Stimulating Our Creativity

1. Surround yourself with creative people. Hang out with writers, musicians, poets and artists. Often, just being in a creative environment will inspire you and refresh your creative mind.
2. Start somewhere. If you create a load of crap for a few pages, whether it’s creative writing in Word or sheet music, the brain loosens up and it’s easier to break through the barrier and come up with ideas.
3. Expose yourself. Not after too much vodka. Expose yourself to new art – books, music, paintings – all the time. If you’re a rocker, listen to funk. If you’re a crime writer, read fantasy. If you’re a productivity writer, read something about slacking off.
4. Develop a “morning ritual” that puts you in the zone – whether it’s stream-of-consciousness such as in tip 2, or a series of non-spectacular everyday actions in sequence that tell your brain it’s time to get in the zone. Perhaps you drink a coffee while watching the news before going for a morning walk – if you repeat the same actions before doing creative work for long enough, it eventually creates an association that tells the mind to get in a particular zone.
5. Use "Getting Things Done" (GTD) techniques – free up your mind from the hassles of life by doing an info-dump so your head is clear enough to create instead of worry.
6. Never stop learning.
7. Imitate the real world – find beauty (or the ugly, depending on what inspires you) and try to extract the essence of it into your work. This may lead you to what you need to create, or it may just warm up the muse.
8. Drink too much coffee sometimes (one of my favorite submissions).
9. Do something new. Play chess. Read a book if you watch television and watch television if you read. Go outside. Sing in the shower.
10. Don’t be too precious about your work. Being inspired by ‘the muse’ is important, but if the doctor and the garbage man can do their jobs every day, then those in a creative line of work can too. Change your attitude towards your work.
11. Based on the theory that everything that can be created has been and creation is simply a process of combining existing ideas, consume information by the bucket load. The more you know, the more you can create from that knowledge.
12. Meet new people from different walks of life. Gain insight into their perspectives on life. Strike up a conversation on the bus.
13. Shut out the world. Instead of sucking in new information, sit quietly, go to sleep, or meditate. Stop thinking and clear your mind so that the clutter doesn’t get in the way of your thoughts.
14. Carry a camera with you and look for interesting things in your every day scenery. Hadn’t noticed that crack in the path before? Then it’ll do. Set a quota and force yourself to make it. Don’t go to new places to do this – force yourself to find new perspectives on old knowledge.
15. Creativity is a muscle. Exercise it daily – if you only need to create once a week, your muscles may have atrophied if you don’t do it just because you don’t have to.
16. Carry a notebook everywhere. Or a PDA.
17. Write down a list of ideas and draw random arrows between them. For instance, if you’re a blogger, write down everything in your Categories list and draw lines to connect unusual ideas. If you had the categories “Relationships” and “Management” and randomly connected them you’d have an interesting article idea to work with.
18. If you’re not on a tight deadline, walk away and do something completely unrelated. Don’t let yourself spend that time stressing about what you need to do.
19. Create a framework. As many writers have said, the blank page can be the biggest show-stopper. Instead of trying to rely on pure inspiration, set your topic or theme and start creating within confines. Think within the box you create for yourself.
20. Remove obstacles to creativity. That friend who calls to complain about their life can wait until you can afford to get stressed about their problems.
21. Don’t judge your ideas until you have plenty to judge. Don’t be embarrassed by yourself – just write them all down! Even if you start with “pink polka-dotted lizard.”
22. Keep a journal. It can get your mind working, and in a month, or a year, when you’ve gained some distance from what you’ve written it can give you new ideas.
23. Stop telling yourself you’re not creative. If you tell yourself not to come up with ideas, then you probably won’t – no matter how hard you try.
24. Don’t be a workaholic – take breaks. Your mind needs a chance to wind down so it doesn’t overheat and crash.
25. Experiment randomly. What does a flanger sound like on a vocal track? Like Lenny Kravitz, of course.
26. Treat creativity like an enemy in a strategy game; if one thing isn’t working, don’t keep trying until you give up. Try a new strategy. Run through the whole list, not just the first tip.
27. Choose a topic and write about it as wonderfully or badly as you possibly can. Then edit it as ruthlessly as a newspaper editor who has thousands of words to edit in the next hour and doesn’t care what gets lost in the process. At the end you might have something decent to use as a starting point.
28. Trash what you’re working on. Start again.
29. Exercise every day, before you sit down to be creative. If you exercise afterwards you’ll get the creative burst – just too late.
30. Spend time with your children. Or someone else’s.

[Thank you, Joel Falconer]

Evaluating a New Venture Idea with Four C's

  1. Company. Think of your idea in terms of its product/service features, the benefits to customers, the personality of your company, what key messages you'll be relaying and the core promises you'll be making to customers.
  2. Customer. There are three different customers you'll need to think about in relation to your idea: purchasers (those who make the decision or write the check), influencers (the individual, organization or group of people who influence the purchasing decision), and the end users (the person or group of people who will directly interact with your product or service).
  3. Competitor. Again, there are three different groups you'll need to keep in mind: primary, secondary and tertiary. Their placement within each level is based on how often your business would compete with them and how you would tailor your messages when competing with each of these groups.
  4. Collaborators. Think of organizations and people who may have an interest in your success but aren't directly paid or rewarded for any success your business might realize, such as associations, the media and other organizations that sell to your customers.
[Thank you, Aaron Keller and Guy Kawasaki]

Refine ... Iterate ... Pivot

Creating something new and better is seldom a smooth start to finish process. More often it's a start, test, iterate, refine, re-start, re-test, re-iterate, get frustrated and quit!!



It starts with an idea, it always does! 

The first question, "Who cares? Are there any customers for our idea?" If the answer is "Yes, we think so ...", then move on to the next stage of development: a] create a business model that will fit our target customers and our idea; and b] develop our product and/or service in steps that can be tested and refine (agile engineering, it's called). 

If our first customers are happy with the results, find more and more customers and build up our venture. If our first customers aren't all that thrilled, iterate either our business model or our product/service, or both!

[Thank you, Steve Blank.]

Tips for Developing a Venture Strategy

  1. Develop the vision statement, the mission statement, and the business model
  2. Describe the industry and context for the firm and its competitors
  3. Determine the firm’s strengths and weaknesses in the context of the industry and environment
  4. Describe the firm’s core competencies, its customers, and its competitive advantage
  5. Describe the opportunities and threats for the venture
  6. Identify the critical success factors
  7. Formulate strategic options and select the appropriate strategy
  8. Translate the strategy into action plans with suitable measures and controls
[Thank you, Tom Beyers]

Mission Statement ... The Critical Success Factor!

The world changes ... client needs, wants, desires; competitive offerings; economic environments; et alia.  
Every organization must proactively address change if it is to survive and thrive.  The four elements of the Critical Success Factor are excellent focal points for potential innovation in an organization.  

The Critical Success Factor statement is also an excellent Mission Statement template.

REAL Brain Modes of Thinking




 

Crucial Questions (CQs)


Ask and you shall receive!
First Round ... ask the the basic CQs
Second Round ... ask supporting CQs for each of the basics
Third Round ... dig deeper!

Potential Sources of Differentiation

Every successful business is differentiated from its competition ... it could be very unique and significant, or it may be seemingly small and minor. But customers choose one enterprise over another for a reason. Following are some potential sources of value and differentiation to use as a guide when creating a competitive advantage strategy ...

ambiance ... branding ... business model ... community service ... contrived deterrence ... convenience ... copyrights ... cost advantages ... cost advantages independent of scale ... customer relations ... customer responsiveness ... customer service ... delivery ... distinct unique competencies ... economies of scale ... effective sales methods ... efficiency ... experience of doing business ... features ... functionality ... government regulation ... high quality ... image ... innovation ... intellectual property ... limited resources ... location ... low-cost ... manufacturing innovation ... market positioning ... market segmentation ... operational methods ... patents ... performance ... price ... product design ... product differentiation ... product innovation ... product selection ... product-line breadth ... quality ... rarity ... relationships ... reliability ... reputation ... selection ... service ... shopping experience ... supply chain relations ... switching costs ... trademarks ... trade names ... unique capabilities ... value

[1.07]