Importance of Creative Thinking in Business

Brands that embrace creativity are more innovative and resilient. Creative thinking is important in all fields, not just those of art. As we’ve learned from our past articles, we know that creativity is key for all types of business to strive and grow. It allows employees to think outside the box and come up with new solutions. This can create something new from different perspectives. Aside from this there are some key benefits to creative thinking in the workplace. Here are our top picks.

1.     Fosters innovation. Outside the box thinking will bring your brand forward with new ideas. You can end up with unexpected opportunities and solutions.

2.     Improves collaboration. Bouncing ideas off of one another lends to open-mindedness. They will have to work together with flexibility in mind and hone in on their listening skills. This improved collaboration will inherently happen through creative thinking at the workplace.

3.     Increase productivity. Using your creative mind and critical thinking mind allows you to work smarter, not harder.

4.     Allows for adaptability. When you have a creative environment at work, it allows your brand and those within it to be more flexible in terms of shifting when unexpected changes happen or need to be made. 

5.     Growth necessity. We talked about the learn-it-all mindset for growth and have a creative mind at work is no different. Listening to new ideas and learning from others will help your brand grow.

Creativity isn’t limited to the art world. It’s required in all businesses for problem solving. One method of creative problem solving is called the SCAMPER method.

Substitute: What can I substitute to improve product/service?

Combine: How can I combine this product/service with something else to improve?

Adapt: How can I adapt this product/service?

Modify: Can I modify to make better?

Put to Another Use: How else could this be used?

Eliminate: What can I remove or how can I remove costs?

Reverse or Rearrange: Can I rearrange to improve?

There are immense amounts of topics and subjects within business that are perfect for the creative mind. New ideas in any department will make a difference. Thinking differently will open your mind to explore new realms of opportunity. Time to get creative!

Feel Good Friday: Creative Thinking Skills

Creativity is an interesting and somewhat uncharted topic. Where does it come from exactly? Are we born with our creative skills or can we learn them? Last week we wrote a little about the different types of creativity, so now let’s dive into some of the skills that creative thinkers’ user to problem solve. Creative thinking is defined as coming up with innovative, unique solutions to problems but what are some of the ways that creative thinkers can discover these answers. Creative thinking skills come in all shapes and sizes but we wanted to put together a short list of some that might be useful to creatives in the workplace. We’ll break them up into categories since we know that there are different types of creativity from our research last week.

Analytical: these skills help sort through factual information to develop more rational solutions. These skills would fit those who are dominant in deliberate & cognitive creativity as well as deliberate & emotional.

·      Analysis

·      Research

·      Interpreting

·      Experimentation

·      Critical thinking

Innovation: These skills can be utilized by all types of creative thinkers.

·      Resilience

·      Imagination

·      Abstract thinking

·      Lateral thinking (using non-traditional logic)

Collaboration: These skills can also be used by all types of creative thinkers.

·      Brainstorming

·      Story telling

·      Open-mindedness

·      Active listening

While we will not go into detail for each of these skills, the overall theme is reframing things as a means to find alternative and unique approaches. No matter what problem you are trying to creatively solve, being able to look at the larger picture as well as the small, is important. Visual and abstract thinking can come into play when coming up with new answers. Some advantage to using these skills in the workplace are that it helps come up with better solutions, improves on problem solving and increases effective teamwork. In order to flex your creativity muscles, it’s important to use them every day. Try to create something new each day that requires you use some of the skills listed above. Creative thinking must be sharpened like a tool.