Improve Your Entrepreneurial Creativity With These Expert Tips

Ben Simkin - CEO of BusinessNET

Entrepreneurs are known for their creative thinking, but like any other human their creativity slumps. Molly Reynolds of The Unicorn In The Room shared her key ways to improve your entrepreneurial creativity with Ben Simkin, founder of BusinessNET, in the globally read magazine, Entrepreneur.

Having interviewed business icons, such as Arianna Huffington and John Paul Dejoria, as well as top executives from GE, PwC, Forbes, Chobani and Heineken, Reynolds is in a position to see what key habits help drive creativity.

There were 5 key ways that Ms Reynolds revealed as follows:

1. Buy an alarm clock

As Arianna Huffington has shared, rest is a crucial part of the creative process and keeping your cell phone next to your bed while you sleep is a bad thing.

The article goes on to share facts about the long term effects of cellphone usage at night, and how checking emails before bed, and in the middle of the night has a negative effect on creativity.

2. Get a variety of perspectives

There have been leading companies around the world who had failed attempts because they refused to get a variety of perspectives.

3. Travel

Taking some time off to respark creativity is one of the most commonly known ways to reignite inspiration. The article shares, Winston Chen decided to invent an app, just to have some fun while he was travelling. It turned out to be the start of his new career and company, voice-based mobile app, Voice Dream.

4. Step away from the desk

“Getting a Fitbit actually made me a better problem solver,” Reynolds says. “Before, I’d sit at my desk for hours trying to figure something out, but the thing buzzes me and makes me take a break to walk. Inevitably, as I’m walking, I figure out the problem more quickly.”

Leading companies like Apple and Facebook have been well-known for their ‘walking meetings’, and ‘standing up meetings’. Researchers at Stanford support that “bursts of walking, whether indoors or outdoors, can help to boost our creative inspiration”.

5. Draw your strategy

Most people write out their strategy, but a more proven way to get the most out of your creativity is to actually draw your strategy. The article draws on the work of visual thinking expert, Dan Roam who has worked with the world’s largest companies, including Google, Sun Microsystems and eBay. He believes that one of the best ways to help people solve problems and contribute new ideas is by drawing them out.

Reynolds also adds, if you’re really committed to improving your creative mind in every one of these five steps, you need to allow yourself to get vulnerable. “Take a class that you would never think of taking, charcoal drawing, samurai sword fighting, tap dancing, whatever! You might feel ridiculous at first, and that’s a good thing. Having that vulnerability will remind you that you don’t have all of the answers and need to be open.”

To learn more about Ben Simkin visit www.businessnet.com.au, or follow him on his active Facebook page, www.facebook.com/benjaminsimkin. To learn more about Molly Reynolds visit www.theunicornintheroom.com or follow her on her Facebook page, www.facebook.com/theunicornintheroom.

Source: http://businessnet.com.au

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