Thinking Outside The Box: How Do You Really Pull it Off?
Thinking Outside The Box: How Do You Really Pull it Off?
By
Prof. Theodore Henderson
The Wisdom Man
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The phrase “thinking outside the box” is often abused in the world of entrepreneurship right now. In fact, its considered a cliche to even utter that phrase in front of your fellow entrepreneurs. https://www.inc.com/jim-haudan/3-ways-to-make-thinking-outside-box-less-rare.html
However, this does beg the question: how do you think outside the box? In truth, you will regularly have to do this if you want to bring in innovation in business. Here are a few tips to help you do so.
Create the “Box”
Before you can think outside of the box, you’ll have to draw the box first. Don’t worry, though, as the box is not there to limit your creativity in one way or another. Instead, it’s there to give you direction when creating strategies.
For instance, in a brainstorming session, you must identify what problems need to be creatively solved. Are the marketing strategies in your Facebook or Instagram not effective? Are your customer service areas too congested?
Whatever the problem is, you have to identify it. After all, you can quickly come up with innovative ideas if there is some direction to your problem-solving process.
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Use Randomness to Your Advantage
One concept brought about by innovation and generation X is finding inspiration from all sorts of random stuff. You’ll see this often at the workplaces of creative marketing teams. The idea is if their eyes get to focus on one of many weird and quirky stuff in their desk, that person gets a sudden jolt of inspiration.
You can do this yourself by allowing yourself and your team to personalize your workspaces. From post-it notes to action figures, you must give yourself the opportunities they need to get inspired and come up with some innovative ideas.
Of course, you’ll have to draw a line between finding inspiration and channeling that inspiration at work. After all, you can’t just spend an entire day looking at nothing but knick-knacks.
Quantity Over Quality
When creating solutions for your business, it’s best that you let the critical side of your brain take the back seat. After all, that part of your mind will get in the way by over-analyzing every idea you will come up with.
As such, you should allow yourself and your team to exhaust yourselves in generating ideas creatively. List down every possible solution that you have for a problem, even the bad ones. After all, subpar ideas can be improved with further brainstorming.
One of the more active business innovation models is to reward creativity. Things like financial bonuses and even something as simple as free food is incentive enough to get the brain’s creative side working. You can also showcase the best proposals made by you and your team at the workplace every week.
In time, you and your team will come up with more than 50 solutions. Moreover, that is even if 50% of them are not applicable given your business’ current circumstances.
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About The Author
Theodore Henderson works with business owners, entrepreneurs, and corporate professionals. He is an Amazon best-selling author, a Certified Career Coach, a Certified Leadership Coach, and a Certified Social Media Security Professional Powered by CompTIA. In addition he is the author of the business program “Launching Your Great Business Idea,” as well as the author of the following books; “The Wisdom Compass: Your 31-Day Journey to Wisdom-Filled Living”, “9 Simple Strategies to Becoming a Strong Leader” and the Security eBook “30 Smart Ways to Protect Yourself from Cyber Criminals” aimed at owners of Smartphones, Mobile Devices, and also those who have significant online activities including Social Media, financial services, etc. He is available for keynotes, seminars, and workshops. He may be reached through www.TheodoreHenderson.com.