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Cultivating Creativity in Business

When you think of the term “business” most people in general don’t think about fun, creativity, play and things like that.  Most see business as profit margins, rates of return or dollars and cents.  My question is, “Why can’t it be both?”  Companies of all shapes and sizes can be highly profitable while remaining highly creative.  Sure your organization needs structure and your employees need to respect and work with one another but cultivating a sense of play or creativity can not only increase the morale but also yield better ideas and more profits.

What originally prompted me to write about this was an article on SmallBusinessBranding.com in which Nick Rice discussed a “Lack of Creativity is Killing Business”.  I have to agree that for me anyways creativity has to be highly involved in any business that I create because to me creativity is just as important as profits maybe even more so in the initial startup phase of a business.

If a business you are building is highly enjoyable you’ll work harder and smarter at it and with incorporating that sense of play or fun is integral to its success.  Who wants to own a boring business?  No one! That’s why boring businesses fail where creative and fun ones launch.

Inspiring employees to contribute ground-breaking creative ideas

With profit-sharing in startups becoming the normal way of attracting top talent to a team, is there a better way to allow more ground-breaking ideas.  Perhaps making it a contest among employees is the best way to go… it has a way to inspire original creative thought.  Companies that reward their idea men and women are taking the forefront and the front page these days and do see evidence of this all one must do is look at Google to see how that begins to work.

I read an article by Steve Pavlina months ago that talked about a $10,000 hour.  Well most bigger companies would frown on these sort of offerings to employees startups, maybe like the one you are starting or running could include something like this in your business’ manifesto.

Here is a excerpt from StevePavlina.com on the idea behind the $10,000 hour…

If you’re an employee in a corporate environment, then your salary sets your hourly rate, depending on how many hours you typically work each week. And in this high-risk situation you have a double problem. First, you have the previously mentioned challenge of getting yourself to think outside the hourly rate box. But secondly, in corporate environments it’s rare to find fair incentives for employees to have such breakthroughs. If you have one of those $10,000 hours on the job, you probably won’t share in the rewards. You’ll just enjoy your usual $50 pay for that hour, while the company keeps the other $9950 you’ve created. At least entrepreneurs and self-employed people get to keep the whole $10,000.

Source: StevePavlina.com 

… This gets my mind thinking that if small companies implemented a practice such as this perhaps someone would come up with a to grow the company in a new way, find a way to save the company $10,000 a quarter or increase profits by 50% per year.  If you are running a startup and don’t bother to implement something like this don’t be surprised if someone ends up holding back that idea.  Put yourself in the shoes of your employee, they believe in the business, they want to make an impact and they’d like to get paid to do it.  Without the incentive those brilliant and creative ideas will probably never see the light of day.  Remember the saying “two heads are better then one”?  Imagine what 5 heads or 10 that are focused on the same thing can do.

Luc