THE MECHANICS OF BUSINESS CREATIVITY
Facilitator: 
In business, creativity makes the difference between success and failure. The entire process of business involves the employment of your creative intelligence, whether it is the setting of SMART goals, conceptualizing an internal operational framework for your business, influencing teammates to achieve great things, building an enduring and a culturally relevant brand, communicating to your target audience a cogent and believable value proposition, doing a good financial projection, or drawing up a viable and a feasible plan, you need one key word: CREATIVITY. You need the matrix of your mental faculties particularly the faculty of imagination.
WHAT IS CREATIVITY?
creativity is the act of processing imaginative thoughts into concrete realities. Creativity is the conceptualization, incubation, and realization of ideas. Creativity is the prelude to novelty. It is the ability to bring something completely new into existence. It also involves improving on something that already exists.
WHAT'S MECHANICS?
Within the context of this topic, mechanics means “the functional and technical aspect of an activity” (this definition is gotten from yourdictionary.com/mechanics). Mechanics also is the matrix- that is the environment in which an activity or phenomena develops. In simple words, mechanics within our context means procedure
The mechanics of business creativity thus means the PROCEDURE of creating your business from the abstract, invisible, formless state of your imagination into a visibly successful enterprise
If you say you are an entrepreneur, you are invariably saying you are a creative person. Entrepreneurs are highly imaginative folks. And if you aren’t creative enough, you aren’t really an entrepreneur. You’re just a regular hustler and you’ll struggle to meet up among your peers in a densely competitive age like ours.
But there is hope. If you feel you aren’t creative enough, you can train your creative intelligence. That’s what this session is about. There are several procedures and models for creative thinking invented by several persons and they work just fine. However, the one I find easiest to use is the Disney Creative Model. I can assure you that if you practice and master the use of this technique or model, there's no limits to what you can achieve.
I once inherited a campus church from a pastor. When I took over, the church was 7 years old with only 4 members which included me! But in a space of 2 years, we were numbering above 100 in a campus of less than 1000 persons. I had 3 members but I handed over to 3 pastors and 20 exco members
How?
I didn't only used my spirit like my predessesors did. I also used my mind to think out solutions. *God isn't against the use of the mind!
STEP ONE: Think as if there's no box..
STEP TWO: think inside the box
STEP THREE: think outside the box
You have probably only heard of thinking outside the box. It’s the term we use when we speak of the employment of unconventional methods to solve problems. It is a term associated with creativity and ingenuity. But I’m here to introduce to you the mechanics of this thought pattern, that’s the PROCEDURE you need to follow in arriving at this creative demand of thinking outside the box.
This procedure is actually my own way of rewriting the Disney’s creative model- the idealist, critic, and realist.
Neither Disney nor the commentators that wrote on his creative model used the terms, think without, within, and outside the box.
What has been said about Disney is he assumed the roles of a dreamer (or idealist), critic and realist in arriving at and achieving his ideas.
To think like there’s no box, is to assume the role of the idealist
To think inside the box, is to assume the role of the critic
To think outside the box, is to assume the role of the realist
We are going to discuss these steps in depth tonight but before we discuss them, let's quickly touch 2 sub-topics which are:
(1) The Creative Matrix &
(2) The Hindrances to creativity
The creative matrix is your mind, particularly the faculty of imagination. A matrix is the environment or totality of conditions through which a thing develops. The mind is the seat of creativity. The understanding of the structure and function of the mind is critical to your growing your creative intelligence.
Everything you see today first existed in the mind Napoleon Hill in his book “You can work your own miracles”, has identified 9 faculties of the human mind:
The faculty of the Will (he calls it the “big boss”)
The faculty of Reasoning
The faculty of Emotions
The faculty of Conscience
The faculty of Memory
The faculty of the Five Senses
The faculty of Intuition
The faculty of the Sixth Sense
The faculty of IMAGINATION.
While all these faculties are very relevant to your life and business (for instance, your conscience provides the ethical background for your dealings with people, your will directs the process, your reasoning helps you reach rational decisions), the most critical of these faculties to your creative essence is your IMAGINATION.
. The greatest enemy to your imagination is your memory
The mind is a storage facility. Each time you process data in the mind you are either recalling the past by engaging the memory; or you are projecting into the future by engaging the imagination. . And if all the thinking you do is to recall the past, you may not be able to actively engage your imagination for your future. Creative people give a higher allocated of their time to the future than the past..
I say this again. Some typos interfered with what I wrote
Creative people allocate more time to imaginative thinking than in recalling the past. Don't allow your memory interfere with your imagination
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The tragedy of our educational system is we train our memories but we seldom train people to do independent thinking...
Lets touch briefly on the hindrances to creativity before we go to discuss the Disney Creative model
The hindrances are:
1. Religion
2. Tradition
3. Fixation
4 Situation
Religion interferes with our creative abilities when we think God is supposed to do our thinking for us. Yes, there is a concept called the will of God and as a Christian I seek and submit to His Will but I also know that one of His Will is we should dream, we should have desires, we should plan and project into the future. It's God's will that we should use our imaginative powers Because if you refuse to use your God given talent, and free will you are a waste.
Remember the Parable of the Talents? The master only gave them talents and went his way. He didn't tell them which business to do. He gave to everyone according to their respective abilities. Religion interferes with our creative abilities when we think God is supposed to do our thinking for us. Yes, there is a concept called the will of God and as a Christian I seek and submit to His Will but I also know that one of His Will is we should dream, we should have desires, we should plan and project into the future. It's God's will that we should use our imaginative powers.
Remember the Parable of the Talents? The master only gave them talents and went his way. He didn't tell them which business to do. He gave to everyone according to their respective abilities.
God is a venture capitalist. He doesn't invest in ideas. He invests in people. You've got to go out and improve your capacity. The resources He sends your way are directly proportional to your capacity. So if you have good ideas but no commensurate capacity, God won't put in His investments
And one area you need capacity is the use of your imagination. The role of faith in your life shouldn't be to lower your capacity. It should be to enhance it.
God had already planted businesses in you even before you were born. And you don’t even need any supernatural code to access it- what you need is creative thinking, the place of the supernatural is to align our thoughts with God's agenda not to show us every little thing we should invest in, or how do you explain how an atheist- someone who’s never said a word of prayer to God- like Mark Zukerberg created the most culturally relevant brand in the 21st Century? How do you explain a country like China with their state sponsored atheism formulating entrepreneurial policies that have moved over 500 Million people out of poverty and raising their nation to become the biggest economy in the world ahead of America? And how do you explain an agnostic like Bill Gates becoming the richest man in the world, and maintaining that position for more than a decade?
Dey there dey dull your brain. Make you dey fast and pray everyday
THINKING AS IF THERE IS NO BOX
This is the first stage of the creative thinking. At this stage, you allow your imagination run really really wild.
You brainstorm on ideas from a standpoint of possibilities. You believe that everything is possible; there are no problems or obstacles to your dream. You dream of how your project will positively affect lives, how it will make you a billionaire (yes you can be a billionaire). I’m very convinced I’m a billionaire and I think like one. Make sure that at this stage you don't accommodate any form of fear or criticism. Disregard any form of recall of failed attempts from your memory. Just allow your mind to run really really wild..
You may not be able to provide the practical steps to arriving at your dream at this stage and even if there are suggestions as to practicalities, simply write them down somewhere and continue your wild imaginations.
This stage can take days, or even weeks. After, you’re really really excited about your dream, and regardless of what any other person suggests to you, they cannot water down your enthusiasm, you move on to the next stage. Before then, make sure you write down your wild dream.
THINKING INSIDE THE BOX.
This is one stage many people jump. At this stage, you critically analyze your wild dreams. You think of your strengths and weaknesses. You think of pitfalls that may come your way. This is the stage of sober reflection
You need enthusiasm. However, uneducated enthusiasm is dangerously misleading. There will be obstacles to your dreams. There are weak points to it too. For instance, your dream is for our startup to take over 60% share of the sachet water business in your local community where there are over 20 other businesses in the same area, some having existed for more than 10 years. My brother, it’s possible to do the takeover but you need to sit down and write out your competitors as one obstacle to your business. Your lack of experience is one weak point too. Then, there’s the issue of little or no business connections compared to your competitors.
At this stage, write out all the weak points in your dream and move to the next stage..
THINKING OUTSIDE THE BOX
Here, you put your wild dream in stage one down. Then, you also put the pitfalls in stage two down.
Then, you start brainstorming on solutions to the problems thought up in stage two so that you can achieve your dream of stage one. You will be surprised at the unconventional creative insight you will receive at this stage. The mind has the power of stimulating insight when the emotions and logic is stirred up. Imagination stirs up these two faculties. At this stage though you know there is a box (in fact boxes) you will think outside them.
It is at this stage that you will realize the kind of partnerships to go into. You may realize you need to go back to school or learn a new skill or change environment. I heard the story of a lady that wanted to start a laundry firm in a high brow area in Lagos but didn't have the resources.
She however built her clientele without actually having a laundry firm. She would collect clothes and take them to the dry cleaners in the suburbs of Lagos where they charge at cheap rates. Then, pay the dry cleaners above their normal charges but the charges are not as expensive as what she collects from the client. This was to ensure good services. She would deliver clothes well dry cleaned to her clients without actually owning a firm!
JASON NJOKU
ason Njoku, founder/CEO of Iroko TV is a classical example of thinking outside the box. His dream was to distribute Nollywood content to the world. He bought some CD plates and went to London. (He grew up in London) But the patronage was slow and after selling the CD plates, he ran at a loss. But he didn’t relent. He looked for a cheap but effective way of distributing Nollywood movies at a larger scale. The thought of the internet came to him. Today, Iroko TV is regarded as the Netflix of Africa.
Let's close with the story of REID HOFFMAN
Reid Hoffman is a classical example of someone who uses this creative model.
He’s the founder/CEO of LinkedIn.
He’s a graduate of Philosophy but he felt Silicon Valley was the destination. He came into Silicon Valley with many wild ideas but met with resistance. Success in Silicon Valley means the matrimony of scalable ideas and investors’ contribution. But investors don’t invest in ideas. They invest in people. The major reason Reid Hoffman was resisted was he had no experience in tech.
. When Reid Hoffman arrived Silicon Valley, he had nothing more than his degree in philosophy and his wolf dreams. According to him, "I networked with a couple of different venture capitalists. They said, “Have you shipped software before? You’re asking us to invest millions of dollars in your company. You’ve done this before, yes?” I said, “No, not really”. And they said, “Go get a job first”.
And that’s exactly what he did. He got a job at Apple. “That’s where my career started” He would later say.
After his job, he decided to learn coding and software development. This is a graduate of Philosophy o!
Reid Hoffman dreamt wild, analyzed his weaknesses and overcame them by taking practical steps.
Today, he has been involved in big businesses like PayPal, invested in over 60 startups in Silicon Valley including Facebook, and founded LinkedIn.
What’s your dream?
You can achieve it!
All things are possible
© VALUEX