Let Creativity & Imagination Grow Your Business

Albert Einstein is credited with saying “Imagination is more important than knowledge”.

It's possible to experience a whole world inside your mind using your imagination. Take a look at any situation from a different view and you will strengthen your creativity. Explore places you have never been, listen to sounds as if for the first time, all because of the magic of imagination.

Do you wonder what use imagination or creativity are to your employees. It's a common question many small businesses ask themselves. Sure you don't want an employee sitting around thinking about how to make the business grow while at the same time not doing their tasks. But like most small businesses you want your employees to be invested in their job and the product or service they are presenting to your clients.

Encouraging employees at all levels to think about how to do things better, about new products and services will create value for your business.You want your employees to have a stake in growth and successes and to this end I encourage you to implement ways they can manifest their imaginations and explore their creative sides.

No matter how great your ideas are or how little competition you have you will be challenged in your niche and your successful business model will be copied. New thinkers are constantly searching out for ways to create success and cannibalizing your ideas and methods is one way your competition can speed up their success and lower both the cost of entry into your field and the length of the industry learning curve.

No Matter If It's Inside Or Outside The Box

Guerrilla Imagination

Is it time for your business to step up its imagination and creativity in the marketing and promotion department? Are you ready to find that new and exciting ideas are right under your nose? Then it's time for guerrilla imagination!

Something about stepping outside of your comfort zone with a group of people allows you to think more freely and be more comfortable sharing your ideas. In a true team environment, there is no such thing as a bad idea, and often the wackiest ideas are the ones that develop into innovative solutions to your marketing and promotional challenges. This is where Guerrilla Imagination comes in. Experiencing fun and adventurous activities together will bring your team to a new and exciting level.

Seek Out Adventure

Want your employees to think fast? Then start by letting them go fast at a nearby racetrack. Most speedways offer packages that allow visitors to be a driver for a day, and the experience will be just what your employees need to get their blood pumping and their creativity flowing. Plan brainstorming activities for immediately after the driving experience to encourage employees to take their business imagination to 120 miles per hour.

If your goal is to help your staff overcome their fears and feel confident as they contribute to your team, rock climbing may be just the activity for you. Rock climbing requires strenuous, high-stakes effort with amazing rewards, and that's exactly the experience you want to mimic in your team's creative meetings. The experience of pushing yourself beyond your limits to achieve unfathomable heights is what rock climbing is all about. Once your staff knows what that feels like, you're one step closer to unparalleled business imagination.

Monotony is the enemy of creativity, and as your business grows, it is easy for your staff to become bogged down in the day-to-day grind of just getting things done. If your office has become a dull, cumbersome place, then it's time to get out of the office and get into the water. Think of the fun your employees will have if their day at the office includes boating, parasailing, and jet skiing. The opportunity to bond as a team without the pressure of reports due and clients to satisfy creates just the environment for Guerrilla Imagination. If you throw camping into your outdoor adventure, you can spend the day in the water and the evening by the camp fire soliciting out-of-the-box marketing ideas for your organization. Providing a non-threatening environment for your staff to innovate is one key to the creative marketing and promotional ideas you're looking for.

Get Creative to Breed Innovation

Business Imagination is essential to planning new marketing strategies and promotions, and boring staff meetings are not conducive to creative thought. Guerilla Imagination techniques will turn those staff meetings into exciting, innovative conferences.

Imagine if your staff walked into a meeting to find ice cream and every imaginable topping for the perfect sundae. Using each of the toppings as a part of a process or idea suddenly turns a complex marketing plan into a hands-on, interactive encounter. As the employees create and enjoy their tasty treats, they can relate the whipped cream, nuts, chocolate sauce, and cherry on top to the steps to your company's promotional goals. Who says work can't be fun (and delicious, too)?

Business Imagination needs an appropriate outlet so that employees can feel comfortable contributing every idea that comes to them. Fear of looking silly can prevent some people from contributing their most creative ideas, so providing a silly way to participate in brainstorming could remove that fear. Try implementing whimsical writing days, like "Haiku Mondays" or "Limerick Wednesdays." Using your email groups or a company message board, your team could submit their marketing or promotional ideas in the form of a quirky poem. The extra focus needed to fit ideas into the poem's format will transfer to focus on the project, and the outlandish idea of a limerick itself will remove any fear of contributing silly ideas because the sillier they are, the better. Of course, you could create competition by giving prizes to your best authors each week.

Return to Childhood Imagination

Have you ever wondered how children can have such vivid imaginations and why they lose their imaginations as they get older? While the answer likely includes many factors, you should consider helping your employees return to their childhood imaginations by having fun like a kid. Consider a day trip to your local pizza joint/arcade. Your staff could enjoy pizza from the buffet, kill zombies in arcade games, and even test their skills in skee-ball or air hockey. After the fun, your marketing strategy session could begin with how you would market each of the games that were played that day. Then those ideas could be adapted to your product or service, creating a new and innovative marketing approach. You could even reserve a birthday party room for the day to use for your regular staff meeting.

Children are constantly active, running and jumping and playing until their heart's content. As adults, we must recognize that the correlation between physical activity and clarity of thought is undeniable. So maybe it's time for you to get your staff up and moving with an old-fashioned field day. Different departments could team up to compete against one another in three-legged races, tug-of-wars, kickball games and other events. Team-building fun would then foster the safe, creative environment that produces exceptional business imagination. Photos and memories from the day should adorn the walls of your brainstorming sessions, or you could even hold your meetings right on the field. Encouraging your staff to return to the imagination and creativity of childhood will bring about the guerilla imagination your business needs.

Often the very ideas you're looking for are right at your fingertips. With guerrilla imagination, you can help your team develop innovative marketing and promotional ideas that will push your business ahead of the competition.

Put All Oppotunities Availible To You Into Motion

The more your completion copies your techniques and your business model the larger the risk your product or service will become a lowly commodity who’s innovation and revolutionary ideas are now old hat. Even in boom times there is not a huge upside to running a business on its way down and when times are tough a commodities line of products and services is like treading water in a completive pool of sharks.

Creating a culture within your business based on the toolset  of imagination and creativity can reinvigorate the original spirit of innovation you had at the start of your career. The same spirit of imagination and creativity can renew your employees sense that they have important work to do and a future with a growing business. And not to be forgotten is what your customers will see think when they see you investing in new ways to solve problems, create value and offer services. Your clients and customers will deepen their commitment to buying your products and services.

Original ideas and ways of creating value and services are not easy at first to duplicate. So it makes sense for you to stay out in front of the competition every step of the way. You competitors will sit on the side and watch to see if your new set of techniques make money or corral customers before they jump in an attempt to copy you. While your business is being watched you are moving ahead in other areas that confound all those copy cats. Keeping it fresh and new will keep you out in front where the air is the best. Let those behind you breath the dust you kick up when your focus is based on imagination and creative fire.

10 Hot Ideas to Grow You business Using Imagination and Creativity

1. Space for Thinking
   Space for thinking might seem like a weird idea. can't an employee think wherever they are? Of course your team can think at their desk but a dedicated room or space can act as a catalyst or an incubator to thinking. Imagination can find it's best expression when given room to expand into a solution.

2. Cultivate Employee Creativity
   Just do the job is how many employers see the role of their employees. It’s past time where we look at our employees as the enemy. To get the most out of someone we hire we are obligated to our bottom line to let each employee create as much value for the organization as possible. This requires someone in your organization to communicate with every employee and lets them know there is room for new ideas and new ways of doing things within the company.
   
   
   
3. Encourage Dissent in Meetings
   Different ideas thrown out in the middle of an meeting can spark imagination and get the creative juices going. One trick is to have a rock that you randomly give to one of your employees in each meeting. The holder of the rock is tasked with coming at each idea from a different side then the group, this includes shooting down an idea. The only caveat is that the rock hold must be constructive in her criticism, just saying an idea won’t work is not acceptable.
   
   
   
4. Visit the Competition
   That's right come up with a list of your competitor and if necessary call them to schedule a tour. Make it simple sample the food, try the product or go on one of their tours. Whatever you do someone is doing it differently, take some time and check them out.
   
   
   
5. Start a Chronicle of What Works & Why
   Like an in house newspaper chronicle what works and what doesn't work. Lay out why something worked and why something didn't work. Talk about the circumstances that surround the ideas implementation. It is important that you file these so everyone on each team can quickly find them and use lots of tags so a search will produce deep results. The more we know about the process the further we can go into new places and spark new imaginative solutions.
   
   
   
6. The Art of Walking Away
   When your team has put in lots of time and they seem tired or edgy have everyone just walk away for an hour or two and let them do nothing. It will recharge the project and sure is an easy way to keep them happy and thinking.
   
   
   
7. Encourage Employees Take an Unusual Class
   Once or twice a year encourage employees to take a class at the local community college that challenges them. The goal is for them to learn something out of their comfort zone and bring back a new sense of different possibilities to the work place. When we learn something new we tend to be more open to other new ideas.
   
   
   
8. Play What if Once A Month
   Have meetings or office parties where you play what if. What if in a business environment would include employees wondering aloud their most creative vision for the company and it’s direction 5, 10 or 15 years down the road.
   
   
   
9. Does The Team Feel A Sense of Responsibility
   An exercise in sprouting the seed of imagination is in getting each employee to write about their sense how they see their investment in the business. What do they see as their role and where do they want to take their responsibility within the business. Also how do they see you as better facilitating their creativity within the team and the company as a whole.
   
   
   
10.  Reward Innovation and Creativity
    The best for last. Reward new ideas and creative thoughts with recognition and when it leads to direct improvement or new products give cash. And do be shy about patting someone on the shoulder letting them know they did well. Never underestimate what gratitude and money will do to inspire your employees to use their imagination and creative sides at work.
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    

10 Websites That Expand on the Business Imagination & Creative Theme

1. Innovation Tools
   
   
2. SCORE (Counselors to America's Small Business)
   
   
3. Fast Company dot com
   
   
4. Creativity At Work Blog
   
   
5. Harvard Business School
   
   
6. LeapFrog Innovations
   
   
7. Creative 4 Business
   
   
8. Creativity And Innovation Driving Business Blog
   
   
9. Ecorner (Stanford University's Entrepreneurship Corner)
   
   
10. Entrepreneur Magazine
    
    
    
    
    

Creative Links to Inspire The Business Mind

1. Wikipedia Definition
   The ever abundant take on the subject from Wikipedia.
   
   
2. Scientific, Philosophical and Historical Approaches.
   A resource for the study of imagination and mental images.
   
   
3. Art of Imagination Society
   We intend to assist the resurgence of interest in fantastic and visionary art and make the Art of Imagination accessible to all
   
   
4. Library of Congress Imagination Gallery
   For Jefferson, Imagination was the realm of the arts.
   
   
5. Theology, Imagination and the Arts
   The Institute for Theology, Imagination and the Arts (ITIA) is a research institute based at St Mary's College,
   
   
6. Buchheim Museum
   A single visit to the museum reveals only a fraction of what it really has to offer
   
   
7. Imagination Playhouse
   Clowning, games, rhymes, cooties, and the usual funny antics of Sammie and Tudie!!
   
   
8. Who Needs Imagination
   An Interview with Professor Paul Harris
   
   
9. Imagine The Universe
   Welcome to Imagine the Universe! (A NASA Site)
   
   
10. Imagine Tours
    Imagine Tours, now in its 18th year, offers affordable and fun cycling escapes to scenic spots in the western US and abroad.

Visualization

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