Is Creativity Overrated As A Business Owner?#entrepreneurs#businessadvice#innovators#businessstartups#successstories
Hi Everyone,
Back to some basic business blogs. I was asked an interesting question the other day. Do you think you have to be super creative to be a successful entrepreneur? I told him I'd get back to him because I was in the middle of creating a life changing product in my living room!
Hey, you have to find the humor or you're sunk, right? But really, it did get me to think. I started thinking how that applied to me as an owner of several businesses. It actually is a fascinating exercise.
Having thought about this for a few days, the short and simple answer is, well I'll get to that in just one second..
First though in my experience, there are different definitions of creativity. I believe as a person who has been working for myself now, for over 18 years, it is almost second nature. I mean think about it?
When you are an owner/entrepreneur, you are faced daily with situations & problems that require quick decisions on the fly! If you can't adjust, you will be swimming upstream without a paddle. So that is creativity right there.
So getting back to the question at hand. I started thinking about all the great successful entrepreneurs, from Vanderbilt to Ford and Edison to Hughes. Certainly all brilliant, and over the top successful. Would you call Steve Jobs super creative? Maybe Bill Gates? I say to those 2 names an emphatic NO.
I would say Jobs and Gates were opportunistic and driven by what people desired. They simply gave people what they wanted really. It really is just a common sense model right? Identify a glaring need within a large market segment and solve it! Brilliant!
Steve jobs didn't invent the iPhone, I read somewhere that the reason the iPhone was so successful was because of the Blackberry! Jobs saw that people loved their blackberry but realized they didn't need those big keys that took up more than half of the face of the phone! So what did he do? He developed a phone with a larger screen you can touch to bring up the all important keyboard! Bill Gates realized there has to be some form of user friendly software other than Dos at that time and wellah Windows was born, an icon based system with all the coding in the background.
Did I create coffee? Certainly not I just sold a ton of it because I came up with blends that people really wanted! Did it take some creativity? Sure, but it really isn't necessary. The more important lesson to be learned here is something that I adhere to everyday. Listen to your customer, give them what they want, when they want it, simple, simple simple!
The better question for all of you wantrepreneurs out there is this;
Do you have a real passion for what you do?
Do you have the drive to stick with it no matter what?
Is there a need for your product or service?
Do you have to invent the cotton gin? Not so much.
So creativity is great but it is certainly not essential to becoming a successful business owner.
In a not so distant future post I will be delving into how to identify different business opportunities, and my step by step process I have developed, that you should follow to get your business off of the ground. It will be an overview, because, after all I am a working business consultant. The steps are fine but the way to get to the steps is where I come in. Again, if you need any kind of help, analysis or advice with your business, I am here. All you have to do is contact me!
Back to some basic business blogs. I was asked an interesting question the other day. Do you think you have to be super creative to be a successful entrepreneur? I told him I'd get back to him because I was in the middle of creating a life changing product in my living room!
Hey, you have to find the humor or you're sunk, right? But really, it did get me to think. I started thinking how that applied to me as an owner of several businesses. It actually is a fascinating exercise.
Having thought about this for a few days, the short and simple answer is, well I'll get to that in just one second..
First though in my experience, there are different definitions of creativity. I believe as a person who has been working for myself now, for over 18 years, it is almost second nature. I mean think about it?
When you are an owner/entrepreneur, you are faced daily with situations & problems that require quick decisions on the fly! If you can't adjust, you will be swimming upstream without a paddle. So that is creativity right there.
So getting back to the question at hand. I started thinking about all the great successful entrepreneurs, from Vanderbilt to Ford and Edison to Hughes. Certainly all brilliant, and over the top successful. Would you call Steve Jobs super creative? Maybe Bill Gates? I say to those 2 names an emphatic NO.
I would say Jobs and Gates were opportunistic and driven by what people desired. They simply gave people what they wanted really. It really is just a common sense model right? Identify a glaring need within a large market segment and solve it! Brilliant!
Steve jobs didn't invent the iPhone, I read somewhere that the reason the iPhone was so successful was because of the Blackberry! Jobs saw that people loved their blackberry but realized they didn't need those big keys that took up more than half of the face of the phone! So what did he do? He developed a phone with a larger screen you can touch to bring up the all important keyboard! Bill Gates realized there has to be some form of user friendly software other than Dos at that time and wellah Windows was born, an icon based system with all the coding in the background.
Did I create coffee? Certainly not I just sold a ton of it because I came up with blends that people really wanted! Did it take some creativity? Sure, but it really isn't necessary. The more important lesson to be learned here is something that I adhere to everyday. Listen to your customer, give them what they want, when they want it, simple, simple simple!
The better question for all of you wantrepreneurs out there is this;
Do you have a real passion for what you do?
Do you have the drive to stick with it no matter what?
Is there a need for your product or service?
Do you have to invent the cotton gin? Not so much.
So creativity is great but it is certainly not essential to becoming a successful business owner.
In a not so distant future post I will be delving into how to identify different business opportunities, and my step by step process I have developed, that you should follow to get your business off of the ground. It will be an overview, because, after all I am a working business consultant. The steps are fine but the way to get to the steps is where I come in. Again, if you need any kind of help, analysis or advice with your business, I am here. All you have to do is contact me!
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