What It Takes To Be An Entrepreneur

Enhancing Personal Creativity for Entreprenuership

Written by Samuel Muriithi for Gaebler Ventures

The development of entrepreneurial capabilities calls for the development of critical and creative thinking. Both of these qualities can be taught to people but the real success will only be achieved when the individual can, on his/her own, manage to maintain a mind that is open, inquisitive or inquiring. The failure to develop personal creativity portends a significant threat to entrepreneurship.

An important aspect of personal creativity; one does not just become open to new entrepreneurial ideas, but is active in seeking them out.

By doing so such a person will not only get new entrepreneurial ideas but will also become more creative. Personal creativity is enhanced through wide reading, wide traveling, talking to all and sundry, joining various professional associations and groups, recording of ideas and useful information in a notebook, and spending time at being curious.

While these are effective at a personal level, there are half a dozen formal techniques that can be used in developing creativity:

• Brainstorming – The whole idea of this technique is create an atmosphere where individuals will feel free to air their opinions and express their ideas devoid of any self-consciousness and fears of what others will think of what they have to say. A problem is proposed and the participants are urged to think of probable solutions or ideas viable enough to tackle the same i.e. the creative thinking aspect. The collected ideas are then subjected to critical thinking after which only the most promising solutions or new entrepreneurial ideas are retained.
• Forced associations – This is another means of developing creativity and it seeks to elicit possibly new entrepreneurial ideas by one matching his/her areas of interest with his/her skills and competencies. Alternatively this may involve two or more persons, various products etc. Personal creativity may see the birth of a new entrepreneurial idea from a person who has interest in the arts and has skills in computing. The automobile is the result of a combination of the internal combustion engine and the wheel.
• Role play – This technique sees the individual or a group of people come up with a problem and then try to find new entrepreneurial ideas or solutions to solve the same by assuming that in doing so it is actually a designated famous entrepreneur doing the thinking. Personal creativity can really be enhanced when one decides to pursue a viable solution in the manner that Richard Branson or Donald Trump would.
• Multiple uses – This is where personal creativity is summoned in a bid to find new entrepreneurial ideas from looking at people and things non-conventionally while seeking to find better ways of satisfying one's needs. For example, you may set out to think about all the different applications possible with a spoon.
• Analogies and metaphors – Literally, these are creative expressions that are used to trigger liberated imaginations. With this understanding as a platform it may be possible for new entrepreneurial solutions to a problem or opportunity to be realized courtesy of the personal creativity developed by an equally creative problem-solving approach.

Samuel Muriithi is a business owner in Nairobi, Kenya. He has extensive international business experience in the United States and India.

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