( Amabile, 1983 , 1993 , 1996 ). The internal components are domain-relevant skills, creativity-relevant processes, and task motivation. Although each component depends, to some extent, on innate or deeply ingrained talents and orientations, they can all be influenced by experience and by the immediate social environment. Each component is necessary, and none is sufficient for creative behavior; the higher the level of each component, the more creative the outcome.

Domain-relevant skills include talent in, knowledge about, and technical expertise for doing work in the domain or domains that are relevant to the problem or task at hand. Essentially, this component is the individual’s set of cognitive pathways for solving a given problem or doing a given task. The larger the set, the more alternatives the individual has for producing a new combination. The ability to merge ideas or products into new designs is especially important for entrepreneurs. Many of the most successful new entrepreneurial ventures involve the combination of already existing products or technologies. For example, the explosion of popular apps for smartphones demonstrates the opportunity of combining an existing product (e.g., game, calendar, paperback book) with a new technology.

Creativity-relevant processes include personality processes (e.g., tolerance for ambiguity) and cognitive styles (e.g., a propensity for idea proliferation) that predispose the individual toward unusual approaches to problems, as well as work styles marked by high energy and perseverance on difficult problems. Because so many new ideas fail for reasons both within and outside the entrepreneur’s control, both an abundance of ideas and the determination to persevere are critical skills to entrepreneurial creativity.

Task motivation can be either intrinsic or extrinsic (or, more, likely, some combination of the two). Intrinsic motivation is the drive to engage in a task because it is interesting, enjoyable, personally challenging, or satisfying in some way; this form of motivation is most conducive to creativity. Extrinsic motivation is the drive to engage in a task for some reason outside the task itself—for example, to gain a reward, win a competition, or earn a positive evaluation. Extrinsic motivation can undermine intrinsic motivation (e.g., Deci, Koestner, & Ryan, 1999 ), and thus creativity, if it is perceived by the individual as controlling or constraining. However, “synergistic extrinsic motivation,” which is the use of externally derived incentives to enhance existing intrinsic motivation, can be a powerful tool ( Amabile, 1993 ). For example, informational feedback that provides direction on how to make progress or improve performance can support intrinsic engagement in the task.

The fourth component, the external social environment (e.g., the work environment in an organization) influences each of the three internal components ( Amabile, 1983 , 1993 , 1996 ). Domain-relevant skills can be influenced by supports for learning, including formal training and on-the-job opportunities for gaining new skills. Creativity-relevant processes can be influenced by training in idea-generation techniques and the development of thinking skills through observation of and collaboration with creative colleagues ( Scott, Leritz, & Mumford, 2004 ). Studies of learning curves ( Epple, Argote, & Devadas, 1991 ) show that the more we use skills, the more skilled we become. An environment that supports the process of creativity, rather than the outcome, allows people to practice and learn both from and for the creative process.

Recent research suggests that creativity-relevant processes can also be influenced by events in the work environment that cause positive or negative affect ( Amabile, Barsade, Mueller, & Staw, 2005 ; Amabile & Mueller, 2008 ). Of all three components, however, task motivation is the most strongly and immediately influenced by the work environment. When the environment supports autonomy and exploration of challenging, meaningful work, intrinsic motivation increases. When the environment is constraining and the work is perceived as meaningless, intrinsic motivation decreases ( Ryan & Deci, 2000 ).

The four creativity components all contribute to the outcome of any creative process an individual undertakes—whether that process is as minor as tweaking a company’s logo or as major as starting a new venture. The creative process encompasses stages which, although distinct, do not necessarily follow a straightforward sequence ( Amabile, 1996 ). However, for simplicity’s sake, the stylized sequence can be described as follows: (1) problem or opportunity identification; (2) preparation; (3) idea generation; and (4) idea evaluation and implementation ( Amabile, 1983 ).

The initial stage of the creative process, problem identification, is accomplished by the difficult task of challenging assumptions ( Amabile, 1996 ; Piaget, 1966 ). It is facilitated by cultivating the intrinsic motivation to take risks and explore the world—two behaviors that are particularly important for entrepreneurship. In Stage Two, preparation, knowledge, and resources are gathered from multiple sources; the purpose of this stage is to acquire relevant information before generating solutions to the problem ( Amabile, 1996 ). Reinventing the wheel is not a useful exercise for entrepreneurs. In Stage Three, idea generation, the newly gathered information is combined with existing knowledge to generate new connections and create new solutions. However, not all of these new ideas will be valuable or acceptable. The fourth stage of the creative process is idea evaluation and implementation—the evaluation of ideas in terms of the optimal level of novelty and appropriateness to meet the initial goal ( Amabile, 1996 ). In the arts, the appropriateness criterion is met when the work of art is expressive of intended meaning. In business, however, appropriateness equates to usefulness for customers. For entrepreneurs, it is especially important that the ideas be truly useful.

The three components of creativity—domain- relevant skills, creativity-relevant processes, and task motivation—have differential importance at the different stages of the creative process, depending on the level of new learning or novel cognitive processing required in the activity at that stage.

Domain-relevant skills play a prominent role at the second and fourth stages, where knowledge is acquired (Stage Two) or applied (Stage Four) in a relatively straightforward way. For example, for individuals in entrepreneurial ventures, knowledge about the domain and technical skills provide a way to assess the current business environment and evaluate the feasibility of newly generated ideas. Creativity-relevant processes are more prominent in the third stage. Developing novel ideas requires complex cognitive processing and breaking mental sets to view existing problems in new ways.

Of course, both domain skills and creativity skills are needed at all stages of the creative process, but they become more or less important depending on the level of uncertainty inherent in the stage. For example, knowledge of the domain space could reduce the time and effort exerted in the Stage One (problem identification). An entrepreneur who is familiar with the needs of customers and potential customers should be able to more easily identify unmet needs or avoid trying something that has already been shown not to work.

Finally, intrinsic motivation is most important in the first and third stages, when a drive to engage in unfettered exploration is most valuable. The componential theory of creativity emphasizes the importance of stage-appropriate motivation ( Amabile, 1997 ): intrinsic motivation is more crucial at Stages One and Three, when the most novel thinking is required, but synergistic extrinsic motivation can be useful at the more algorithmic stages (Stages Two and Four).

In the remainder of this chapter, we integrate research on creativity, learning, and entrepreneurship to delve more deeply into each stage of the creative process. Using examples from successful and struggling entrepreneurial ventures, we explore the creative behaviors that are most needed at each stage, the learning behaviors that support creativity at each stage, and the environmental factors that are most conducive to the necessary motivational states. Throughout, we discuss implications for leading entrepreneurial ventures.

Stage One: Problem Identification

The first stage of the creative process is problem identification, which is directed toward making sense of the problem or opportunity at hand ( Amabile, 1997 ). The goal of this stage is to construct the problem in a way that increases the chances of generating novel, workable solutions. In entrepreneurial settings, opportunities may seem obvious after the fact—although no one had seized them previously. For example, Nike founder Phil Knight, an avid middle-distance runner in school, had a coach who was obsessed with finding great shoes for his team ( Wasserman & Anderson, 2010 ). Knight knew that he wanted to provide runners like himself with shoes that were comparable in quality to Adidas but much less expensive. Knight’s domain-relevant knowledge made the opportunity in the market clear to him. His innovation lay in figuring out how to make that idea a reality.

Alternatively, an entrepreneur may spend intensive time and effort figuring out the problem that needs solving. Creativity-relevant processes, such as challenging assumptions and making novel connections, can help entrepreneurs discover new problems. Southwest Airlines challenged the assumption that consumers make air travel decisions based on service and amenities. Solving the problem—by lowering cost at the expense of amenities—was then a matter of execution.

Problems can also be “discovered” by reframing an existing situation. Reframing has the power to transform difficult problems into exciting opportunities ( Dutton, 1992 ). Jeff Housenburg, CEO of Shutterfly, attributes his success to reframing Shutterfly’s service model. The company transformed from a photo finishing service to a vehicle for publishing personal photo albums. The reframing lay in viewing the company as one that sells memories, not products. This new way of envisioning the use of an existing product enabled Shutterfly to develop creative solutions for a much wider, nonprofessional market base. In Stage One of the creative process, reframing presents an old or familiar problem as a newly discovered one.

Desired Behaviors for Problem/Opportunity Identification

Whether the entrepreneur is discovering a new problem or reframing an existing one, certain behaviors help him or her to be effective during this stage of the creative process. These behaviors include thinking broadly; considering the passions, pain points, and nagging problems of oneself and others; scanning the environment widely ( Perkins, 2001 ); staying alert to things that don’t fit and needs that aren’t met; amplifying weak information signals that others may miss ( Ansoff, 1975 ); and abandoning safe, taken-for-granted assumptions ( Argyris, 1976 ).

As an example, consider the entrepreneurial venture Sittercity, an online babysitter–parent matching service ( Wasserman & Gordon, 2009 ). Sittercity was founded in Boston in 2001 by Genevieve Thiers, then a college student. By 2009, Sittercity had moved to Chicago, and its large, successful program in cities throughout the United States led to equity financing of $7.5 million. Throughout the growth of this company, Thiers engaged in many iterations through the creative process—each time, identifying a problem or opportunity, preparing to solve it, generating ideas, validating her chosen ideas by actually implementing them, and assessing results.

Thiers had a long history of babysitting—first for her six younger siblings, then for neighborhood children, and eventually for families who hired her during her college years. Moreover, she loved it; she had a passion for meeting new people, getting out of her own home, and eating food from someone else’s kitchen. Her initial problem identification grew from paying attention to her own unmet needs and nagging problems. About to graduate from college, she said, “I didn’t know what I was going to do with my life, but I wanted to do something big—not be a nine-to-five employee” ( Wasserman & Gordon, 2009 , p. 2). Thus, the initial problem was to create an unusual (entrepreneurial) career path for herself. This realization heightened Thiers’ alertness to unconventional opportunities, led her to think broadly about her future, and amounted to abandoning the safe, taken-for-granted assumption that she would stay in a “regular” job—even as she accepted a full-time job at IBM after college.

Three days before college graduation in 2000, Thiers identified the specific opportunity that would lead to the founding of Sittercity. She did so by picking up on a weak signal that most other people would have completely missed. She was posting flyers for an upcoming musical event, and she found herself helping a very pregnant woman post flyers advertising for a mother’s helper. In that moment, she saw the unmet need that countless parents have of finding a suitable babysitter, and she wondered if it would be possible to list all of the babysitters in the country in one place. To her, this could be the “big” undertaking she had been looking for. She worked on her business idea for many months, while also working full-time at IBM, and launched the Sittercity website in September 2001.

By March 2002, the number of parents and sitters registered on the site had begun to grow, and Thiers—still alert to weak signals and things that didn’t fit—noticed that a few parents were not from Boston; they were from New York or Cleveland. Puzzled, she inquired, and discovered that they were commuters to Boston from those cities who had heard about Sittercity from their work colleagues and were hoping to find sitters in their hometowns. This identified another opportunity: expand Sittercity to new locations.

Learning Behaviors that Support Stage One

The goal of the first stage of creativity is to spot new problems and opportunities. This requires a difficult shift in the deeply rooted underlying assumptions that drive the routine behaviors that make up most of our day. Learning these routines is often effortless; changing them is not. The difficulty arises, in part, because routines are extremely valuable. In their classic work on organizations, March and Simon (1958) provided a description of the power of routines for accomplishing the well-defined tasks that build organizational capacity. Routines increase efficiency by reducing uncertainty, variability, and the time it takes to make decisions. Once established, routinized behaviors, which March and Simon termed “programs,” are launched by a particular stimulus that can occur in many different situations. It is the routine, not the situation, that guides behavior ( Levitt & March, 1988 ). The nuances of the situation are suppressed in favor of the expectations of the routine ( Nelson & Winter, 1982 ). Routines, whether examined at the organizational or the individual level, are sticky—so sticky that adult learning theorists have long argued that breaking routine thinking requires a triggering event ( Dewey, 1938 ; Marsick & Watkins, 2001 ; Piaget, 1966 ).

This is particularly problematic for creative entrepreneurs because they must not only break their own routines but also convince investors and customers to try something new. Certain learning behaviors can help to activate routine-breaking triggers. Adopting an open systems view ( Senge, 1990 ), seeking feedback ( Edmondson, 1999a ), and maintaining a learning mindset ( Dweck, 2006 ) can all serve the creative behaviors of Stage One. An open systems view considers how all elements of a system interact, as well as the interactions among related systems. Seeking feedback means, among other things, looking for disconfirming information at the risk of proving favored ideas false. Similarly, a learning mindset is open to new possibilities and able to challenge existing assumptions. For our purposes, the key element is that individuals with a learning mindset are better able to extract learning from situations; they have “learned how to learn” in just about any setting ( Feuerstein & Rand, 1974 ).

Developing an open systems view of a given domain supports the creative behavior of thinking broadly. In his seminal work on organizational learning, Senge (1990) reveals how prone even top executives are to viewing only their piece in a system of interacting dependencies. By seeking to understand how a given product or service relies on, and is relied upon, by consumers, suppliers, competitors, and industries, entrepreneurs may be able to identify the gaps that trigger great ideas and the problems that are not being addressed by the current business environment.

Confirming or disconfirming hunches can be facilitated by expanding the scope of feedback beyond one’s own internal states and seeking help from others both within and outside the relevant domain. The active seeking of feedback is a necessary part of the learning process ( Edmondson, 1999a ) and can save valuable time by allowing the problem-solver to abandon infeasible ideas early ( McGrath, 2001 ) or by triggering new connections that identify unmet needs. Internal feedback can alert us to the weak signals missed by others and give us a sense of what doesn’t fit, while openness to external feedback helps us expand our thinking and develop a learning mindset.

A learning mindset is needed to engage in the creative behavior of scanning the environment widely. It raises one’s perspective above the routines themselves to adjust embedded associations and reframe the situation ( Kegan, 1982 ). This embracing of uncertainty, at the expense of the comfort of certainty, is a hallmark of human learning ( Piaget, 1966 ). As demonstrated in the example of Southwest Airlines, entrepreneurial opportunities often arise because current products and services rest on specific assumptions about the customers that belie their actual needs and desires. Getting into the practice of surfacing, and challenging, underlying beliefs is a learning tool that enables entrepreneurs to define the ultimate goal of their creative process.

Work Environment Influences at Stage One

All work behavior is motivated either intrinsically or extrinsically, and usually both ways ( Amabile, 1997 ). As we have noted, work motivation is strongly affected by the social environment. The social-environmental conditions that entrepreneurs seek for themselves and establish for their first employees can determine whether, and how, people in the entrepreneurial organization will be motivated to engage in the learning behaviors necessary at each stage of the creative process.

Intrinsic and extrinsic motivation are often considered opposite constructs, with extrinsic motivation undermining intrinsic. Indeed, decades of research in psychology, organizational behavior, and economics suggest that intrinsic motivation and complex performance (like creativity) diminish when people are focused primarily on extrinsic goals, such as tangible rewards and deadlines, or extrinsic constraints, such as restrictions on how a task may be done ( Deci & Ryan, 1980 ; Frey & Palacios-Huerta, 1997 ; Lepper & Greene, 1978 ; see Deci et al., 1999 , for a review).

However, an accumulating body of research supports a much more nuanced view ( Amabile, 1993 , 1996 ; Amabile & Kramer, 2011 ). It is true that extrinsic forces that lead individuals to feel controlled generate nonsynergistic extrinsic motivation, which does undermine the intrinsic desire to tackle a problem for its own sake. But extrinsic forces that support individuals’ ability to engage in problem solving or opportunity identification, such as rewards that provide resources or recognition that confirms competence, can create the synergistic extrinsic motivation that actually adds to intrinsic motivation. Whether this type of extrinsic motivation will support creativity depends on the stage of the creative process; this is the concept of stage-appropriate motivation mentioned earlier.

According to the componential theory of creativity ( Amabile, 1983 , 1996 ; Amabile & Mueller, 2008 ), a more purely intrinsically motivated state is conducive to Stage One, when problems to be solved and entrepreneurial opportunities to be pursued are being identified. Intrinsic motivation fosters the expansive thinking, wide exploration, breaking out of routines, and questioning of assumptions that this stage requires.

Ideally, the work environment at this stage will present individuals with puzzles, dilemmas, problems, and tasks that match their interests and passions, thus maximizing the probability that intrinsic motivation will remain high throughout the process ( Csikszentmihalyi, 1990 ). For example, from a young age, Phil Knight was passionate about running and gear that optimized the running experience; he sought out environments in which he could explore this domain. Whatever the domain, the environment should allow a high degree of autonomy ( Gagne & Deci, 2005 ), whereby the person feels free to follow new pathways and need not fear breaking out of established routines—whether formalized or implicit. There should also be an optimal level of challenge, in which work demands are neither well below nor well above the person’s current skills ( Csikszentmihalyi, 1997 ); it is at optimal levels of challenge that learning is most likely to occur ( Bandura, 1993 ). Ideally, the task or problem will have sufficient structure so that the person can engage with it productively but not so much structure that there is little room for anything surprising.

Within an existing organization, leaders at the highest level can engender the proper environment for Stage One by voicing support for entrepreneurial, creative, innovative behavior and then showing that support through actions that reward and recognize good new ideas—even when those ideas ultimately fail ( McGrath, 2001 ). In fact, one of the most effective means for triggering the learning described in the previous section is to laud the value of good-effort failures that naturally arise whenever people try radically new ideas. Leaders at all levels in an organization, down to immediate supervisors, should talk about the importance of creativity—and then walk the talk.

Lower-level leaders can play a particularly important role at Stage One by matching people to projects on the basis of not only their skills and experience but also their interests ( Amabile et al., 1996 ). Moreover, supervisors can greatly increase the probability that people will engage effectively with new problems to solve (and find hidden opportunities) if they put two structural supports in place. First, providing clear strategic direction toward meaningful goals lends purpose to the work ( Latham & Yukl, 1975 ); coupling that strategic direction with operational autonomy allows flexible exploration ( Ryan & Deci, 2000 ). Second, in forming teams to collaborate on a creative task, leaders should ensure a substantial degree of diversity in perspectives and disciplinary backgrounds among the members and then provide the teams with support for communicating effectively across their differences ( Mannix & Neale, 2005 ). With these structural conditions in place, people are more likely to question their taken-for-granted assumptions in deciding how to tackle the task before them.

Conversely, managers undermine intrinsic motivation and creativity if they establish a work environment that is marked by an emphasis on the status quo and on extrinsic motivators such as unrealistic deadlines ( Amabile, DeJong, & Lepper, 1976 ) and rewards that are dangled like carrots to induce employees to perform. And, although competition with other organizations can fuel intrinsic motivation by lending additional meaning to the work, win-lose competition within the organization can sap intrinsic motivation ( Deci, Betley, Kahle, Abrams, & Porac, 1981 ). Finally, rigid status structures in the organization can lead employees to consciously or unconsciously believe that certain assumptions may not be questioned and certain problem domains are off-limits to them ( Detert & Edmondson, 2011 ).

Startup entrepreneurs have the advantage and challenge of establishing their own work environment. As such, they should be conscious that they are developing long-term practices for the fellow members of their founding team and their earliest employees. Generally, the first employees are intrinsically motivated because there is little pecuniary reward at the outset. Even in the earliest days of a firm, founders can model and encourage the sort of freewheeling exploration and questioning of assumptions that characterize Stage One. They can look for partners and initial employees who are also passionate about the undertaking, and they can focus everyone’s competitive instincts on external entities rather than internal colleagues.

Stage Two: Preparation

Preparation in this context is the acquisition of knowledge within a relevant domain. It is accomplished by gathering information and resources to understand what has and has not been done to address the defined problem. Gaining a deep understanding of the problem space allows entrepreneurs to seize opportunities as well as sharpen the creative goal. Nike founder Phil Knight’s travels through Japan, including many visits to sporting goods stores, allowed him to identify a Japanese company and brand that could help bring his idea to fruition. Although he still had not actually established his own company before he traveled, his growing understanding of the culture enabled him to make a favorable deal with his targeted Japanese manufacturer based on a cold call.

For individuals who have a deep familiarity with the problem space, this stage can be a trivial one. An important exception to consider is that such individuals may face a different sort of challenge in the preparation stage: unlearning some of their familiar cognitive pathways and re-examining their assumptions. Experts who engage in creative endeavors can be stifled by the deeply ingrained mental representations they hold ( Runco, 1994 ), which may lead them to think they already know the answer.

Desired Behaviors for Preparation

The behaviors that can be most conducive to the preparation stage are, in some ways, distinct from the desired behaviors for problem/opportunity identification. They include perseverance ( Dweck, 1986 ), searching for and incorporating a wide range of information, and discarding preconceived notions as warranted by new information ( Piaget, 1966 ).

In her many iterations through the creative process to build Sittercity, Genevieve Thiers engaged in a range of preparation behaviors. Although she could not have known it at the time, her years of babysitting, including the junior year abroad at Oxford University, when she elected to be both a student and a nanny, served as excellent preparation. The wide range of information she gained about parents and their constraints, needs, and concerns served her well as she founded her company. This knowledge formed the broad foundation of domain-relevant skills that Thiers could immediately call to mind and upon which she built as she worked intensely on her startup.

Excited about her initial opportunity identification just before college graduation, Thiers did an Internet search to see if anyone was already offering such a service. Although she found websites for Babysitters.com and Sitters.com, neither was an operating business. In the summer of 2000, after Thiers had graduated from college and started her job at IBM, she spent her free time writing a business plan for Sittercity. She searched for relevant information during this phase, drawing on resources at the Boston office of the US Small Business Administration (SBA), and incorporated that information into her approach to preparing the business plan. By the fall of 2000, after Thiers had participated in three meetings with potential investors arranged by the SBA, she discarded her preconceived notion that external funding was the route to starting this business. She persevered, searching for other ways to fund Sittercity.

As new problems and opportunities arose, Thiers repeatedly dove into information gathering. As described earlier, when she noticed the puzzling fact that a few parents from outside of Boston were signing up for her service, which was then available only in Boston, she spent time talking with them to discover their underlying motivations. Later, when Sittercity’s major competitor, Babysitters.com, launched its site, she diligently monitored that site, as well as others that later appeared, to keep herself prepared to deal with competition.

An important resource on which Thiers drew in preparing to grow her business was her boyfriend, Dan Ratner, whom she met a few months after launching Sittercity. Ratner, although only a few years older than Thiers, had already been involved in more than one startup. His entrepreneurship experience, as well as his technical expertise, served as broad and deep sources of information and assistance for Thiers in the ensuing years. Eventually, in 2005, Ratner joined Sittercity as vice president. Thiers was CEO.

Learning Behaviors That Support Stage Two

The second stage of creativity can be viewed as adopting or calling up the routines of the domain; as such, it is subject to all the advantages and drawbacks of human minds as incredible learning machines. For experts, the second stage of creativity can be a trap when the routines of the domain become mental ruts ( Levitt & March, 1988 ). On the other hand, knowing a subject matter can free up cognitive resources to engage with it in multiple ways. This freedom is not typically available to novices during the learning process ( Bransford, Vye, Stevens, Kuhl, Schwartz, Bell, & Meltzoff, 2005 ). One of the great paradoxes of creativity is that expertise can be both a great source of and a substantial barrier to creative thinking. What makes the difference is whether the expert retains a learning mindset and continues to learn from the situations she encounters ( Feuerstein & Rand, 1974 ).

Novices face different challenges at Stage Two. The learning process is generally a social one, situated in a specific context ( Vygotsky & Cole, 1978 ). Studies on how novices become full participants in a community of practice have demonstrated that learning best occurs when individuals engage in the co-construction of knowledge in that community ( Lave & Wenger, 1991 ). As demonstrated in the partnership of Thiers and Ratner to build Sittercity, working with practiced professionals can help novices process vast amounts of new information in meaningful ways.

In the first stage of creativity, there is possible discomfort from surfacing deeply held beliefs and challenging the assumptions embedded within routines. In Stage Two, there can also be discomfort in the effort it takes to learn something new. For adults, context is particularly important in enhancing the intrinsic motivation needed to stay actively engaged in the often arduous learning process. For example, informal learning through problem solving ( Marsick & Yates, 2012 ) acquired in the “midst of action” is specific to the task at hand ( Raelin, 1997 ). This action learning is potent because it addresses challenges of transfer, which are common when employees attend external trainings and then struggle to apply what they’ve learned back in their job context. Action learning means paying particular attention to learning while actually doing one’s work.

In her seminal work on achievement-oriented behavior, Dweck (1986) observed that children who focused on learning something new had better outcomes and were more resilient to failure than those who focused on demonstrating what they already knew. Learning-oriented children had an implicit theory that they had the ability to increase their intelligence through effort. In contrast, performance-oriented children felt that intelligence was fixed, so they focused their efforts on demonstrating what they already knew. A learning orientation enables children to be resilient to the failure inherent in the learning process. It also means they are more likely to take on challenges and seek feedback because these activities are less threatening to them. Learning orientation is related to the learning mindset discussed earlier in that both connote an openness to exploring new possibilities. However, they are distinct constructs. A learning mindset is developed over time and describes the ability of individuals to find the lesson in any situation—learning is a natural process of how they interact with the world. A learning-oriented individual associates effort with intelligence and will therefore approach difficulties and challenges with the belief that they can be overcome. They will learn if the situation requires it, but they will not necessarily reframe situations as learning opportunities on a consistent basis.

Dweck’s (1986) work has been extended to organizations, with dozens of studies consistently demonstrating that a learning orientation is positively associated with better learning and performance outcomes ( Payne, Youngcourt, & Beaubien, 2007 ). Organizational culture can help individuals develop a learning-oriented or growth mindset by embracing risk-taking in learning new skills, emphasizing challenge and development over success, and giving preference to deep learning over fast learning ( Murphy & Dweck, 2010 ).

Work Environment Influences at Stage Two

Synergistic extrinsic motivation, which uses externally derived incentives to enhance existing intrinsic motivation, can be particularly useful at Stage Two, because thorough preparation for idea generation can be a tedious affair. Particularly for people who are novices in a domain, the learning required is often vast and the time commitment is often high—meaning that intrinsic motivation alone may be insufficient to fuel behavior ( Amabile, 1997 ).

The motivation for learning is more likely to be maintained if people perceive a sense of progress ( Amabile & Kramer, 2011 ). And progress in gathering and assimilating information is more likely if the work environment has a sufficient level of two kinds of resources: relevant information and people who are both willing and able to share their tacit knowledge about the problem domain ( Frey & Osterloh, 2000 ). In established organizations, managers can ensure the availability of these resources by supporting the establishment of accessible, useful information management systems; by finding new ways for employees to access new sources of information; and by structuring the organization to facilitate smooth coordination and cooperation among individuals and groups. Moreover, tacit knowledge available to problem-solvers within an organization grows dramatically when employees with diverse sets of skills, backgrounds, and experiences are brought on board ( Woolley, Gerbasi, Chabris, Kosslyn, & Hackman, 2008 ).

Startup entrepreneurs can support their own progress in gaining knowledge by building and accessing wide social networks of individuals with potentially relevant, yet diverse, perspectives. Analysis of social networks shows the power of cultivating and maintaining connections in peripheral, but related, domains ( Granovetter, 1973 ). These “weak ties” provide ways of linking previously disconnected groups and filling in structural holes at the nexus of potential for the innovative recombination of ideas ( Burt, 1995 ). Often, the information-rich individuals are venture capitalists or other investors. Sometimes, they are other entrepreneurs—as in the innovation hotbed known as Silicon Valley (where venture capitalists and angel investors also abound). Not only can new opportunities be identified (Stage One) through even casual conversations in such settings, but much useful—and unique—information can be learned.

Managers can foster the synergistic extrinsic motivation needed in Stage Two with occasional rewards and recognition that confirm individuals’ competence as they struggle to learn ( Bandura, 1993 ). A sense of progress once again comes into play. Self-efficacy increases as individuals experience progress towards goals, even when the goals are externally set, as is often the case in learning situations. The progress is a signal of improvement, which furthers motivation ( Elliott & Dweck, 1988 ).

Ideally, managers will also support intrinsic motivation by enabling people to pursue new areas that have piqued their curiosity ( Lepper & Henderlong, 2000 ). For example, some organizations—most famously, 3M and Google—give some of their employees the gift of time by allowing them to spend approximately one day per week working on any project they wish. These self-motivated pursuits can involve extensive exploration into new domains of knowledge that can, ultimately, serve as superb preparation for generating new and valuable ideas. Google Scholar is one of many products that resulted from initial “free time” work.

Work environment elements to avoid include an atmosphere of threatening critical evaluation connoting incompetence ( Dutton, 1992 ) and constrained communication in the work group or across the organization ( Detert & Edmondson, 2011 ). To be sure, these elements can be damaging at any stage of the creative process. But they can be particularly harmful when people are venturing into arenas where they have much to learn and must adopt a vulnerable dependence on others with greater expertise.

Stage Three: Idea Generation

Idea generation, the third stage of the creative process, is the one that most commonly comes to mind when people think of creativity. The goal of Stage Three is to produce high-quantity and high-quality ideas. Generating a large number of new ways to combine existing concepts increases the probability of finding one that works ( Simonton, 1999 ). Creativity-relevant processes are the most used, and the most useful, creativity component at this stage ( Amabile, 1988 ). They depend on the interaction of flexible cognitive processes (including deliberate techniques for creative thinking), energetic work styles, and nonconforming personality traits.

Brainstorming ( Osborn, 1953 ) and breakthrough thinking ( Perkins, 2001 ) are two of the many techniques that have been devised to facilitate the flexible cognitive processes required by this stage. The goal of brainstorming is to unleash as many ideas as possible. It requires that all ideas receive at least initial exploration, with brainstorming groups ideally designed to reduce concerns about criticism by the self or by others. Research has shown that the quality of ideas produced during brainstorming can be increased if individuals develop the ideas alone, then openly discuss all of them in a group session ( Diehl & Stroebe, 1987 ). Breakthrough thinking involves seeking and embracing different ways of looking at the problem and turning the difficult aspects of the problem to one’s advantage. For example, a company with slow elevators installed mirrors in the lobby so that the previously painful wait time became an advantage to riders, who want to “spruce up” on their way to their appointments ( Byrnes, 2005 ).

Desired Behaviors for Idea Generation

The most prominent behaviors involved in successful idea generation can be described as various forms of mental gymnastics—taking unusual leaps in perceiving the world and combining cognitions in new ways ( Cropley, 1967 ; Getzels & Csikszentmihalyi, 1967 ). These behaviors include seeing multiple perspectives, exploring new cognitive connections, embracing complexity, tolerating ambiguity, and proliferating ideas.

After her initial opportunity identification and preparation, Genevieve Thiers entered the idea-generation phase by first coming up with a name for her business. Considering the essentials of what she wanted to do (i.e., helping parents in her city find a sitter), she considered various verbal connections and hit upon the new linguistic combination, “Sittercity.” As Thiers developed her business concept, she considered a number of different ideas for how to set up the Sittercity service. She knew that there were existing agencies to help parents find just the right babysitter, but those were expensive and time-consuming. She began focusing on how to provide such a service more cheaply and efficiently, but still with high quality. It was clear from her personal experience in this domain that parents were much more likely to hire a sitter who was a college student; therefore, she knew that she would require all sitters registered on her site to be currently enrolled college students. It was also clear to her that, even when an agency was involved, parents would want to interview potential sitters. When expanding her Sittercity business into new geographical areas, Thiers generated ideas for many different ways to entice parents to join. She offered movie tickets for referrals, interacted with local mothers’ groups, went on talk shows, and offered “SpeedSitting” events to remove the barrier of unfamiliarity with a new sitter.

Throughout the development of her business, Thiers generated a broad range of ideas by considering her complex multiple goals and, perhaps most importantly, by keeping the perspective of parents and the perspective of her business needs in mind simultaneously.

Learning Behaviors That Support Stage Three

Because the creative goal has been defined, Stage Three is a more targeted version of the activities that occurred at Stage One; like that earlier stage, it requires challenging assumptions and breaking out of cognitive routines. Theories of transformational learning ( Mezirow, 1990 ) lend insight into learning behaviors that reinforce the creative behaviors of seeing multiple perspectives, exploring new connections, and embracing complexity. Transformational learning is distinct from technical learning—the acquisition of knowledge and skills described in Stage Two. Technical learning, although potentially challenging and fruitful, occurs in known spaces in answer to technical problems. In contrast, transformational learning, the highest level of learning ( Bateson, 2002 ), occurs in response to adaptive challenges—the difficult, frustrating problems that arise from unpredictable breaks in routine. Globalization provides many examples of these dilemmas as leaders struggle to understand, manage, and inspire people from different cultures, with different values, needs, and priorities ( Molinsky, 2013 ). Transformational learning in creative endeavors means seeking information that is not only new to the problem-solver but novel in the given setting. Adapting ideas from a different domain is a key source of creative concepts, particularly for entrepreneurial ventures. Certainly, neither the Internet nor babysitting were new when Thiers developed Sittercity. The creative act lay in using the power of one to serve an unmet need in the other.

Although Thiers worked alone at that point, this sort of recombination can be served by engaging multiple actors from different disciplines to work together toward a common goal. For example, in a study of medical teams in Helenski, Engestrom (1999) described how personnel from different sites, with different levels of experience and authority, were able to cross boundaries to redesign the children’s healthcare model. Individuals had to transform how they interacted across both horizontal and vertical boundaries to gain multiple perspectives, make new connections, and embrace the complexity of understanding the experience of care for children within their system.

Work Environment Influences at Stage Three

Stage Three, idea generation, involves divergent thinking to produce a large number and wide variety of candidate ideas. Intrinsic motivation is particularly important at this stage, and extrinsic motivation can be particularly detrimental, because the individual problem-solver must become deeply engaged in the problem itself, exploring the possibilities that arise from new combinations of the knowledge elements garnered in Stage Two.

That sort of deep engagement, sometimes experienced as “flow” ( Csikszentmihalyi, 1990 ), is more likely when people have work that is optimally challenging—neither so difficult that it is completely beyond their capabilities nor so easy that they are bored. The implication is that managers must allow for sufficient preparation in Stage Two (or assign creative problem-solving projects to individuals with the optimal level of existing skills) so that the individual is able to generate truly novel ideas that are at least potentially useful.

One of the most supportive things that managers can do at this stage is, essentially, to leave people alone. Autonomy, a sense of control over one’s own work and one’s own ideas, is central to the divergent-thinking mindset. Research on the exploratory phases of innovation processes has shown that autonomy in both goals and supervision can lead to better team outcomes ( McGrath, 2001 ). In some cases, this can require physically separate spaces for work. For example, Steve Jobs famously secluded his group at Apple as it was creating the first Macintosh; he even flew a pirate flag over the building, as a symbol of the group’s difference from the rest of the organization.

This type of autonomy allows for creative people to feel like originators of their work ( De Charms, 1968 ), a belief that may be particularly important for individuals who are drawn to entrepreneurship. Unlike more traditional organizations, entrepreneurial ventures involve high levels of risk, but they often afford more freedom to explore and experiment. Ideally, these opportunities will be explicitly valued by entrepreneurial leaders. They can accomplish this by clearly signaling that calculated risks are encouraged, even though failure will often result. Entrepreneurial leaders can also seek out the “small wins” ( Amabile & Kramer, 2011 ) that are inherent in creative ideas by actively recognizing elements of ideas that could be applied to the end product, even if the idea as a whole must be abandoned; this orientation toward learning from failure is crucial.

While allowing autonomy, leaders at all levels should be sufficiently involved to encourage the generation of a range of new ideas, from the incremental to the radical. Moreover, in contemporary business, most problems and opportunities are sufficiently complex that few of them can be solved or pursued by lone individuals—whether entrepreneurs or inventors within established firms. Ideally, the collective intelligence ( Woolley, Chabris, Pentland, Hashmi, & Malone, 2010 ) of committed individuals with deep, diverse expertise will have been leveraged to come up with ideas to the identified problem. Working autonomously does not necessarily mean working alone.

To keep the engine of new ideas cranking long enough for really good ones to emerge, there must be an atmosphere of openness inside the organization, whether it is a three-person startup or a 50,000-person conglomerate. The need for openness in innovation has even redefined the boundaries of what it means to be a firm. Many organizations now draw on external expertise and knowledge to supplement existing research and development efforts ( Chesbrough, 2006 ; Lakhani & Panetta, 2007 ). There should be mechanisms for considering new ideas by which leaders and colleagues welcome new solutions and hear out new ideas. The work environment should be such that, although not every idea can be accepted, every idea will be respected enough to receive a fair hearing ( Edmondson, 1999a ).

To best facilitate Stage Three work, managers should keep the emphasis on intrinsic motivation and, to the extent possible, avoid extrinsic motivators. As damaging as an environment of harshly critical evaluation can be at Stage Two when people are trying to learn new knowledge and skills, it can be even more harmful at Stage Three when people are trying to “be creative” in the purest sense of the word. Similarly, competition with coworkers who could have valuable information or useful perspectives can undermine intrinsic motivation ( Deci et al., 1981 ); moreover, it can cut off access to important stimuli for idea generation. Time pressure can operate in this fashion, too. When people are placed under deadlines for solving complex problems, they will feel controlled, and their intrinsic motivation will be undermined ( Gardner, 2012 )—especially if they don’t understand and accept the urgency of the problem. At a practical level, unrealistic deadlines don’t allow people the time to come up with many ideas ( Amabile et al., 1976 ).

Finally, Stage Three thinking is particularly vulnerable to bureaucratic red tape and rigid routines—which can crop up quickly even in relatively young companies. Ideally, the work environment will afford people easy access to materials, colleagues, and information that could be helpful in stimulating divergent thought processes ( Amabile, 1996 ). For example, at the renowned design firm IDEO, people expect that they may be called on to participate in brainstorming sessions for projects that are well outside their usual areas of expertise, in the hope that they may stimulate the process through their “outsider” perspectives ( Hargadon & Sutton, 1997 ). Indeed, anyone in the firm feels free to ask anyone else to participate, and it is considered an honor to be asked.

Stage Four: Idea Evaluation and Implementation

The fourth stage of entrepreneurial creativity includes two related but distinct elements—idea evaluation and initial idea implementation. (Full implementation of an idea is, strictly speaking, innovation, not creativity [ Amabile, 1988 ].) Consideration of idea implementation drives the efforts of idea evaluation. The goal is to determine which of the newly-generated ideas is optimally novel and useful for implementation in the current business environment. Often, evaluation of ideas leads to the realization that the most novel idea is not the best fit for the current market situation, competitive situation, or level of resources available. Successful entrepreneurs have often adopted a “fast failure” approach, which gives quick and objective feedback to allow the entrepreneur to quickly evaluate many ideas. It is based on a rapid prototyping model that involves investment in trial and error. Many ideas are tested on a small scale before fully committing resources ( McGrath, 2001 ).

Stage Four is the stage at which ideas become reality, or not. Perhaps more prominently than any other, the fourth stage of entrepreneurial creativity is often marked by a return to earlier stages and trying again, with new understanding and sharpened criteria. The problem-solver could reconsider ideas from Stage Three that were not pursued, generate new ideas, back up to gather additional information, or even return to the beginning and re-conceptualize the problem or opportunity.

Interestingly, the evaluation of an idea’s novelty is usually quite straightforward. As long as the problem-solver prepared adequately enough, it is fairly easy to determine how different the idea is from what has been done before. It is the usefulness aspect of creative ideas that can present a greater analytical and practical challenge. No matter how new and potentially useful it might be, if a creative idea cannot be implemented within the current environment, it is simply not useful. This is evident in ideas that are “ahead of their time,” such as Leonardo DaVinci’s helicopter 1 or Charles Babbage’s 1837 analytical machine 2 . Both were amazingly well thought-out, novel ideas, but the technology, materials, and manufacturing processes were simply not available to bring the ideas to fruition—that is, to render them useful.

Even when the infrastructure exists to support a novel idea, it may not become reality because the organization, the industry, or the world may not be prepared to change to the degree required to adopt the new idea. The delay in the standardized use of seatbelts (first invented in 1885, implemented widely in the 1960s), and the lack of adoption of the metric system in the United States are examples of useful ideas that stalled because people were unwilling to change their habits. As these examples show, it is often difficult to determine a priori whether an idea will be within a given environment.

Desired Behaviors for Evaluation and Implementation

The demands of the fourth stage of entrepreneurial creativity require, again, a somewhat different set of behaviors from those required at earlier stages: realistically analyzing the potential of the various ideas, unbiased by passion for them; communicating the chosen idea clearly; non-defensively gathering feedback on the idea’s potential; and implementing the idea with a balance of speed and attention to crucial details ( Amabile, 1996 ; Dyer, Gregersen, & Christensen, 2011 ).

Encouraged by her SBA advisors in the summer of 2000, Genevieve Thiers fearlessly presented her business idea to potential investors. Unfortunately, in her own words, she got “laughed out of the room” ( Wasserman & Gordon, 2009 , p. 3). These investors saw the idea as little more than a babysitter’s club, not a serious business endeavor. However, rather than abandon the original idea, Thiers analyzed their reactions and realized that, as older men with grown children, they actually had less expertise in this particular marketplace than she did.

The feedback from these investors did, however, lead Thiers to non-defensively realize that she had to figure out how to get the service up and running without relying on investors. This led her to re-enter the creative process at the idea-generation stage. Choosing from the ideas thus generated, she recruited sitters by putting up posters in local colleges and holding recruiting events—including one at an all-female college that attracted 150 students. She held focus groups with parents to figure out their willingness to pay and, with Ratner, developed a streamlined payment transfer process.

Thiers worked tirelessly to implement her ideas quickly and assess their success as soon as possible. Ratner remarked that “she has limitless energy and a total lack of fear” ( Wasserman & Gordon, 2009 , p. 7). Nonetheless, Thiers also paid careful attention to details. She monitored competitors’ websites and adjusted her strategy as the competitive signals became clearer. For example, she realized how crucial it was to have information on her website about safety, parents’ primary concern when hiring sitters.

Because she had developed a system for carefully tracking Sittercity’s membership rates daily, Thiers got immediate feedback on the success of the ideas she implemented, enabling her to discard failed ones and quickly try something new. Moreover, when she got unexpectedly positive feedback—such as learning that media reporters, many of whom were mothers, loved her company—she moved quickly to build on the new opportunity. This led Thiers to send press releases to a wide range of media and to enthusiastically respond to requests for interviews.

Thiers’s fast failure approach of repeated iterations through problem/opportunity identification, preparation, idea generation, and evaluation/implementation allowed her to steadily and successfully grow Sittercity. In 2004, Time magazine named Sittercity one of the year’s “50 Coolest Websites.” In 2005, Sittercity received a $500,000 investment on favorable terms. By 2006, the company had grown to include over 100,000 sitters and 11,000 registered parents. By 2013, the company had a presence in more than 25 major cities in the United States and had expanded to include pet care, senior care, housekeepers, and tutoring services.

Learning Behaviors That Support Stage Four

The fourth stage of creativity is a culmination of the learning and creative efforts of the earlier stages. The more creatively the problem space was framed, the more expertise that was developed, and the more ideas that were generated, the better the chances of success at the evaluation/implementation stage. The learning behaviors at this final stage are more directed versions of those described in earlier stages. In particular, idea evaluation relies heavily on seeking, listening to, and applying feedback.

Not all feedback is equally useful. In a meta-analysis of external feedback in learning situations, Kluger and DeNisi (1998) found that feedback is more effective when it builds on previous iterations and provides correct information about the current trial ( Hattie & Timperley, 2007 ). Feedback on iterations can make a highly complex and challenging task more manageable because it scaffolds the learning process as that process moves along ( Eisenhardt & Tabrizi, 1995 ). It directs the process toward specific, challenging goals ( Latham & Yukl, 1975 ) without overwhelming individuals who are in the midst of learning how to better judge the value of each iteration. Even when these criteria are met, seeking feedback from others can often be difficult because individuals do not want to appear ignorant or admit to making mistakes ( Argyris, 1976 ; Edmondson, 1999a ). However, feedback from experimentation—that is, concrete feedback from the work itself—provides an objective source of learning for the problem-solver that can be easier to accept and discuss.

At times, even concrete feedback is ignored. Because of the effort and success experienced to even get to Stage Four, individuals are prone to cling to ideas that simply don’t work. The effects of this escalation of commitment are well documented ( Brockner, 1992 ; Sleesman, Conlon, McNamara, & Miles, 2012 ; Staw & Ross, 1989 ) in that, once time and resources (“sunk costs”) have been dedicated to a given course of action, individuals are vulnerable to “throwing good money after bad” ( Staw, 1981 ). The result can be an irrational commitment of even more resources, rather than “cutting one’s losses” ( Arkes & Blumer, 1985 ). The temptation to maintain a course of action is strong, even in the face of clear evidence that it is a bad idea.

For these reasons, it is crucial for problem-solvers, including entrepreneurs, to respond non-defensively to feedback from informed others. Critical reflection on “the basic premises that underlie thinking” ( Mezirow, 1990 ) has been shown to facilitate learning from feedback ( Argyris, 1976 ; Senge, 1990 ). Learning is described as a cycle of action and reflection ( Argyris, 1976 ; Edmondson, 1999b ), and entrepreneurial ventures, in particular, are action-oriented. The time and space for reflection can seem like time away from ‘real work,’ but it is important to take that time. O’Neil and Marsick (1994) described how, by embedding pauses for reflection within action, managers can gain insights into the problems and situations at hand, as well as their own learning patterns. This type of insight is needed at all stages of creativity, but with the high stakes involved in this final stage, it is especially important and useful here.

Work Environment Influences at Stage Four

As facilitative as passionate intrinsic motivation for the ideas can be at Stage Three, it can become something of a handicap at Stage Four. Here, individuals who came up with ideas need to dispassionately evaluate them with a critical eye, choose the most promising from among them, and champion that idea by communicating clearly and effectively with others in the organization ( Battilana & Casciaro, 2013 ). This requires a combination of intrinsic and synergistic extrinsic motivation.

Certain structural elements in the work environment support the effective evaluation and implementation of ideas. Clearly defined task structures and mechanisms, such as review procedures ( Zollo & Winter, 2002 ), can be detrimental at Stage Three but now become much more appropriate. They support competent performance, and a sense of self-efficacy that boosts synergistic extrinsic motivation, as discussed earlier. Providing access to information through structured knowledge processes can ensure coordination of activity and availability of critical information at the time of need ( Lee & Choi, 2003 ).

In all but the smallest startup organizations, more people are involved at Stage Four than at any of the earlier stages, to ensure that the selected ideas are fully vetted across multiple stakeholders throughout the organization. This means that wide cooperation and collaboration, helpful at each stage of the creative process, are essential at this stage. Often, that collaboration must be cultivated by keeping key individuals informed and involved throughout the process. In established organizations, these individuals may be colleagues in marketing and manufacturing; in entrepreneurial startups, they may be venture capitalists or other investors and partners. Buy-in of key stakeholders can make all the difference in whether promising ideas get implemented or wither away. And cultural norms within the organization make all the difference in determining how those individuals interact with the idea generators ( Russell & Russell, 1992 ). The most helpful organizational norms are those that combine an openness to new ideas with an expectation that every idea will be constructively challenged. This means that idea evaluators should objectively and dispassionately focus on the merits of the work itself (the pros and the cons) while avoiding harshly critical evaluation that implies incompetence on the part of the idea generators.

In the same vein, reactions to failure can make an important difference. Managers should expect that, as ideas are tested, a good number of them will be found to be infeasible ( Sitkin, 1992 ). If the culture is one that views such occasions as learning opportunities, rather than opportunities for blame, idea generators will maintain their motivation to cycle back through earlier stages of the creative process—or move on to other creative problem-solving projects, if the decision is made to end the current project ( McGrath, 2001 ). And such decisions do need to be made at times. Although it is harmful for decision makers to be wedded to the status quo, it is equally harmful for them to implement new ideas with insufficient regard to the organization’s capabilities and the realities of the marketplace.

Sufficient resources for testing and refining ideas are essential at this stage, and organizations need processes for securing and quickly deploying these resources. Other work environment factors can have a direct positive effect on intrinsic and synergistic extrinsic motivation. If there is a truly urgent need for a solution or workable idea, that realistic time pressure can actually augment intrinsic motivation—as long as the problem-solvers understand the urgency and are protected from extraneous demands so they can focus on the project ( Ohly & Fritz, 2009 ). Genuine urgency can lend great meaning to the work ( Amabile & Kramer, 2011 ). Sometimes that urgency arises because a competitor firm is attempting to create a product to capture the same market. Although internal competition among coworkers can undermine intrinsic motivation and creativity, competition with outside organizations can add to the cohesion and intrinsic motivation of problem-solving teams.

Most broadly, the organizational work environment should be one where people at all levels care about birthing and developing new ideas. Even contentious debate over the novelty, feasibility, and ultimate value of new ideas is preferable to bland apathy.

Future Directions

Both managers and researchers still have much to learn about entrepreneurial creativity. Our exploration of the process of entrepreneurial creativity suggests several avenues for future investigations into how learning can serve creativity and innovation. We believe that, just as open innovation has redefined organizational boundaries, the boundaries of workplace learning should be expanded. The entrepreneurial stories we presented demonstrate that new ideas and creative insights are not bound by time or location. Because learning involves making new connections to break from old ways of thinking, it can and does occur both within and outside of work. In fact, the learning that occurs outside of work may be more useful than the formal training and job development that occurs within the constraints of the workplace.

Organizations benefit, and should therefore support, learning outside of work, even when it is not related to the employee’s primary work role. Because learning outside of work is primarily voluntary, autonomous, and intrinsically motivated, only barriers of time and resources remain. These are barriers that organizations are designed to overcome. Research on non-workplace learning that enhances performance at work can help direct resources toward activities that naturally leverage intrinsic motivation in service of workplace innovation.

Future research on the joy of achievement also has the potential to leverage intrinsic motivation to serve entrepreneurial efforts in startups and established firms. Stages Two and Four of the creative process can be arduous, often involving repeated failure. Recent work on the power of progress, including incremental progress (small wins) ( Amabile & Kramer, 2011 ), has shown that progress in meaningful work is a powerful motivator and boosts positive affect. This means that arduous tasks can become self-motivating and satisfying if progress remains salient. Viewing creativity, learning, and performance through the lens of the progress principle could enlighten researchers and managers about how to enhance both employee work life and performance.

Other research could address environmental conditions that target cognitive rather than motivational processes. Triggering the creative process requires some change in thinking or behavior that allows entrepreneurs to notice things others miss and to realize the potential of new ideas. Future research could examine the types of triggers that tend to spark the entrepreneurial creative process, as well as behaviors in which entrepreneurs could engage to be more aware of triggers. For example, facilitated reflection has been shown to guide people toward challenging underlying assumptions ( Argyris, 1983 ; O’Neil & Marsick, 1994 ). This raises research questions about the possibility for self-directed reflection that might enhance the learning of individuals and teams and thus enable them to more readily break out of cognitive routines.

Individual differences may also play an important role in the processes we have explored. Given the strong psychological forces of cognitive routines and sunk costs, tremendous effort is required to begin and to continue the experimental mindset required for creative entrepreneurship. Although confidence enhances the likelihood of tackling transformational challenges, it may quickly lead to overconfidence in one’s ability to evaluate the solutions to those challenges ( Judge, Erez, & Bono, 1998 ). Research has shown that self-efficacy may, in fact, exacerbate the tendency to hold on to bad ideas ( Bragger, Hantula, Bragger, Kirnan, & Kutcher, 2003 ; Garland, 1990 ). Because learning enhances self-efficacy and tends to embed people in routines (at least initially), it may be impossible to objectively evaluate one’s own work, raising the stakes on making creativity a collaborative process. Ideally, future research will address the underexplored issue of self-evaluation in the creative process.

Creativity is hard. But it is hard at different points in the process for different reasons. Breaking out of routine thinking to identify truly interesting problems or opportunities requires intrinsic motivation and creativity-relevant skills that are supported by an open, learning-oriented mindset. Understanding a given domain deeply and widely requires learning domain-relevant skills that can be supported by access to expert knowledge and any other environmental factors that facilitate steady, meaningful progress. Intrinsic motivation and creativity-relevant skills are most important when taking the risk to generate new and useful ideas. Successfully validating a new idea and communicating its value depends on yet another set of skills, including dispassionately understanding the perspectives of stakeholders. Motivating the appropriate behaviors at each stage of creativity involves a nuanced understanding of the power of both intrinsic and synergistic extrinsic motivation, and especially how they may be used together to reinforce rather than undermine each other. This understanding must then actually be applied to the work environment, with leaders modeling the behaviors they hope to inspire.

As difficult as it may be, creativity is also highly rewarding. In this chapter, we deconstructed the stages of creativity to reveal the underlying learning behaviors that support creative problem solving and the work environments that can motivate—or demotivate—it. By establishing these facilitating environments, entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial leaders in established firms can help people push through the frustration to engage in genuine breakthrough thinking.

“Leonardo da Vinci’s helicopter is a world renowned example of his ability to think centuries ahead of his time. It is the first known drawing of any helicopter-like machine… The design was drawn in 1493, 450 years earlier than an actual helicopter would take to the air.”— Leonardo Da Vinci’s Inventions.   http://www.leonardodavincisinventions.com/inventions-for-flight/leonardo-da-vinci-helicopter/

2. Charles Babbage developed the principle of the Analytical Engine, which was the world’s first computer and could be programmed to solve a wide variety of logical and computational problems.— Charles Babbage   and   Henry P. Babbage . ( 1889/2010 ). Babbage’s Calculating Engines. England : Cambridge University Press .

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Importance of Critical Thinking in Entrepreneurship

We all know that entrepreneurship is a rollercoaster world, where every twist and turn can either be a wild ride or a strategic move. In this whirlwind of decision–making, we all must realize that one skill takes center stage: critical thinking. 

You read that right. This isn’t just some textbook term. It’s what guides you through the busy world of business, helping you make sense of the chaos and find your path to success. And I tell you, if you master this skill, it could be your secret weapon as an entrepreneur. Let’s unravel the importance of critical thinking and how to wield this powerful tool in the entrepreneurial world.

Understanding the Critical Thinking Advantage

Critical thinking in entrepreneurship  is the systematic process of conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and evaluating information. With this information, entrepreneurs can reach answers or conclusions that are the best for their businesses and teams. It involves questioning and challenging assumptions, identifying biases, and understanding multiple perspectives.

This intellectual discipline, when practiced consistently, can help entrepreneurs reach their goals faster. Without it, many find themselves struggling to overcome the same type of problems and obstacles. That is why critical thinking is one of the most  important skills an entrepreneur  can work to build. This valuable attribute enhances the entrepreneur’s ability to interpret, infer, explain, and make reasoned judgments. By engaging in critical thinking, individuals can make well-informed decisions, solve problems effectively, and foster a deeper understanding of complex issues.

Critical thinking is not just something you learned in school; it can be your secret weapon to succeed in business. Whether it’s devising a marketing strategy, navigating a crisis, or hiring the right talent, critical thinking is the secret sauce that transforms your challenges into triumphs. 

As an entrepreneur myself, when I think about critical thinking, it’s about looking beyond the surface, questioning assumptions, and making informed decisions that propel your business forward.

Questioning Assumptions

Before you dive headfirst into making a huge decision, take a step back. I recommend you question your assumptions. Are you just winging it? Are you making choices on preconceived notions or are they based on actual data and insights? 

Let’s say you assume your target market prefers one feature over another – challenge that assumption you have. How can you do this? Use surveys, maximize customer feedback, or do market research to uncover these truths. 

When you question your own assumptions and those of others, you help uncover the often-unseen foundations upon which beliefs and decisions are built. Assumptions can be limiting. These limits can shape our understanding and perspective without us even realizing it. 

By actively questioning them, we can identify potential biases or unfounded beliefs that may skew our reasoning. This process not only leads to more accurate and objective conclusions but also encourages a deeper level of thinking. All of which, can help us drive our businesses forward in a more dynamic way.

Instead of assuming your customers want more features, utilize surveys that shed light on their priorities, preferences, and main pain points that your product can help solve.

Analyzing Information

Let’s be real. We all know that data is like gold in the world of business. But, and that’s a huge BUT, it only becomes valuable when and if you know how to mine it. Agree?

Critical thinking truly involves analyzing information with a magnifying glass. Whether it’s financial reports, marketing trends, or customer behavior, you must dissect the data to extract meaningful insights that can help you make informed decisions as an entrepreneur. 

Learning how to analyze information teaches us to think independently. It helps entrepreneurs understand exactly what they want to do and gives them the confidence to take steps forward. Dive into your sales data to identify recurring patterns. Are there specific products or services that are consistently performing well? Use this information to refine your offers.

Considering Alternative Perspectives

We all know that having tunnel vision is not great, especially if you’re an entrepreneur. Why? Because it can become a silent killer.  Critical thinking encourages   you to consider alternative perspectives. 

Invite diverse voices to the decision-making table – whether it’s your mentors, advisors, partners, or team. Embracing and being open to different viewpoints can illuminate blind spots and lead to well-rounded decisions. When planning a marketing campaign, seek input from team members with various backgrounds. Their perspectives can offer unique insights into your target audience.

Decision-Making with Precision

A good leader knows how to make informed decisions. And we all can agree that the  decision-making process  is the heartbeat of any business. 

Critical thinking enables you to transform gut feelings into strategic decisions. So instead of relying solely on intuition, you gather relevant data, weigh pros and cons, and envision the potential outcomes before making huge decisions and taking the plunge. 

 If you’re contemplating entering a new market, conduct a thorough market analysis. Evaluate key factors like competition, consumer behavior and preferences, and economic conditions before deciding. Trust me, this will help.

Remember that critical thinking is more than just about making decisions; it’s about making the right ones that propel your business forward. Encourage diverse perspectives, welcome healthy debate, and invest in continuous learning.

Problem-Solving Agility

We are aware that every entrepreneur, big or small, faces challenges. Truth be told, it’s an unavoidable part of the journey. 

Critical thinking equips you with problem-solving agility. So that instead of viewing problems are roadblocks, you see them as opportunities to improve, innovate, and become better. Break down complex issues into smaller, more manageable components so that you can tackle them one by one. 

If you encounter a sudden drop in sales, don’t panic.  Utilize critical thinking   to identify potential causes, analyze marketing conditions, and develop targeted strategies to address the issue. 

My take on all of this as an entrepreneur is that we all must learn how to navigate the business arena with finesse. It’s not a walk in the park, but it’s feasible. Running a business is akin to being the captain of a ship in uncharted waters. Critical thinking is your compass, guiding you through the complexities and uncertainties. 

As you navigate entrepreneurship, let critical thinking be the wind in your sails, propelling you toward success. After all, in the art of business, it’s not just about what you do; it’s about how you think.

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Team Writer: Victoria is an award-winning international communications manager with over 13 years of experience in strategic campaigns, brand storytelling, and building stakeholder relationships across diverse industries and regions. She is known to challenge norms and capitalize on brand storytelling opportunities. She is an avid writer, a frustrated chef, and a passionate advocate for diversity and inclusion.

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What Is Creative Problem-Solving & Why Is It Important?

• 01 Feb 2022

One of the biggest hindrances to innovation is complacency—it can be more comfortable to do what you know than venture into the unknown. Business leaders can overcome this barrier by mobilizing creative team members and providing space to innovate.

There are several tools you can use to encourage creativity in the workplace. Creative problem-solving is one of them, which facilitates the development of innovative solutions to difficult problems.

Here’s an overview of creative problem-solving and why it’s important in business.

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What Is Creative Problem-Solving?

Research is necessary when solving a problem. But there are situations where a problem’s specific cause is difficult to pinpoint. This can occur when there’s not enough time to narrow down the problem’s source or there are differing opinions about its root cause.

In such cases, you can use creative problem-solving , which allows you to explore potential solutions regardless of whether a problem has been defined.

Creative problem-solving is less structured than other innovation processes and encourages exploring open-ended solutions. It also focuses on developing new perspectives and fostering creativity in the workplace . Its benefits include:

• Finding creative solutions to complex problems : User research can insufficiently illustrate a situation’s complexity. While other innovation processes rely on this information, creative problem-solving can yield solutions without it.
• Adapting to change : Business is constantly changing, and business leaders need to adapt. Creative problem-solving helps overcome unforeseen challenges and find solutions to unconventional problems.
• Fueling innovation and growth : In addition to solutions, creative problem-solving can spark innovative ideas that drive company growth. These ideas can lead to new product lines, services, or a modified operations structure that improves efficiency.

Creative problem-solving is traditionally based on the following key principles :

1. Balance Divergent and Convergent Thinking

Creative problem-solving uses two primary tools to find solutions: divergence and convergence. Divergence generates ideas in response to a problem, while convergence narrows them down to a shortlist. It balances these two practices and turns ideas into concrete solutions.

2. Reframe Problems as Questions

By framing problems as questions, you shift from focusing on obstacles to solutions. This provides the freedom to brainstorm potential ideas.

3. Defer Judgment of Ideas

When brainstorming, it can be natural to reject or accept ideas right away. Yet, immediate judgments interfere with the idea generation process. Even ideas that seem implausible can turn into outstanding innovations upon further exploration and development.

4. Focus on "Yes, And" Instead of "No, But"

Using negative words like "no" discourages creative thinking. Instead, use positive language to build and maintain an environment that fosters the development of creative and innovative ideas.

Creative Problem-Solving and Design Thinking

Whereas creative problem-solving facilitates developing innovative ideas through a less structured workflow, design thinking takes a far more organized approach.

Design thinking is a human-centered, solutions-based process that fosters the ideation and development of solutions. In the online course Design Thinking and Innovation , Harvard Business School Dean Srikant Datar leverages a four-phase framework to explain design thinking.

The four stages are:

• Clarify: The clarification stage allows you to empathize with the user and identify problems. Observations and insights are informed by thorough research. Findings are then reframed as problem statements or questions.
• Ideate: Ideation is the process of coming up with innovative ideas. The divergence of ideas involved with creative problem-solving is a major focus.
• Develop: In the development stage, ideas evolve into experiments and tests. Ideas converge and are explored through prototyping and open critique.
• Implement: Implementation involves continuing to test and experiment to refine the solution and encourage its adoption.

Creative problem-solving primarily operates in the ideate phase of design thinking but can be applied to others. This is because design thinking is an iterative process that moves between the stages as ideas are generated and pursued. This is normal and encouraged, as innovation requires exploring multiple ideas.

Creative Problem-Solving Tools

While there are many useful tools in the creative problem-solving process, here are three you should know:

Creating a Problem Story

One way to innovate is by creating a story about a problem to understand how it affects users and what solutions best fit their needs. Here are the steps you need to take to use this tool properly.

1. Identify a UDP

Create a problem story to identify the undesired phenomena (UDP). For example, consider a company that produces printers that overheat. In this case, the UDP is "our printers overheat."

2. Move Forward in Time

To move forward in time, ask: “Why is this a problem?” For example, minor damage could be one result of the machines overheating. In more extreme cases, printers may catch fire. Don't be afraid to create multiple problem stories if you think of more than one UDP.

3. Move Backward in Time

To move backward in time, ask: “What caused this UDP?” If you can't identify the root problem, think about what typically causes the UDP to occur. For the overheating printers, overuse could be a cause.

Following the three-step framework above helps illustrate a clear problem story:

• The printer is overused.
• The printer overheats.
• The printer breaks down.

You can extend the problem story in either direction if you think of additional cause-and-effect relationships.

4. Break the Chains

By this point, you’ll have multiple UDP storylines. Take two that are similar and focus on breaking the chains connecting them. This can be accomplished through inversion or neutralization.

• Inversion: Inversion changes the relationship between two UDPs so the cause is the same but the effect is the opposite. For example, if the UDP is "the more X happens, the more likely Y is to happen," inversion changes the equation to "the more X happens, the less likely Y is to happen." Using the printer example, inversion would consider: "What if the more a printer is used, the less likely it’s going to overheat?" Innovation requires an open mind. Just because a solution initially seems unlikely doesn't mean it can't be pursued further or spark additional ideas.
• Neutralization: Neutralization completely eliminates the cause-and-effect relationship between X and Y. This changes the above equation to "the more or less X happens has no effect on Y." In the case of the printers, neutralization would rephrase the relationship to "the more or less a printer is used has no effect on whether it overheats."

Even if creating a problem story doesn't provide a solution, it can offer useful context to users’ problems and additional ideas to be explored. Given that divergence is one of the fundamental practices of creative problem-solving, it’s a good idea to incorporate it into each tool you use.

Brainstorming

Brainstorming is a tool that can be highly effective when guided by the iterative qualities of the design thinking process. It involves openly discussing and debating ideas and topics in a group setting. This facilitates idea generation and exploration as different team members consider the same concept from multiple perspectives.

Hosting brainstorming sessions can result in problems, such as groupthink or social loafing. To combat this, leverage a three-step brainstorming method involving divergence and convergence :

• Have each group member come up with as many ideas as possible and write them down to ensure the brainstorming session is productive.
• Continue the divergence of ideas by collectively sharing and exploring each idea as a group. The goal is to create a setting where new ideas are inspired by open discussion.
• Begin the convergence of ideas by narrowing them down to a few explorable options. There’s no "right number of ideas." Don't be afraid to consider exploring all of them, as long as you have the resources to do so.

Alternate Worlds

The alternate worlds tool is an empathetic approach to creative problem-solving. It encourages you to consider how someone in another world would approach your situation.

For example, if you’re concerned that the printers you produce overheat and catch fire, consider how a different industry would approach the problem. How would an automotive expert solve it? How would a firefighter?

Be creative as you consider and research alternate worlds. The purpose is not to nail down a solution right away but to continue the ideation process through diverging and exploring ideas.

Continue Developing Your Skills

Whether you’re an entrepreneur, marketer, or business leader, learning the ropes of design thinking can be an effective way to build your skills and foster creativity and innovation in any setting.

If you're ready to develop your design thinking and creative problem-solving skills, explore Design Thinking and Innovation , one of our online entrepreneurship and innovation courses. If you aren't sure which course is the right fit, download our free course flowchart to determine which best aligns with your goals.

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2.4: Creativity and Innovation in Entrepreneurship

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Learning Outcomes and Task Summary

Learning Outcomes:

• Define creativity and innovation in an entrepreneurial context
• Reflect on various perspectives on creativity and innovation in an entrepreneurial context
• Assess the potential of design thinking
• Identify the characteristics that resonate with you as being critical to entrepreneurial success

Task Summary:

Lesson 2.3.1: Entrepreneurial Creativity and Innovation

Lesson 2.3.2: design thinking, activity 2.3.1: read/watch/listen – reflect, activity 2.3.2: journal entry.

• Unit 2 Assignment: The Makings of a Successful Entrepreneur

Creativity and innovation are what make the world go around and continue to improve and evolve! There have been lots of great ideas and thoughts around the creative and innovative process for entrepreneurs, as this is a key part of the problem identification process. Have a look at what some resident experts have said about creativity and innovation from an entrepreneurial lens.

Systematic innovation involves “monitoring seven sources for an innovative opportunity” (Drucker, 1985). The first four are internally focused within the business or industry, in that they may be visible to those involved in that organization or sector. The last three involve changes outside the business or industry.

• The unexpected (unexpected success, failure, or outside events)
• The incongruity between reality as it actually is and reality as it is assumed to be or as it ought to be
• Innovation based on process need
• Changes in industry structure or market structure that catch everyone unawares
• Demographics (population changes)
• Changes in perception, mood, and meaning
• New knowledge, both scientific and nonscientific

One of the components of Mitchell’s (2000) New Venture Template asks whether the venture being examined represents a new combination. To determine this, he suggests considering two categories of entrepreneurial discovery: scientific discovery and circumstance .

• Physical/technological insight
• A new and valuable way
• Specific knowledge of time, place, or circumstance
• When and what you know

The second set of variables to consider are the market imperfections that can create profit opportunities: excess demand and excess supply . This gives rise to the following four types of entrepreneurial discovery.

• Uses science to exploit excess demand (a market imperfection)
• Becomes an opportunity to discover and apply the laws of nature to satisfy excess demand
• Inventions in one industry have ripple effects in others
• Example: the invention of the airplane
• Circumstances reveal an opportunity to exploit excess demand (a market imperfection)
• Not necessarily science-oriented
• Example: airline industry = need for food service for passengers
• Uses science to exploit excess supply (a market imperfection)
• Example: Second most abundant element on earth after oxygen = silicon microchips
• Circumstances reveal an opportunity to exploit excess supply (a market imperfection)
• Example: Producer’s capacities to lower prices = Wal-Mart

Schumpeter’s (1934) five kinds of new combinations can occur within each of the four kinds of entrepreneurial discovery (Mitchell, 2000):

• The distinction between true advances and promotional differences
• Example: assembly line method to automobile production, robotics, agricultural processing
• Global context: Culture, laws, local buyer preferences, business practices, customs, communication, transportation all set up new distribution channels
• Example: Honda created a new market for smaller modestly powered motorbikes
• Enhance availability of products by providing at lower cost
• Enhance availability by making more available without compromising quality
• Reorganization of an industry

Murphy (2011) claimed that there was a single-dimensional logic that oversimplified the approach taken to understand entrepreneurial discovery. He was bothered by the notion that entrepreneurs either deliberately searched for entrepreneurial opportunities or they serendipitously discovered them. Murphy’s (2011) multidimensional model of entrepreneurial discovery suggests that opportunities may be identified (a) through a purposeful search; (b) because others provide the opportunity to the entrepreneur; (c) through prior knowledge, entrepreneurial alertness, and means other than a purposeful search; and, (d) through a combination of lucky happenstance and deliberate searching for opportunities.

According to experimentation research, entrepreneurial creativity is not correlated with IQ (people with high IQs can be unsuccessful in business and those with lower IQs can be successful as an entrepreneur). Research has also shown that those who practice idea generation techniques can become more creative. The best ideas sometimes come later in the idea-generation process—often in the days and weeks following the application of the idea-generating processes (Vesper, 1996).

Vesper (1996) identified several ways in which entrepreneurs found ideas:

• Chance event
• Answering discovery questions

Although would-be entrepreneurs usually don’t discover ideas by a deliberate searching strategy (except when pursuing acquisitions of ongoing firms), it is nevertheless possible to impute to their discoveries some implicit searching patterns. (Vesper, 1996)

Vesper (1996) categorized discovery questions as follows:

• What is bothering me and what might relieve that bother?
• How could this be made or done differently than it is now?
• What else might I like to have?
• How can I fall the family tradition?
• Can I play some role in providing this product or service to a broader market?
• Could there be a way to do this better for the customer?
• Could I do this job on my own instead of as an employee?
• If people elsewhere went for this idea, might they want it here too?

Vesper (1996) also highlighted several mental blocks to departure . He suggested that generating innovative ideas involved two tasks: to depart from what is usual or customary and to apply an effective way to direct this departure. The mental blocks in the way of departure include the following:

• difficulty viewing things from different perspectives
• seeing only what you expect to see or think what others expect you to see
• intolerance of ambiguity
• preference for judging rather than seeking ideas
• tunnel vision
• insufficient patience
• a belief that reason and logic are superior to feeling, intuition, and other such approaches
• thinking that tradition is preferable to change
• disdain for fantasy, reflection, idea playfulness, humor
• fear of subconscious thinking
• inhibition about some areas of imagination
• distrust of others who might be able to help
• distractions
• discouraging responses from other people
• lack of information
• incorrect information
• weak technical skills in areas such as financial analysis
• poor writing skills
• inability to construct prototypes

Understanding these mental blocks to departure is a first step in figuring out how to cope with them. Some tactics for departure include the following (Vesper, 1996):

• Trying different ways of looking at and thinking about venture opportunities
• Trying to continually generate ideas about opportunities and how to exploit them
• Seeking clues from business and personal contacts, trade shows, technology licensing offices, and other sources
• Not being discouraged by others’ negative views because many successful innovations were first thought to be impossible to make
• Generating possible solutions to obstacles before stating negative views about them
• Brainstorming
• Considering multiple consequences of possible future events or changes
• Rearranging, reversing, expanding, shrinking, combining, or altering ideas
• Developing scenarios

Query \(\PageIndex{1}\)

The Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford University called the d.school ( http://dschool.stanford.edu/ ), is an acknowledged leader at promoting design thinking. You can download the Bootcamp Bootleg manual from the d.school website at https://dschool.stanford.edu/resources/the-bootcamp-bootleg . The following description of design thinking is from the IDEO website:

Design thinking is a deeply human process that taps into abilities we all have but get overlooked by more conventional problem-solving practices. It relies on our ability to be intuitive, to recognize patterns, to construct ideas that are emotionally meaningful as well as functional, and to express ourselves through means beyond words or symbols. Nobody wants to run an organization on feeling, intuition, and inspiration, but an over-reliance on the rational and the analytical can be just as risky. Design thinking provides an integrated third way.

The design thinking process is best thought of as a system of overlapping spaces rather than a sequence of orderly steps. There are three spaces to keep in mind: inspiration , ideation , and implementation . Inspiration is the problem or opportunity that motivates the search for solutions. Ideation is the process of generating, developing, and testing ideas. Implementation is the path that leads from the project stage into people’s lives (IDEO, 2015).

Today is all about taking some time to sit the value of creativity and innovation in entrepreneurship. Similar to previous activities, this is all done with the intent to develop your own understanding of the characteristics needed for success in entrepreneurship. Pay close attention to characteristics and leanings that resonate with you, and are particularly appealing. Remember, at the end of this module you will be developing either a 250-word document, infographic, or a three-minute presentation on the characteristics that make an entrepreneurial thinker and leader successful.

The key steps are:

• Choose five (5) videos from this Innovation Playlist to watch
• Building on what you have learned throughout this unit, identify the characteristics that resonate with you as being critical to success and appealing to you personally
• Reflect on why these characteristics are critical and appealing
• Reflect on how these characteristics, or lack thereof, could impact your own success as an entrepreneur
• Reflect on how you can strengthen these characteristics to support your own entrepreneurial success over the next 18 months

As a reminder, journaling can be a really powerful way to learn because it gets us to pause and reflect not only on what we have learned but also on what it means to us. Journaling makes meaning of material in a way that is personal and powerful. Similar to your unit end reflection in Unit 1, we are going to take a slightly different approach for this journal, which focuses on developing an action plan given your previous two journal reflections. Here, you will develop a plan of action for immediate learning challenges, such as the unit assignments featured in this course. Recall in the past two journals you reflected on key learning (not content) aspects you found challenging. You will reconsider your strengths, weaknesses, and key learnings and determine specific steps to prepare and complete the oncoming learning challenge of designing the entrepreneurial process for yourself. Your reflection entries should be either 300 to 500 written words or a video that is approximately 5 minutes.

Using your past two journal reflections and your learning experience in Unit 2, Module 3, reflect on the following:

• If there was not a particular concept that was easy to understand, reflect on why this was the case
• If there was not a particular concept that was difficult to understand, reflect on why this was the case
• Develop a meaningful plan with clear and specific actions you need to take, how you will take them, and when you will take them, to address any challenges or weaknesses before you complete your Unit 2 Assignment: The Makings of a Successful Entrepreneur.

UNIT 2 Assignment: The Makings of a Successful Entrepreneur The purpose of this assignment is to connect all of the dots that you have been learning about and engaging with over the past unit when it comes to what really makes for a successful entrepreneur. You are going to develop your own set of characteristics, skills, abilities, traits, etc., which collectively make for a successful entrepreneur, and explore how you see these characteristics in yourself. Remember, this is not about finding the right answer, or providing a set of characteristics that was developed by someone else, but rather this is about developing your own set of characteristics with supporting rationale. Your submission should be about 250 words, which is one page double spaced, or it could be done as an infographic, or a two-three minute presentation. If you are doing this as part of a formal course and have a different approach that you would like to take for developing this assignment, please check with your instructor.

Media Attributions

• Photo of Innovation by Michal Jarmoluk on Pixabay .

Text Attributions

• The content related to the Ways of Identifying Opportunities was taken from “ Entrepreneurship and Innovation Toolkit, 3rd Edition ” by L. Swanson (2017) CC BY-SA

Drucker, P. F. (1985). Innovation and entrepreneurship: Practice and principles . p. 35. New York, NY: Harper & Row.

IDEO. (2015). About IDEO. para. 7-8. Retrieved from http://www.ideo.com/about/

Mitchell, R. K. (2000). Introduction to the Venture Analysis Standards 2000: New Venture Template Workbook . Victoria, B.C., Canada: International Centre for Venture Expertise

Murphy, P. J. (2011). A 2 x 2 conceptual foundation for entrepreneurial discovery theory. Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, 35 (2), 359-374. doi:10.1111/j.1540-6520.2010.00368.x

Schumpeter, J. A. (1934). The theory of economic development : An inquiry into profits, capital, credit, interest, and the business cycl e (R. Opie, Trans.). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Vesper, K. H. (1996). New venture experience (revised ed.). p. 60. Seattle, WA: Vector Books

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Here’s why creativity is so crucial for entrepreneurship?

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Entrepreneurship is something that is of high importance in driving economic development. It is because of this phenomenon that immense opportunities are create and more and more employment options are generated, which in turn has a positive effect on various aspects including revenue generation, per capita income, lifestyle, and so on. Entrepreneurship is same as doing any other business venture, but has some of the characteristics that distinguishes it from a traditional approach .

• Innovation  is one such characteristic which involves critical examination of current business scenarios and devising new ways to increase efficiency and effectiveness.
• Resource optimization  also features in the list, whereby an entrepreneur makes full use of resources to generate efficient business processes.
• Risk taking  is at the root of entrepreneurship and revolves around the ability and courage to take new risks.
• New niches and enterprises are created, providing exciting  job opportunities  for people.
• And on top of all is  creativity,  which is a must have skill and characteristic of an entrepreneur.

Fig1 : Entrepreneurship Phenomenon

The role of creativity in entrepreneurship

Creativity is a crucial skill for an entrepreneur, and helps in devising interesting processes and products. Now the question is what makes creativity so crucial and impactful for an entrepreneur. Let’s have a look and try to understand the importance of creativity:-

• Optimal utilization of employee potential:  An entrepreneur utilizes full employee potential by encouraging creativity in workplace. There might be an ocean of ideas which are being dormant and ready to be utilized. By tapping on such creativities, an entrepreneur can reap results in the form of profitability, financial strength, and effective decision making.
• Competitive advantage:  Creativity leads to generation of novel and innovative ways of doing business. Exploring new niches and generating new ideas lead to efficiency and eventually give an entrepreneur the required edge over the competition.
• Product development:  Creativity encourages new ways of developing an existing product or service, thereby optimizing business activities in the organization. A creative entrepreneur knows how to make improvements in the deliverables of an enterprise.
• Changing the status quo:  Creativity enables an entrepreneur to get new perspectives towards business processes or financial/operational problems. It is creativity that helps an entrepreneur to abandon status quo and follow a path of immense discoveries. Creativity ignores ‘’usual’’ or ‘’normal’’, and lets an entrepreneur think outside of the box. Traditional solutions are shut and new, interesting, & versatile options are explored. It leads to ‘’Thinking the Unthinkable’’.
• Developing new niches:  It is also very important for an entrepreneur to analyze the traditional business approach and come up with new aspects of doing business activities. This can lead to a change in the methods of manufacturing or service delivery or supply chain, and so on. This all generates new niches for a potential business and leads to success.

It should also be noted here that creative thinking is not the only attribute needed for successful entrepreneurship. Some of other areas pointed out by researches include Interpersonal skills, personal traits, practical skills, critical thinking, and so on. Nevertheless, creativity is a must have skill in an entrepreneur. If simply put – creativity involves thinking freely but focusing on the major question to be answered, the product to be developed, or the areas to be improved.

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An Entrepreneur's Guide to Better Thinking Our brains are wired to think in patterns, but it might be hurting your decision-making.

By Aytekin Tank • Jun 28, 2021

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

In normal times, being an entrepreneur can feel like constantly swimming upstream. Each day involves a continual onslaught of decisions, big and small, to be made by you and you alone. But in times of uncertainty, while businesses scramble to adjust to evolving markets and work conditions, entrepreneurs are facing more daily decisions than ever. It's no wonder that according to the World Economic Forum , an average of 45% of adults globally said their mental and physical health has become worse in the past year.

As CEO of my company JotForm, it would be easy to slip into cruise control just to get through another jam-packed day; to keep swimming along and forget to think about how I'm thinking and making decisions.

But unaware decision-making can lead to a less innovative, less productive and less inclusive workplace and ultimately hurt your business. That's why it's critical to recognize your current thinking patterns and how to do it better. Here, a few expert-backed strategies to improve the quality of your thoughts.

1. Think about thinking

If you're reading this article, then you're already knocking out strategy number one. According to Ness Labs , metacognition — the practice of thinking about your thinking — helps you to analyze your thought processes and, in doing so, improves the quality of your thinking. And though it may sound complicated, metacognition simply requires carving out some space for self-reflection, which can be done through daily journaling , regularly checking in with your thought processes and practicing some of the techniques below.

As long as you're conscientious about how you think, you're off to a good start.

Related: 7 Ways to Remove Biases From Your Decision-Making Process

2. Be aware of loops

Many of us are familiar with behavioral loops — the way we automatically look both ways before crossing the street; or how your mouth waters when you walk into your favorite restaurant. Similar to these learned physical reactions, our minds develop certain "loops" as well.

Mental loops are not inherently bad — in fact, sometimes we need them to process the barrage of new information throughout the day. As Zat Rana writes , "Our brain is a pattern-seeking survival machine, and habits are how it ensures that we don't have to think too hard about what to do when familiar situations arise, letting us conserve energy."

But they can also lead to blind spots. Writes Rana, "Our brains have learned something in one context, so they mistakenly apply it to others, mixing up the triggers that lead to routine thoughts." For example, you assume that a new business issue requires the same old solution, rather than searching for a better answer.

The way to counteract loops is to train our minds to think critically — reading books, hearing out conflicting opinions, educating yourself about divergent ways of perceiving the world. Also, you can practice different mental models, as explained below.

Related: You Own a Business, But Got a Golden Offer to Work for Someone Else. What Do You Do?

3. Add to your mental model toolbox

As entrepreneur Charles Munger once said, "You've got to have models in your head. And you've got to array your experience both vicarious and direct on this latticework of models."

In other words, we arrange new information based on the existing infrastructure in our brains. The good thing is, we can diversify the kinds of models available and that way, achieve a deeper and more nuanced understanding of that new information. One way to increase your available mental models is simply to study and practice them . Take, for example, the first principles mental model, which entails breaking down complicated problems into individual elements, then rebuilding them from the ground up. Or the inversion technique: Think about what you want, then, think of the opposite of what you want — a surefire way to achieve a new perspective.

Entrepreneurs can also try organizing employees in a way that ensures cross-fertilization of mental models. A few years ago at JotForm, our employees began working in small, cross-functional teams . Whereas a designer would see a challenge from one perspective, an engineer would come at it from a completely different angle. The results were undeniable — not only were employees happier and more motivated, but our products improved.

On a personal level, expanding your mental model toolbox will help you make better decisions.

Related: Expose Cognitive Biases For What They Are

4. Make diversity the rule not the exception

Of all the reasons to embrace diversity, here's one: It will boost your thinking and your company's innovation. Harvard Business Review authors analyzed more than 150 companies and found that after women join C-suites, they don't just bring new perspectives, but they actually shift how the C-suite thinks about innovation, leading them to consider a wider variety of strategies for creating value. Importantly, the shift happened in particular where teams already had at least one woman.

Having more diverse perspectives can make groups more open to change. And as any entrepreneur can tell you, change is integral to innovation.

5. Remember emotional agility

As much as we'd all like to see ourselves as completely objective decision-makers, especially when it comes to our businesses, it's undeniable that emotions play into our daily choices. While we might expect anger could lead to brash or impulsive decisions, it turns out that positive moods can affect our better judgment too.

The key to overcoming this tendency is to develop awareness and practicing emotional agility. As Ness Labs explains, "Emotional agility encourages you to observe your inner world and to build resilience. Such a compassionate and honest relationship with your emotions will help in limiting their clouding effect on your judgement." Not only that, emotional agility can relieve stress, reduce errors and improve job performance.

So, how can you become more emotionally agile? According to HBR , the key is to recognize your patterns; label your thoughts and emotions; accept them; and act on your values.

Our brains may be wired to work a certain way, but there are easy ways to rewire them to benefit ourselves and our businesses.

Related: How to Trust Your Gut to Make the Right Business Decision

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Creativity, Innovation and Entrepreneurship: A Critical Overview of Issues and Challenges

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• First Online: 17 August 2017
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• Peter P. Groumpos 13  

Part of the book series: Communications in Computer and Information Science ((CCIS,volume 754))

Included in the following conference series:

• Conference on Creativity in Intelligent Technologies and Data Science

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Creativity in intelligent technologies & data science is recognized as a growing and challenging scientific field. Additional concepts of Innovation and Entrepreneurship are examined and their important role in developing theories and technologies for intelligent systems and data science is shown. The Triangle of Knowledge that contains all these concepts is presented and analyzed. The role of human intelligence in developing Intelligent Control and Cognitive Control is analyzed. The need for developing an Intelligent Cognitive Control Theory as a new unified theory is emphasized.

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Acknowledgment

I wish to express my sincere gratitude to Mrs. Alexandra Lotsari-Groumpos for her encouragement and assisting in developing this paper as well as many thanks for editing the final version of the paper.

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Groumpos, P.P. (2017). Creativity, Innovation and Entrepreneurship: A Critical Overview of Issues and Challenges. In: Kravets, A., Shcherbakov, M., Kultsova, M., Groumpos, P. (eds) Creativity in Intelligent Technologies and Data Science. CIT&DS 2017. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 754. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-65551-2_1

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Creative Coach | Mark McGuinness | Since 1996

Helping you thrive as a 21st Century Creative

The 3 Critical Characteristics of the Creative Entrepreneur

By Mark McGuinness

So how come Marla ’s having such a ball? How did she get to be queen of the roost? And what does she know that Lou doesn’t?

Marla is the consummate creative entrepreneur .  She’s a bright creative thinker who follows through and gets things done.  Everybody loves her for a reason – she treats everyone she works with, big and small, as a valued collaborator and potential ally.  And her creativity is not limited to the artistic sphere – her entrepreneurial vision allows her to conjure new opportunities out of thin air, and she has the business savvy to make her dreams a reality.

Her success – like yours – depends on her ability to master three critical skill-sets:

• Creativity – generating new ideas, evaluating them effectively, taking action to turn them into new products and services.
• Collaboration – connecting and working with partners, clients, and other significant players in your network, which will probably be scattered across the globe and contain more ‘virtual’ relationships than face-to-face ones.
• Entrepreneurship – identifying opportunities in the marketplace and using business skills to turn ideas into products into profits.

Of course, entrepreneurs have always relied on their creativity to produce wealth, but the modern creative entrepreneur goes further. John Howkins defines creative entrepreneurs as people who ’use creativity to unlock the wealth that lies within themselves ’ (my emphasis) rather than external capital.

The value they create lies not in their physical products (if any) but in intangible assets such as their brand, reputation, network and intellectual property.  They are adept at projecting a desired image and creating a personal 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.

Creative entrepreneurs are not freelancers. Freelancers earn a living by doing paid work for clients, usually charging by the hour, day or project. Freelancers think in terms of  ’getting more work’. Creative entrepreneurs think in terms of creating opportunities, producing results and making profits. This leads them to create systems and businesses that generate wealth and free up their time for their next big idea.

Mary’s Story

Once upon a time there was ’a young girl who just wanted to draw pictures’. When she was 11, her family created a ’studio’ for her by empying out a linen closet, where she would sit and draw for hours, no matter how hot it was in summer.

She grew up into a woman who wanted to draw pictures. She took a job at an ad agency and freelance commissions from clients – but she wasn’t satisfied ’drawing to order’ for other people. So she started licensing her designs to greeting card companies and saw her levels of income and satisfaction rise.

She branched out into other media and took on staff to help her. To this day, she still draws the originals of all her designs, before her staff ’reformats’ them for licensed products including cards, calendars, T-shirts, mugs, books and animated films. One day her fame and personal brand were so well established that she was able to launch a national magazine bearing her name – Mary Engelbreit’s HOME COMPANION .

Had she remained a freelancer or even become a contracted author, Mary Engelbreit would no doubt have made a comfortable living. But because she became an entrepreneur, licensing her art and building a business around it, she has achieved lifetime retail sales of more than $1 billion. She has also touched the lives of millions of people with her artwork, and partnered with the charity First Book to promote literacy by delivering millions of books to low income children.

Artist or Entrepreneur?

Conventional thinking sees art and business as worlds apart, with little or nothing in common. Here at Lateral Action we think this is a deeply uncreative way of looking at things. In Mary Engelbreit we see the Artist and Entrepreneur working together in harmony:

It’s an amazing degree of success for any company, but even more remarkable considering that it all began with a single-minded young girl who decided at age 11 that she was going to be an artist. And while Mary Engelbreit Studios has grown into a global licensing and retail business, that same girl still sits at its core, grown up now, but still drawing her pictures with the same sense of wonder, imagination and enthusiasm. ( MaryEngelbreit.com )

Or how about Caterina Fake , who started out as a designer, then later an Art Director at Salon.com before she co-founded Flickr , the photo-sharing phenomenon. These days her business interests include sitting on the boards of Creative Commons and Etsy , speaking at conferences and universities, and advising startups. She also finds time to write fiction and poetry and make sculpture and art installations. Are her businesses really any less creative than her artistic pursuits?

Marla wouldn’t say so. She calls herself an ‘Artist in Business’, meaning both ‘an artist who is in business’ and ‘an entrepreneur whose business is a work of art’.

We’re All Entrepreneurs Now

As Lou is finding out to his cost, the steady job and predictable career path are now historical relics.  The only real security lies in taking an entrepreneurial approach to our own careers, by taking responsibility for developing our skills, building our network and reputation, and creating opportunities for ourselves.  Taking a job can be a great learning experience and a worthwhile investment in yourself – just don’t assume it will be there forever.

Of course this is great news to someone like Jack who values his independence and always has plenty of creative side projects on the boil.  He’ll get bored and move on long before he’s made redundant.  That blog he’s been writing in the evenings has grown arms and legs – as well as landing him a book deal it’s put him in touch with collaborators around the globe.  He’s convinced he’s on the verge of making it big… but he’ll need more than dreams to succeed.

Because the new economy is founded on creativity, it would be easy to assume we all need to get our creative thinking hats on and schedule a lot of brainstorming sessions. But there’s a little more to it than that – as we’ll see in the next article in this series.

Want to Become a Creative Entrepreneur?

We’ve created an in-depth learning programme to help you become a creative entrepreneur, based on our own real-life experiences and other examples. Sign up here if you’d like to be first to know next time the course is open to new students.

Over to You

Do you consider yourself an entrepreneur?  Why?

How have the skills of creativity, collaboration and entrepreneurship contributed to your success?

Which of these three skill-sets come easiest to you? Which do you have to work at?

About the Author : Mark McGuinness is a poet and creative coach .

About Mark McGuinness

Mark McGuinness is a an award-winning poet , a coach for creatives , and the host of The 21st Century Creative Podcast .

Get Mark’s FREE Creative Career Course

Receive all 26 lessons of The 21st Century Creative Foundation Course to help you thrive as a creative professional

You'll also receive every new article and podcast Mark McGuinness publishes on this blog, plus occasional product and service offers, to help you succeed as a 21st Century Creative.

Learn more about the course here . Read the privacy policy here .

Reader Interactions

September 19, 2008 at 6:49 am

Great goin…. waiting for more.

September 19, 2008 at 7:46 am

What I liked about your article is the idea that you don’t have to do or be just one thing. You can find different ways to apply, repackage and market your talents.

Today’s creative entrepreneur has lots of ideas and uses them to generate multiple streams of income. That makes for such an interesting life!

September 19, 2008 at 8:45 am

Found you through copyblogger’s tweet.

My mother-in-law struggles with this. She is an outstanding artist, but struggles with the idea of selling work… the business side. My brother is also highly creative but has a difficult time turning it into cash, so he’s worked a sh!t job most of his life so he had time to be creative on the side. My wife and I (who aren’t all that creative) are entrepreneurs, and try to help them, but sometimes I don’t think they understand what we are saying. It is like we speak different languages.

September 19, 2008 at 9:44 am

Totally agree that the artist and the entrepreneur should work in harmony with each other.

In these times the ‘starving artist’ persona should be a thing of the past.

September 19, 2008 at 10:06 am

Thank you! You are doing a great job pulling together various concepts that have been a bit disparate for me until now. I really appreciate your approach. Thanks also to copyblogger for the tweet.

September 19, 2008 at 11:29 am

I also found you through Brian Clark via Twitter. Excellent articles – I am working my way backwards from here 😉

I recently attended the Portland Creative Conference and was incredibly inspired. I have been looking for a “title” that summarizes what I want to do from a work perspective after 10 years in software, and I have settled on “Creative” as my working title. . .I know it sounds naive, but I was not aware of such discussion surrounding the idea – classes and so forth. Thanks for bringing it to my attention.

Can’t wait for the next article.

September 19, 2008 at 12:36 pm

Interesting. I think it’s a something of a tautology to say that the 3rd skill of entrepreneurs is “entrepreneurialship,” but I get the idea (maybe the terminology could have been a little better). I’m just glad that bloggers are finally getting away from the “modicum of madness” theory that gets tagged to entrepreneurs. When we start getting business advice from Gary Busey (garybuseyonbusiness.com) there’s something really, really wrong 🙂

Also — why can’t SOME freelancers be entrepreneurs, too? I started life as a freelancer. You’re right, I was always looking for work, but since everyone else with my same skill set was also looking for work I had to find (and/or create) niches and opportunities where only I could thrive. Granted, contract copywriting isn’t exactly the same as starting a business, but it required a lot of the same thinking. I have this theory that a whole generation of “artist” entrepreneurs are really failed freelancers (or freelancers forced to go small biz due to an overcrowded market). In any case, I think it’s a venn diagram of overlap rather than being either/or.

September 20, 2008 at 1:31 am

I have considered myself an entrepreneur in the past, but now I might start thinking of myself as a “Creative Entrepreneur” thanks to this site.

This stuff is right up my alley. I’ve been working from my laptop for the past three years, my friends and family don’t understand what I do or how I pay the bills, and it’s great to see that there are other people out there who are doing this and succeeding! It’s great to hear from like-minded people. Thanks… and keep up the great work!

September 20, 2008 at 7:24 am

Thanks for the great feedback everyone.

Susan – ‘Who can I be now?’ indeed. 🙂

Fantabulous – I like the venn diagram idea, different identities overlapping. That’s kind of how it feels for me, at least in relation to my poetry and the rest of my work. I also started out as a freelancer and agree that the freelancer and entrepreneur share some of the same skills. But there is a fundamentally different mindset between the two – the freelancer gets paid to work on clients’ projects (with all the attendant hassle and loss of control) while the entrepreneur creates her OWN profitable business.

Darren – Glad we’ve made a new convert. 🙂

September 21, 2008 at 4:43 am

I am an entrepreneur, and my persistence is so far the apparent winner.

But I will silently watch this blog and wait for you guys to mention ‘luck’ as one of the things that people credit for their successes. (some credit luck as the only factor, some give it a glancing glance! But luck is there. I am just waiting for it to pop up here. Why? Maybe I will get lucky and tell you then Hmphh)

September 21, 2008 at 2:42 pm

This is a superb series, guys, and I can see the fun you’re having (along with real work, of course). I think that’s such a big part now of communicating to others in a way that makes them want to come back for more. Hurray for the coming demise of the drearily “informative” website (and all other media), hurray for the emergence of the collective imagination, standing up, looking around, and pointing over there! and over here! I recognize myself!

Exactly where I was going when I wrote “Little Shifts.” Now, to step over to my next creative plateau, where I get to collaboratively produce entertaining and soul-satisfying visuals that inform. What a tremendous time to be an artist!

Looking forward to more, Suzanna Stinnett

September 21, 2008 at 6:07 pm

Yes, I consider myself an entrepreneur, both in my job and my business interests. As a professor, I’m a creative entrepreneur in how I present materials to my class. I need to be creative in how I share ideas so that the students will be interested and so that they will learn. I’m also an entrepreneur as I do things to grow the program I am responsible for. I look for ways to attract new students, retain the ones we have, and provide the best ‘product’ possible for all of the students.

In my business I’m naturally an entrepreneur. I’m creative in the sense that I look for ways to help people achieve their goals. I’m creative in attracting those people to my business, and in how I work with them.

September 21, 2008 at 8:12 pm

I aplaud this blog! It’s about time that people started realizing that commercial success for an artist isn’t the death nell. It’s ok to be commercially successful…it just means that you have the business and marketing sense to get the word about your artistic talent out to the rest of the world in a compelling way. There are so many talented artists out there…what separates the Mary Engelbreit’s is the ability to successfully market and distribute her ideas to people who can and want to purchase them. Entrepreneurship IS creative…..Entrepreneurship does NOT kill creativity. I say this as an advocate for Charles Fazzino ( http://www.fazzino.com ), the artist my company represents….he’s incredibly talented, very popular, and often criticized by the classical art world as “too commercial.” I don’t believe there is such a thing…..

September 22, 2008 at 1:01 am

I’m an entrepreneur because I see a fringe market in the Christian culture that recognizes the benefit of a passionate sex life within marriage. There is information on female sexuality that they (nor most people) don’t have knowledge of. If Christian men had this knowledge, their wives would be absolutely crazy about them. I’m betting my time, reputation, and money that men will love the results that such an education can produce in a wife. Seeing and acting upon the perceived opportunity is what makes me an entrepreneur.

I use my creativity to connect experiences to ideas… ideas to experiences…ideas to ideas… ideas to people… and people to people. And I do it while telling a story along the way… a story about how an any regular guy can make himself into an extraordinary man for his wife… and become her hero. I’m not successful, yet, because I just started. I’m finding I LOVE learning about marketing. It’s just fun. Less than two weeks ago, I began learning how to use social media. I get a thrill from learning about and thinking about new possibilities for the future. Ideas, possibilities, and big dreams are like fairy dust to me. It’s makes me high.

I’m more creative and entrepreneurial. My weakest skill set is collaboration simply because I haven’t done much of it, yet… in business. But I have a feeling that will change. In “real life”, I’ve found that helping other people succeed is a reward unto itself. I get joy from empowering others.

Wow… Your post and your questions, at the end, really got me thinking. What a wonderful post and blog! Thanks for giving me the opportunity to answer the questions. You have a new follower on twitter.

~ John Cannon

September 22, 2008 at 2:45 pm

I really enjoy this blog a lot and can’t wait to see more. I feel that I struggle on the entrepreneurship. I have a lot of great ideas and ways to get people involved, but the driving force that seems to be the problem is money. Especially when trying to make a short film that has quite a large budget. I feel at times where do I start and how to begin when friends and family have been pretty exhausted. I would really like some more posts on working to find the money or how to build up those skills. Ideas are only idea until you made this happen and create something solid.

September 23, 2008 at 2:51 am

Thanks guys.

Momekh – “The harder I work the luckier I get!” Samuel Goldwyn

Suzanna – Fun? Who, us?! 😉

Melissa – We will have plenty to say about business skills…

September 23, 2008 at 3:46 pm

Of the three skills, the one I have the hardest time with is collaboration. I tend to want to sit at the drawing board or at the workbench all day and not tell a single person about my ideas. I have such a hard time collaborating.

How do you improve at that?

September 24, 2008 at 8:06 pm

Great story about Mary, I remembered when I was young boy. I got into the hobby of drawing. I even joined contests and was the artist of choice for projects in our class. I never thought that I could earn from such talent that I forgot about it and focused on my studies. Hobbies do become great earners.

September 25, 2008 at 3:47 am

Joe – You’re talking to an introverted poet here, if I can do it anyone can! 🙂

Seriously, why are you spending all that time at your desk? Surely you want someone to see the end result? So you are never completely disconnected even when you’re working on your own.

Have you ever had the experience of having someone who’s opinion you respect give you feedback that improves your work? Or had a really great conversation that left you buzzing with ideas? That’s what collaboration’s all about. Not so scary huh?

October 2, 2008 at 8:57 am

I do consider myself a creative entrepreneur. But like most of us, I have way too many ideas and projects in my head to commit to one. I am LOVING your articles – they really are lighting a much needed fire under my butt to figure out “who will I be next”. It’s an exciting, although scary time.

Now if I could get over this entrepreneur ADD!

November 7, 2008 at 12:21 pm

What a great post! It definitely went beyond the “characteristics” of the creative entrepreneur and expanded on what it means to be a creative entrepreneur. As someone who had a dream of being on Broadway for about 20 years, and who is now making the switch to become a career coach for creative types, I’m inspired by the stories you told. I believe that creative types make the best entrepreneurs, as they’re already used to rejection, an irregular pay schedule, & have built the ultimate business – themselves! Independence is also really important -I know, for me, that part of the reason I’m making the switch to life coaching (from a mind-numbing day job) is to allow myself the opportunity to do shows if & when I wish. We CAN have it all – it’s just in finding the balance and another passion that can make your heart sing.

November 11, 2008 at 12:43 pm

Sandra — that’s what we’re here for!

WhenIGrowUpCoach – good points, especially the rejection and irregular pay schedule. 🙂 I seriously think you’re right, that there are many overlook similarities between creatives/artists and entrepreneurs.

November 28, 2008 at 1:30 am

This should make a really interesting blog. All-Star cast is set… what’s going to happen?!?!?!

November 28, 2008 at 3:58 am

You’ll just have to stay tuned to find out. 😉

August 8, 2009 at 11:27 pm

As a reality television producer who broke in by using creativity to spur action, I can’t tell you how refreshing your site is. I blogged about this post in particular, as it’s full of the kind of advice I find myself giving aspiring producers all the time. Great work, and I’ll enjoy following your blog from here on out. Best, Biagio Messina

August 12, 2009 at 12:54 pm

Thanks Biagio, much appreciated. Here’s the link to your excellent post so that our readers can enjoy it: http://www.jokeandbiagio.com/a-hands-on-producer-is-a-creative-entrepreneur

September 5, 2009 at 5:25 pm

I am enjoying your work and the conversation it is creating here… I have been self-employed in the design business for 30 years and recently discovered that it’s never to late… although I had a successful career, my business was little more than a “Job”… I write about inspired success at http://www.whitehotcenter.com

one idea I would like to add for creative entrepreneurs:

build your business around what matters to you and serves others… it’s really the best way to live life.

Great work and I am delighted to share in your conversation Thank you! Thomson Dawson

September 28, 2009 at 11:17 am

“build your business around what matters to you and serves others” – a great way to dovetail your passions and the interest of others.

May 9, 2010 at 7:22 pm

Nice thoughts Mark…

True when you said that an creative entrepreneur should have all three skills…and these three skills are reinforcing each other. So if you get all of them, you would benefit from the creative sum which is always more than the simple sum of the three…

June 9, 2010 at 6:34 am

Out of the three I would think maybe creativity is the most important. It is hard to purchase. I think maybe that’s why entrepreneurs place such high value on tapping their internal creativity and then moving to protect it.

Great article and I like the concept of the blog.

June 10, 2010 at 2:58 pm

I think there’s a real need to distinguish the kind of entrepreneurship you describe here from the more familiar and mundane kinds: the first being the VC-go public kind; the second, the make-gift-baskets-and-sell-to-my-friends kind.

Much of the entrepreneurial advice I see leads readers towards a badly engineered hybrid of those two models.

September 13, 2010 at 3:52 pm

i think all of them are very important for enterpeuner to have the creativity, collaboration and knowing somae thing about enterpreunership all these will make the enterpruener to make a success business so that he/ she achieve his/her goals.

September 23, 2010 at 11:44 am

I call myself a creative business artist. Good to know :0)

I agree with you and John Hawkins… “within themselves”

In regards to the three skill-sets, I humbly say – The three do come easy to me when I am in alignment with who I am.

Unlocking the door within ourselves and fightning to keep it open is a constant fight. It’s hard work!

We all know what makes us “tick”. This is what I believe makes each of us unique.

In my opinion – We are Art.

November 25, 2010 at 4:16 am

I’m not sure about the three skills listed as there are MANY involved. But did you know that creativity and innovation are both teachable and learnable and I think these mixed with a few basic success criteria such as determination and perseverance are more than enough for and “Creative Entrepeneur”?

We have proved it with our training for some of the word’s most successful companies time and time again…

June 6, 2014 at 8:30 am

To the blog post operator, may I inquire how does one tackle junk posts? I was in a position to compensate just for information on how to eradicate it!

July 2, 2014 at 3:50 am

Have you ever considered creating an e-book or guest authoring on other blogs? I have a blog based upon on the same subjects you discuss and would love to have you share some stories/information. I know my readers would enjoy your work. If you’re even remotely interested, feel free to send me an e mail.

[…] McGuiness of Lateral Action does it again by coming up with The 3 Critical Characteristics of the Creative Entrepreneur. I honestly belive that creative types are well suited for becoming successful entrepreneurs, & […]

[…] journalist of the future is a Creative Entrepreneur. Their business is their talent, creativity and knowledge. They are a freelancer, yes, but not a slave to the odd newsroom shift or rubbish PR story; instead […]

[…] Mark McGuinness wrote a great article called The 3 Critical Characteristics of the Creative Entrepreneur. Mark says they are: 1. Creativity – generating new ideas, evaluating them effectively, taking […]

[…] entrepreneur in any business requires lots of creativity and innovation. My fellow bloggers at Lateral Action, have an in-depth article on the subject that I think you would find helpful regardless of the […]

[…] a fuller description, read my article The 3 Critical Characteristics of the Creative Entrepreneur. And for an inspiring vision of what it’s like to be a creative entrepreneur, watch the […]

[…] that they don’t like to do in order to protect the message and the movement in their art.   Creative entrepreneurs actively engage in lifestyle design by aggressively understanding that business and communication […]

[…] Lateral Action, a definition of an entrepreneur: Entrepreneurship – identifying opportunities in the marketplace and using business skills to […]

[…] To be successful one should master 3 skill-sets:                                                                (see Creative Entrepreneurship) […]

[…] need a new position; if you’re a freelancer, don’t rely on one or two clients; if you’re a creative entrepreneur, develop multiple income […]

[…] skills were critical to his artistic and commercial success. And I’ll suggest what 21st-century creative entrepreneurs can learn from Shakespeare’s […]

[…] solution is to stop thinking like a “freelancer” and start thinking and acting like a creative entrepreneur. This does notmean you need to get VC funding and take on an army of staff. The opportunities […]

[…] Read more http://lateralaction.com/articles/creative-entrepreneur/ […]

[…] this adaptability in other areas of life, you can turn failure into success time and time again. Lateral Action advises combining your creativity with your business savvy to make the most of any opportunities […]

Of all the writers I know, I have learned the most about how to be a productive creative person from Mark. His tips are always realistic, accessible, and sticky. It’s not just talk, this is productivity advice that will change your life. ~ Jocelyn K. Glei, author, host of the Hurry Slowly podcast, and Founding Editor, 99U

Creativity and the Brain: How to Be a Creative Thinker

What do we know from research on brain activity involved in creative thought.

Posted April 30, 2024 | Reviewed by Michelle Quirk

• The book "The Creative Act" argues that creativity is a skill we can all use daily.
• Creativity is complex and involves multiple brain regions.
• Research shows that there are several ways to improve our creative thinking.

This post is part 2 of a series.

In my previous post, I wrote that, after being inspired by Rick Rubin’s book, The Creative Act: A Way of Being, I decided to find out what is going on in the human brain that results in creativity. It turned out to be a very complex and complicated subject. That is mainly because it is difficult to clearly define creativity, and there are many different kinds of creative processes, such as visual art, music, creative thinking , etc.

Coming from the field of cognitive processes, I decided that I would concentrate on research related to brain activity involved in creative thought processes. Most of the time, cognitive creativity involves testing the person’s divergent thinking (generating possible solutions to the problem) or convergent thinking (finding a single, correct solution to the problem).

The review of research papers indicated that creative thinking (convergent and divergent thinking) requires the coordination of multiple brain regions, mainly the executive control network (simply speaking involves planning, organizing, problem-solving, and decision-making ), default mode network (areas of the brain that are activated when we are letting our minds wander at rest), and salience network (a network that is involved in the awareness of the feelings associated with rewards). But, obviously, other parts of the brain are also involved, and this depends on the specific goal/outcome that we want to achieve.

I also promised my readers that I would try to find answers to the question of how to be a creative thinker. There are many suggestions on the internet, but let’s see what the research says.

You can learn how to meditate and practice it daily.

It may come as a surprise to many people, but the majority of the research papers in that area point to the daily practice of meditation as a way to improve creative thinking. It is not a surprise to me because I am a believer in meditation and do it daily. I also encourage all my patients to try to do it daily.

In a Chinese study (Ding, X. et al. 2014), 40 Chinese undergraduate students were assigned to three groups, a meditation group (30 minutes daily for 7 days), a relaxation training group, and a control group. Creativity performance was assessed by the Torrance Test of Creative Thinking (TTCT). The results indicated that the subjects in the meditation group improved their creativity performance on the divergent thinking tasks.

Research studies on meditation also indicate that it helps improve attention/ concentration skills and emotional regulation and reduces stress and anxiety , so it looks like a good daily habit to start.

You can read aloud and do arithmetic calculations.

In a Taiwan study (Lin, WL. et al. 2018), 50 junior high students were divided into a training group or a control group. The training group was reading aloud and performing arithmetic calculations for 20 sessions. The control group played the game Tetris (a puzzle video game). The results indicated that the participants in the training group outperformed the control group in thinking and creative abilities.

You can do neurofeedback.

Neurofeedback is a computer-guided, noninvasive brain-function training based on electroencephalography (EEG) feedback. Neurofeedback is also called neurotherapy, neurobiofeedback, or EEG biofeedback, and it helps control involuntary processes such as muscle tension and heart rate. Usually, the person is responding to a computer display of her/his own electrical activity of the brain, but it may also simply be a sound stimulation. The most important factor is that neurofeedback focuses on helping a person train himself/herself to regulate brain functions.

In an Italian study (Agnoli, S. et al. 2018), 80 female students from the University of Bologna got three neurofeedback training sessions. The researchers also measured the participants’ lifetime creative achievement by using the Creative Activity and Accomplishment Checklist. The results were measured with the divergent thinking tasks (producing original and effective ideas). The results indicated an increase in both originality and fluency. The increase was particularly evident in participants with an initial low creative achievement level.

This is good news for people who believe that they are not that creative. You may get better with neurofeedback training sessions. Artists and athletes do this nowadays to enhance their performance.

You can do overinclusive thinking training.

Overinclusive thinking can be described as increased generalization and/or considering concepts that most people consider unrelated to certain categories, which provides an increased number of options. In a Taiwan study (Chiu, F.C. 2015), the researcher examined the effect of overinclusive thinking on creativity. Four experiments were designed, and the subjects were undergraduate students who were randomly assigned to an overinclusive thinking training group or a control group. The training group did better on the overinclusive thinking that is related to creativity. The fluency and originality performance were higher than in the control group and the insight problem-solving was also better than in the control group.

So, if you would like to be a creative thinker, you can try some of the ideas described above. Good luck on the road to creativity!

Rick Rubin. The Creative Act: A Way of Being . Penguin Press, NY 2023.

Ding, X. et al. “Improving creativity performance by short-term meditation” Behavioral and Brain Functions. Vol. 10, 2014.

Lin, WL. et al. “ Improving junior high students’ thinking and creative abilities with an executive function training program” Thinking Skills and Creativity . Vol. 29, Sept. 2018.

Agnoli, S. et al. “Enhancing creative cognition with a rapid right-parietal neurofeedback procedure.” Neuropsychologia, Vol. 118, Part A Sept. 2018.

Chiu, F.C. “ Improving your creative potential without awareness: Overinclusive thinking training.” Thinking Skills and Creativity . Vol 15. March 2015.

Barbara Koltuska-Haskin, Ph.D., is a neuropsychologist in Albuquerque, New Mexico and the author of How My Brain Works.

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Spotlight: Collaborative Writing to Solve Real-World Problems

The Communication Spotlight features innovative instructors who teach written, oral, digital/technological, kinetic, and visual communication modes.

What is the assignment .

Collaborative Technical Proposal

The students collaborate as a team across different engineering disciplines to produce a technical proposal (written paper and verbal presentation) to solve a real-world problem. The proposed technology should be new (never seen before) or improve an existing product. Think about this as a problem in search of a technology solution, NOT a technology in search of a problem to solve. The proposal should address the solution’s technical feasibility and provide credible evidence to validate the problem, target customer, competition, development timeline, cost estimations, and user risk management, all critical issues that need to be addressed to bring any idea into fruition in the industry.

How does it work?

I like this assignment because it asks students to learn and practice multifaceted skills, including critical thinking, problem-solving, and team collaboration. The assignment challenges students to identify real-world problems and develop innovative solutions by applying technical knowledge in practical scenarios. The students practice iterative critical thinking (evidence-based research) during the outlining process to validate and organize their points of view before any drafting should begin. The writing then focuses on self-reflection, iterative peer editing, and feedback for improvements. The students’ learning outcome is the ability to communicate a technical solution to a real problem effectively and with credibility, both in written and oral forms. The goal is to persuade a broad audience, such as senior executives and investors, to invest in their ideas. Additionally, the structured feedback process and collaborative environment foster professional growth, leadership skills, and ethical considerations in a workplace-like setting. This comprehensive learning experience is designed to prepare students academically and professionally, equipping them with a growth mindset, grit, and agency needed to succeed in ever-changing future workforce demands.

What do students say?

Aside from technical knowledge, I believe it’s also essential for engineers to demonstrate strong communication skills. These skills will help clearly and effectively present complicated ideas and technical plans or create technical reports for company leaders or academic peers. Additionally, I find communication very beneficial for productive collaboration and valuable for engineers when working with others across different projects and disciplines. – Student A

Communication is essential in engineering; ideas could never become reality without communication. It takes clear communication and teamwork to manufacture new products and explain them to others. Engineers must be able to discuss their creations with a diverse audience, most unfamiliar with their area of expertise. – Student B 

Being able to communicate with others effectively is essential for engineers. This is especially true in work environments where engineers must collaborate and pitch proposals to managers and directors. The ability to communicate is a skill that all engineers should continuously work on to express their ideas more clearly and effectively. – Student C 

Communication is essential for engineers because every calculation or design we create would linger on paper without it. Ideas would not be able to come to fruition, and nothing would be built. Communicating thoughts or ideas may be complex for engineers because we spend most of the time designing and understanding how things work. However, practicing delivering presentations and preparing articles or documents allows us to learn how to explain our thoughts and ideas. – Student D

Student Artifact: 

Proposal Excerpt:

“The proposed EzBreathe inhaler attachment, along with the integrated smartphone app, is designed to help people manage their asthma more effectively. By integrating a spirometer and nitric oxide level measurements, patients will be able to assess their lung function and any indication of airway swelling on a regular basis using the corresponding user-friendly app. The app will also include features such as clear and concise results, tips for correct breathing techniques to properly inhale the prescribed amount of medicine, and reminders to help patients stay consistent with treatment and assessment. The Asthma Therapy Assessment Questionnaire (ATAQ) will also be integrated into the app to evaluate patients’ asthma control and management. Based on this, patients will be notified when they need more intense treatment and what areas of management they can improve on.”

Read the Full Proposal Here

The 2021-2022 UCI Writing Award-winning technical proposal EzBreathe demonstrated exemplary mastery of all learning outcomes. The proposal showed excellence in critical thinking and analysis, use of evidence and research, development and structure, and language and style conventions. The added challenge for this proposal is its goal, where the team needed not only to address the technical feasibility of their solution to solve a real-world problem, but also had to go beyond their engineering studies to address business value questions such as customer and competitive analysis, critical for product development in the professional world. Moreover, since the proposal’s target audience is not just engineers, the team explained all the topics convincingly with appropriate background and context so that even a non-technical audience can follow and easily understand. While the technical proposal demonstrated writing excellence, it is even more remarkable considering this project was completed by a team, and each member is from a different engineering discipline: biomedical engineering, chemical engineering, civil engineering, and material science engineering. To produce one technical proposal of such detail where every part of the content is cohesively aligned from the beginning to the end is already challenging for one person, let alone a group of students with different majors and time commitments. Each member in this project has demonstrated their respective substantive contributions and excellence in teamwork, as well as additional learning outcomes assessed for the course needed for success in the professional world. 

Why does this work?

This collaborative writing assignment provides students with the opportunity to think critically about a real-world technical program with their classmates and practice developing their writing processes as a team. This assignment also underscores the importance of providing students with a specific audience – in this case, potential investors – to write for.  

Check out these resources for developing collaborative and audience-aware assignments in your communication classes:

• Collaborative Writing Assignment Resources from UCONN Writing Center
• Group Writing Strategies and Pitfalls from UNC Writing Center
• Start thinking about audience, genre, and the rhetorical situation with Understanding Writing Situations from WAC Clearinghouse

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