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Tag: Creative Entrepreneur

  • Be Innovative, Not Just Creative — 2 Types of Innovation to Increase Your Profits | Entrepreneur

    Be Innovative, Not Just Creative — 2 Types of Innovation to Increase Your Profits | Entrepreneur

    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    Innovation is the source of critical differentiation in competitive markets. Unfortunately, innovation has become a buzzword for something that looks more like creativity in practice — or worse, incremental improvements. This conflation has had an undeniable detrimental effect on companies and consumers alike.

    Creativity is the generation of new ideas. While valuable, these concepts cannot always be marketed or commercialized. Instead of addressing true consumers’ met or unmet needs, they were generated based on technical know-how. Even when they can be commercialized, they don’t often drive revenue or profit growth as expected.

    On the other hand, innovation is driven by consumer needs and demands, especially unmet needs. Ultimately, innovation is the differentiator influencing consumer behavior, creating new revenue and increasing profit — all the makings of a market leader. Innovation is about transformation: achieving more with less, finding new ways of doing things and identifying ways to create new consumer demand. Especially in uncertain times, how do you significantly alter the playing field to your benefit?

    Two key types of innovation drive increased profits: new-to-the-world solutions and new-to-the-market solutions. For either method of innovation to be successful, executive leadership must build and foster a culture that relentlessly prioritizes listening to the targeted consumers it aims to serve. Innovation can happen only by harnessing the power of people — especially those with different ways of thinking.

    Related: 11 Innovation Strategies That Can Effectively Increase Your Businesses’ Growth

    1. New-to-the-world solutions

    New-to-the-world solutions are not existing products with incremental changes made; they are original in their approach to problem-solving and often create new categories that irrevocably change the market. New-to-the-world solutions require a deep understanding of consumers’ unmet needs and behaviors to accurately identify and address problems that consumers may not even realize they have. This means listening to what consumers don’t say and observing what they do. Based on this consumer understanding, technological know-how can make solutions.

    Consider the classic example of how Netflix reinvented itself during the Global Financial Crisis of 2008, surpassing Blockbuster to change the entire at-home entertainment landscape. The company saw consumer demand shrinking and found new ways to create more value for consumers via home delivery and streaming content directly to the consumers’ homes.

    Gone are the days of video cassettes, DVDs and Blu-ray disks — and better yet, consumers don’t need to drive to the stores to pick them up. While such a thing was unthinkable just 15 years ago, Netflix has since evolved into the streaming platform we all know and enjoy from our devices — a true innovative shift.

    Related: Want to Build a Faster Horse? Follow these 3 Innovation Strategies

    The rapid advancement of the internet also revolutionized traditional workplaces, including office supplies. As emails began to dominate modern professional communication, 3M’s Post-It notes were put in a somewhat sticky situation — and so 3M invented an innovative product that was even stickier. The Post-It Super Sticky notes could adhere to any vertical surface — including chairs, doors, computers, refrigerators, etc. This innovation addressed the needs of consumers who still preferred physical, visual reminders but found themselves using paper memos less frequently. The Post-it Super Sticky notes were made in vibrant colors, offering a convenient reminder that could be placed almost anywhere, ensuring that the product remained relevant and helpful even in the digital age.

    By contrast, Google failed to understand the true unmet needs of its consumers when the company first launched its “moonshot” Google Glass in 2014. Despite the “smart” glasses’ cutting-edge technology, the product was discontinued after just one year. Despite its live map imaging and hands-free web navigation, Google botched its assessment of the product’s marketability — opting for a “clunky” shape, overcomplicated features, and an overwrought price tag ($1,500).

    This is a classic example of a new-to-the-world product that myopically prioritized sleek, convenient bells and whistles over simplicity and accessibility. Google also failed to consider the desires and budgets of consumers properly. The product did not offer an authentic solution to make consumers’ lives easy and affordable.

    Related: Why Combining Company Culture with Strategy is Necessary for Lasting Business Success

    2. New-to-the-market solutions

    New-to-the-market solutions deliver an already-existing product to a region or market where it was not previously familiar or available. This does not require a fundamental change to the product itself but rather an integration into a new demographic of consumers — but not all products that succeed in one region are destined to succeed in another. Therefore, it’s crucial to take note of the ethnographic differences between markets and to develop a deep understanding of the cultures being marketed to.

    WD-40 is a prime example of a longtime staple of the American home that was popularized globally. Invented in San Diego in 1953, WD-40 was created for Convair to protect missiles from rust and corrosion and was later used more widely for its water-resistance and lubrication properties. The product was not introduced to Latin America until the 1960s, when it was presented as a valuable tool for people from all walks of life — including mechanics, cleaners, and individuals preparing for natural disasters.

    In addition to sponsorships of sporting events and festivals, the company was careful to market WD-40 to the Latin American audience through localized campaigns tailored to regional needs and interests. Lastly, the company established partnerships with local retailers and distributors to ensure the product’s accessibility. WD-40 was known for its versatility and reliability, but its affordability and universality propelled its successful sales in over 170 countries worldwide.

    Related: Great Minds Think Unalike — 3 Ways to Drive True Innovation Through Diversity

    Unlike WD-40, Bunnings — an Australian hardware and garden center chain — struck out in the UK market. While Bunnings was able to understand and cater to the needs of Australian homeowners, its leadership failed to consider the UK’s very different DIY habits, climate and competitive landscape.

    After overpaying for the UK-based home store chain Homebase, Bunnings made drastic changes to its logo, layout, and product mix without raising awareness around Bunnings’ brand in the UK. Bunnings also failed to invest in its UK presence properly, alienating potential consumers familiar with Homebase. Thus, Bunnings and its products failed to catch on with UK consumers, and in 2018, the brand was forced to sell Homebase at a loss of 1.7 billion Sterling pounds.

    The reality is that creativity alone will not create demand nor change consumer behavior. True innovation requires a combination of creativity, foresight and deep consumer understanding to deliver the right solutions for consumers’ unmet needs. Our current economy is actually primed for innovation — this troubled market is similar to what Netflix faced back in 2008, and company leaders would be wise to follow Netflix’s example.

    Now is the time when generational entrepreneurs launch their world-changing businesses, and real innovative ideas are born. For existing companies, large and small, it’s a time to double down on the core of who you are and what can be best offered to consumers to drive new demand.

    Jack Truong

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  • How to Free Up More Space in Your Business for Creativity | Entrepreneur

    How to Free Up More Space in Your Business for Creativity | Entrepreneur

    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    Like most business owners, you probably wish there was more time in the day. Finding the balance between meeting necessary deadlines and keeping space to be creative can be tough. But creativity in business is essential, and losing it means losing out on innovation, efficiency and (ultimately) revenue.

    So, it’s vital to free up some space in your business for creative endeavors — especially considering three-quarters of small business owners said that inflation affected their bottom line between July 2021 and July 2022, and 56% expect to feel the pinch through at least the summer of 2023. Creative solutions can mean the difference between financial success and failure.

    From a survey of more than a thousand executives, Deloitte found that so-called “high-growth brands” are more likely to value creative ideas as part of long-term success. These brands — in contrast to brands with less measured growth — also are more likely to intentionally create an environment that fosters creative thinking and cross-collaboration. Creativity is a key factor in innovation, which ultimately determines a company’s growth over time.

    One common reason business owners struggle to find creative time for themselves is that they’re hiring people but not delegating effectively. As an owner, you can’t handle everything on your own. Though it’s important to ensure quality, you must find a way to delegate tasks if you want to maintain balance, stability and creativity. Research from the Annual Review of Psychology shows that we need time for our brains to wander between tasks to fully realize our creative potential. However, it’s hard to find that time when you’re trying to do it all yourself.

    The simple truth is that a business can’t grow when its owner is consumed with micro-managing every facet of the organization. Instead of spreading yourself thin, focus on the part of your role that adds the most value, prioritize it and let it grow. Delegate tasks and share authority where you’re able. The goal? A company that can function without your constant supervision, leaving you space to bring in new passion and creative ideas.

    The qualities that make up an efficient system and leave room for creativity

    As a leader, you must endeavor to build systems that help you find more creative space instead of more tasks for your list. Here’s where you should focus your efforts:

    1. Processes

    Regular processes enable you to oversee different aspects of the business and maintain quality without micro-managing every detail. Not only can poor or inefficient systems or strategies lead to chaos and capital loss, but having efficient processes also means spending more time doing what you’re good at, being creative and making better strategic decisions.

    A great start would be to improve the day-to-day routines that keep your company running. Successful processes are clear, can be replicated and documented, have supporting tools and are easy to access.

    Well-designed and well-implemented systems (including financial, technology, marketing, people and operations systems) create consistent experiences for customers and employees and make your business run more smoothly. Concrete processes, outline how things should be done and provide a way to improve them, saving you time and energy you can spend elsewhere.

    Related: How to Take Marie Kondo’s Approach for Workflows and Processes

    2. Roles

    A big challenge in creating more space for creativity is having well-defined tasks for everyone on the team. You must have a clear job description for every role in your organization. As your company grows, you’ll delegate tasks to many employees and having defined roles helps you manage payroll more effectively, set performance expectations and outline innovation opportunities.

    Perfectly assigned roles are crucial for business because, according to LinkedIn, ineffective management can lead to low morale and budget overruns. This can manifest in poor planning or role definition or more personal things like failure to coach or innovate within roles. Buck this trend by clearly defining your team’s scope of work.

    Related: What If a Boss and an Employee Swapped Roles? We Tried It.

    3. Skills

    After you have determined your company’s roles, you can assign specific, necessary skills to each one. By clarifying which skills are valued and required in each role, you empower your employees to focus their time and efforts on the skills that will most help them grow in their role. By narrowing their focus, you free up more time and headspace for innovation and creativity.

    Skill assignment also ensures you hire the best-qualified candidates and place them in the most productive roles for your organization. Skill testing should be an important part of hiring, too. McKinsey says that 87% of employers see current or potential skill gaps at their companies. Skill testing and clarification can help close those gaps.

    Related: How to Acquire Soft Skills and Measure Them Successfully

    4. Structure

    The best way to create an effective organizational structure is to design it before you need it. As with systems optimization and role definition, providing organizational structure means employees spend less time confused and more time doing the important work you hired them for. Progress will stall if an employee has a question and doesn’t know where to ask for the answer. Provide structure and reduce confusion.

    Toyota is a great example of how structure can impact time management. The Toyota Production System (TPS)

    is a program that encompasses all of Toyota’s practices and philosophies, from sourcing materials to customer interactions. TPS was a key factor in the development of “lean manufacturing,” which focuses on efficiency in production. The right systems help you prioritize and manage your time so you have the freedom to work on developing your business with creative solutions rather than simply maintaining it.

    One way to quickly simplify inefficiencies is to remove unnecessary steps in company procedures. An audit is one way to accomplish this, but automation is another modern solution. Automation can identify and solve company growth issues, reduce wasted resources in poorly designed systems and maximize profits.

    As a business leader, your priorities should be achieving amazing customer outcomes, maintaining a healthy company culture and finding innovative opportunities for growth. By optimizing the systems, processes and roles in your company, you spend less time managing and more time doing what you do best.

    Drew McLellan

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  • This TikTok-Famous Funeral Director Might Bury 10 People a Day, But He Still Finds Time to Write Beautiful Songs | Entrepreneur

    This TikTok-Famous Funeral Director Might Bury 10 People a Day, But He Still Finds Time to Write Beautiful Songs | Entrepreneur

    This mortician and musician has learned a lot about life — and art — while working in death.

    Madeline Garfinkle

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  • Why Creativity Is the Best Tool for Navigating Challenges

    Why Creativity Is the Best Tool for Navigating Challenges

    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    With these “unprecedented times” comes some unprecedented emotions. In the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic, the prevalence of anxiety and depression increased by 25%, and many are feeling the crunch of increased costs of living, political unrest and non-stop news. We are all feeling so deeply at this moment in history, and it is undoubtedly affecting our mental health.

    What can we do, in times like these, to support ourselves and our communities? I believe the answer is art. Having an outlet isn’t the cure for what we’re experiencing, but it can be the medicine. Art can help us process our emotions and to share our inner experiences with others. It’s a way to move through it.

    But do you have to be a “creative person” to use art as an outlet? Absolutely not. Everyone is creative in their own way. Everyone is an artist in their own right. You may be called to music, painting, writing — all of these and more are valid expressions of our emotions. You also don’t have to create museum-worthy art for your art to help you in times of strife.

    The key is to acknowledge that we are having a human experience, and art is one of the most powerful ways to express that. But to boost our mood, manage our mental health and care for ourselves, we must first accept that we are, in fact, artists.

    Related: Why Your Creativity Is Your Most Valuable Skill

    We’re all artists

    There is truly no more creative time in our lives than childhood. It’s a free and precious time where creativity flows easily and in abundance, but it is fleeting. Many of us were told at a certain age that we had to “grow up” and take on more mature pursuits — like school, careers, parenthood, etc. Many are not told to continue to express themselves through creativity.

    It starts young, too. Laura Parrott Perry, author and public speaker, has asked kindergarten, third grade and middle school student classrooms the same question for years: “Everyone here who is an artist, raise your hand.” In kindergarten classrooms, almost every student raises their hand. In the third-grade classrooms, only about half will raise their hand. In middle school classrooms, usually only one or two children will raise their hand.

    As we grow up, we’re told — by loved ones and society — that art isn’t a mature outlet. There was a time when we all identified as artists and could express ourselves creatively, but that changed somewhere along the line. We came to think that some of us are artists and some are not, but the truth is we all are artists in our own ways. There is no prerequisite to being an artist, there’s no level of expertise needed or amount of practice.

    Study after study shows that art helps people get in touch with and express their feelings. What do we think happens when we lock down our creative urges and when we don’t allow ourselves to let out our emotions? We shut down, we self-medicate, we avoid. And our mental health deteriorates.

    Now, more than ever, I think we as adults are being called to remember our creativity and tap into it. Art is how we process, how we heal and how we prepare for what’s ahead.

    Related: 5 Ways to Unlock Your Entrepreneurial Creativity

    Using honest art to process emotions

    When I tell my students to “leave it on the canvas,” I mean that they can fully express what they’re feeling through their art. You don’t have to create pretty art or gallery-worthy art. You can create art that honestly reflects what you’re feeling in the moment.

    If you’ve been out of touch with your creativity for a while, this might feel foreign. You might find yourself trying to replicate artists you admire or simply trying hard to make something “perfect.” But that’s not the art that helps us during times of trouble. Be honest with yourself, and channel what you’re truly feeling into your art.

    Are you sad? Are you happy? Are you angry? Frustrated? Excited? The best way to approach art in a therapeutic way is to harness your emotions and feelings and use them as fuel for your creation.

    You don’t need to paint like Van Gogh or play music like Chopin. You don’t need to worry about what others might think of your creation or if it will make you money. Create things purely for yourself, not for the sake of making something for others. If we are to use our art to improve our mental health, it means we have to tell the truth — our truth.

    Your truth and your feelings need to not only be felt but be put somewhere. Instead of filing them away in your brain that might already feel oversaturated with information and tasks, put those feelings into your art. Creating gives us the ability to put feelings not only into perspective but into action.

    Related: 3 Ways to Unleash Your Creativity

    Art as a point of connection

    Art also does more than heal us individually — it helps us reflect our emotions and experiences to one another. Think about the last time you saw a truly moving piece of art or heard an emotional song. Did it take you back to a time and place where you felt those same feelings? Did it make you feel not so alone? That is the power of art.

    In a world that values progress above all else, we forget our emotions or shove them away to deal with what’s in front of us. We forget what makes us human until we experience something that reminds us. Seeing or creating art that reminds us of our humanity gives us permission to share feelings that may be uncomfortable or ostracizing. While it is your personal choice whether or not to share your art, the pure act of creation can help you feel less alone.

    And if you do decide to share that with others, it also gives you the opportunity to find people who are feeling the same, who needed to feel seen. Those connections can heal, and they may even save us in unexpected ways.

    The stigmas of mental health and art

    The creative path isn’t the easiest to walk down, especially if you’ve been out of touch with your own creativity for a while. We have been taught over and over again that what is socially acceptable is to swallow the feelings that weigh us down the most. This results in the stigma we see around mental health, as well as the discomfort we sense when we try to express the ways we’re struggling.

    Art is a way around all that. It’s a way to break those stigmas, express ourselves in a safe way and move our emotions through our bodies. You’ll also find that, by having a creative outlet, you have a tool that helps you address challenges as they come up. With every bit of horrible news I see, I remind myself to take it to the canvas, where I let those emotions move through me and into the paint.

    Will every piece of my art see the light of day? No. Does every piece help me heal a bit of myself? Absolutely. Art is a tool more than anything — a way to help us find ourselves and heal.

    Jodie King

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  • 3 Lessons for Creative Entrepreneurs

    3 Lessons for Creative Entrepreneurs

    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    When people say, “Well, everyone has to start somewhere,” they’re usually not referring to drop-outs like me. I was a pretty rebellious kid, to be honest, and at age 16, I’d managed to flunk most of my classes — all but art and technology — so, I dropped out. You could say I wasn’t exactly setting myself up for success, but what 16-year-old doesn’t like a good challenge?

    One thing I knew was that I wanted to use my art skills, so I set my sights on becoming a designer and applied to graphic design school. But my low grades and lack of detectable academic skills did me no favors, and my application was rejected. Irritated, I got a job working at a creative production agency as a tea boy (yes, it’s exactly what it sounds like). It didn’t take me long to realize that if I made the tea badly enough, my colleagues wouldn’t request it as often. I’d then have more time to figure out how to make myself actually useful at the company.

    But the biggest challenge I faced at the agency was not the tea kettle; it was my family. I was the son of one of the agency’s three owners, which meant I had to do twice as much work to gain acceptance from my fellow employees. But it soon became clear that it wasn’t working. Two weeks into my tenure, my older brother, who’d been at the agency for a few years, pulled me aside. “Everybody hates you,” he said.

    That stung. I couldn’t believe it. I was hurt, angry and more than a little embarrassed. But that harsh slap of reality motivated me to prove myself over the next 20 years by consistently searching for ways to make myself valuable to the organization. By the time I was named CEO some two decades later, I’d worked in nearly every position. Along the way, I learned lessons that would end up being incredibly useful to me as CEO. And I only could have learned them by slowly moving up the ranks and working in all corners of the business.

    Here are three lessons I’d like to pass along to any inspiring entrepreneur:

    1. Don’t believe what you see in the movies

    Entrepreneurship is not for the faint of heart: New problems, scary unknowns and intriguing (but distracting) opportunities will challenge you every day. And you’ll second-guess yourself every step of the way while others rely on you to make decisions. People will rely on you to make the right decisions — and they expect you to do it with a degree of confidence, whether you have any or not!

    Movies love to depict entrepreneurs with automatic access to lavish parties, luxury cars and a golden ticket to Silicon Valley. In this case, life doesn’t imitate art. Entrepreneurship includes many struggles. And if you’re lucky, and your company begins to grow, your struggles grow as well.

    In fact, you can compare entrepreneurship to parenting. Some of the most difficult, challenging and stressful moments in life involve raising a child. The bigger the child, the bigger the mess, right? It often feels like an uphill battle trying to keep the house clean. But parenting is also magic. It includes some of the most moving and memorable moments of your life. Parents and entrepreneurs often find themselves in high-pressure situations, managing unique personalities and getting zero credit. But these facts hold true for both:

    Despite the difficulties, you can achieve success with persistence. As Benjamin Franklin once said, “Energy and persistence conquer all things.”

    Related: 4 Success Secrets for Creative Entrepreneurs

    2. Passion supports persistence

    As an entrepreneur, you need passion to succeed. It inspires your business plans and sets you apart from the competition. Your passion attracts the right customers and employees, and perhaps most importantly, gives you the motivation to deliver on your mission.

    If you want to give everything to something, you have to do what you love. Otherwise, you’ll burn out, get frustrated and be tempted to throw in the towel. To identify your purpose, ask yourself:

    • What was I put on this earth to do?

    • What motivates me to get out of bed every morning instead of languishing under the covers and pondering life?

    • What makes me tick?

    Once you identify your purpose, take a step back and examine your career. Ask yourself: Does my career feed my purpose? Stepping into the business world means choosing a venture you believe in and feel passionate about. Find a way to tap into that purpose and drive yourself forward to achieve the best possible outcome.

    That somewhere starting point requires a vision and goals to achieve success. Where do you want to see your business in one, five and 10 years? Every day, check the alignment of your goals and your passions with your plan for the future.

    My purpose is creativity. It makes me tick, and it drives me forward in my career. In my world, it’s essential for me to understand the creative process, how people think and work. By thinking creatively, I find more solutions to problems and even challenge my own assumptions.

    Related: Remember, Persistence Pays Off. Stay Motivated With These 5 Tips.

    3. Defend, cherish and promote creativity

    Creativity is born from adversity and constraint. Growing up, I was very familiar with both. My parents played infidelity tennis through much of my childhood, fighting and tormenting each other while my brother and I could only look on. My constraint was the academic system, which crushed my spirit. It wasn’t the right fit for me, and it didn’t give me what I needed at that time.

    Adversity pushed me towards creativity to ease my anxiety and escape from my parents’ tortuous relationship. I channeled my passion for the creative process into drawing, building and creating, which also served as a rebellion against the constraints of the academic system. My creative spirit protected me and helped me thrive, despite the upheavals happening at home.

    To an extent, the creative spirit represents a higher power in humans. And while creativity doesn’t come naturally to everyone, it lives in us all. Entrepreneurs need to use the creative process to solve problems, escape troubled times and leverage that creativity in good times to develop products and innovate. I launched my company in 2011 with the mission to unlock creativity through liberating technology. That purpose hasn’t changed, and it still gets me out of bed in the morning.

    The struggles I faced in my career and personal life, along with my passion and creativity, shaped me into the leader and entrepreneur I am today. If you have the next great idea, give yourself permission to explore it, and see where it goes. Use your experiences, your purpose and your creativity, of course, to unlock your potential.

    Related: 7 Tips for Emerging Creative Entrepreneurs

    Simon Berg

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  • The Key to Becoming More Creative and Innovative

    The Key to Becoming More Creative and Innovative

    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    Curiosity is a muscle — and that muscle needs to be exercised if you want to be more innovative or deliver on creative work. But as with anything that must be developed or worked on, most of us look for shortcuts. From workouts to productivity tools to grocery shopping … we’re all attracted to time-saving hacks that offer fast results and immediate solutions.

    This can happen in creative work when we look for shortcuts or try fast-tracking the process by pulling inspiration from design galleries or others’ websites. To be clear, there’s nothing wrong with your team members trying to optimize their time by turning elsewhere for inspiration. Your team should be doing that. Often.

    But if that’s all they’re doing — if they’re relying solely on inspiration from others’ work — then they’re stunting their curiosity’s growth. Without a well-developed sense of curiosity, they’ll fail to grow into the brilliant creatives they’re meant to be.

    Related: How to Make Your Employees More Creative at Work

    Explore outside your industry

    By building your curiosity muscle, you’ll be able to not only ask deeper, more meaningful questions but also ideate ideas more rapidly. How do you develop that muscle? By learning new things. Proactively. You can develop that muscle even more successfully by learning things you’re not familiar with and even exploring ideas you may be uncomfortable with.

    Don’t limit your learning and exploration to ideas directly connected to your job. Go outside of your industry to learn new things.

    A designer might cultivate their curiosity by learning how to bake and studying the reason why yeast causes bread to rise, why a second rise yields a better loaf and how yeast, baking soda and baking powder are all leavening agents but require very different conditions to cause baked goods to rise.

    If you’re a nonprofit exec, you could explore why the tools, techniques and strategies of Six Sigma matter in manufacturing. You could study processes like Toyota‘s production system or the five whys technique. Or you could explore how things relate in different ecosystems. The point is to broaden your curiosity across a variety of disciplines.

    The best-kept secret to creativity

    So, why does this matter to your creative muscle? Why bother investing so much time and effort into learning ideas so far removed from your creative endeavors? It’s all about getting your reps in.

    We live in a world that offers endless opportunities to ponder, discover and investigate ideas. And every time you embrace one of those opportunities, you develop your curiosity. And perhaps more importantly, you create a deeper well of experience to draw on. By soaking in all that new information, you have a broader set of ideas to apply to your current challenges and iterate on. That’s the best-kept secret to cultivating creativity and innovation.

    Related: The 9 Steps That Will Help You Learn Anything

    3 questions for cultivating your curiosity

    So, how can you and your team develop that curiosity muscle to grow in creativity and innovation? Use these three questions to lead you forward as you grow your curiosity:

    1. “Am I learning something new?” It’s a fairly common question, right? Most people will ask themselves this question a couple of times a year when they’re feeling reflective and introspective. But that’s not enough. The most successful creatives ask themselves this question every day. Whether they’re trying to learn something big over the course of time or simply exposing themselves to new ideas, they are exercising their sense of curiosity about the world every day. Right now, go into your calendar and block off 15 minutes every day to focus on learning something new.

    2. “Am I discovering something new about a topic I already know?” Stay in your career long enough, and you’ll get to a point where you feel like you know a lot. It’s a great feeling, isn’t it? But don’t get comfortable there. Develop the mindset that no matter how much of a subject matter expert you may be, there is always more to learn. Keep an ongoing, ever-growing list of ideas and topics within your industry that you want to grow in. If this is a struggle for you, ask your peers about their career paths and the knowledge gaps they had to overcome.

    3. “What if…?” and “Why not…?” To really level up your creativity muscle, you need to use prompts such as: “What if…?,” “Why not…?,” “I wonder…,” and “What’s stopping us from…?” Be the person who’s always questioning ideas and strategies. The point isn’t to be contrarian, but to cultivate the curiosity your team needs to drive innovation.

    Related: 3 Ways to Unleash Your Creativity

    If you’ve ever felt limited in your creativity, then asking yourself the questions above will help you do something about it. And if you’ve thought you’re just not creative, well, stop. Because you can make yourself more creative. Cultivate your curiosity, and you’ll start producing more creative, innovative ideas.

    Mark Miller

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