Unharnessing Creativity in Business

Guest post by: Sandra Bekhor
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Unharnessing Creativity in Business - By Sandra Bekhor

Regardless of profession or industry, your ability to nurture creativity in business will enable you to sustain innovation and competitive edge, the very essence of a successful business.
Today, businesses are challenged in an infinite number of ways, many of which are relatively new. Today's business needs to:

· Know what their customers care about before their customers (and certainly before their competitors) figure it out

· Deliver better, faster and cheaper products and services in a global economy

· Minimize their footprint in a planet in peril

· Leverage technology before getting replaced by it

· Continuously introduce innovation and excitement into a market that is over-stimulated, flowing with abundance and believes that it has seen it all

Most importantly, today's business needs to know how to lead people to do all of the above.

The ability to identify, recruit and foster creativity in business will become a powerful differentiator in our time. Daniel H. Pink, author of A Whole New Mind: Why Right Brainers Will Rule the Future, preaches that we are perched on the cusp of the third industrial revolution, ‘the conceptual age’, where creators and empathizers rule. As with every revolution, the conceptual age will be met with resistance and challenge.

In an age where analytical skills have been rewarded and right brain thinkers have been encouraged to adapt left brain thinking in order to climb the corporate ladder, such a trend can be a little unnerving.

It can also be exhilarating for businesses that see the opportunity that lies beneath the challenge.

The point of unharnessing creativity in business is not to send all your employees to art class but rather to gain insight as to how we can invite right brain thinking into a left brain world.

Leadership that eliminates fear of failure is conducive to creative thinking. Nothing kills a great idea faster than the fear of reprisal. Today, traditional authoritative leaders are being replaced by transformative, creative and lateral leaders that know how to draw the most out of the people that they lead. This idea was vividly demonstrated by the recent majority election of Barack Obama as President of the United States of America.

It would seem that Pink's conceptual age is indeed arriving.

Here's why you should build creativity in the workplace.

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Unharnessing Creativity in Business - By Sandra Bekhor

About the Author: Sandra Bekhor

RSS for Sandra's articles - Visit Sandra's website
Sandra Bekhor is President of Bekhor Management, a Toronto-based consulting firm that provides marketing and strategic planning services to professional practices and small to mid-sized businesses. A senior marketing professional since 1992, Sandra has guided leading Canadian-based businesses to a new level in the global marketplace with business planning, strategic marketing and the enhancement of organizational structure and process. Sandra speaks, teaches and writes for various Canadian professional associations on strategic planning, business planning, marketing, brand management and public relations. Sandra Bekhor received a Masters in Business Administration from the University of Toronto, a Bachelor of Science (Honours) in Physiology from McGill University and a second Bachelor of Science in Architecture from McGill University.
Click here to visit Sandra's website.

More from Sandra Bekhor
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