A consumer goods company that came up against an economic downturn decided to turn to the creativity of its employees to reduce internal waste. The company took this action rather than bringing in an external consultant who would most likely have introduced employee retrenchments.
The result: employees identified close to 30 waste points and saved the company a potential $12 million, according to a case study reported in an industrial management journal.
There’s a lot more to the story but it goes to show how creativity can be applied to large companies to increase profits in difficult times. If they had taken the route of simply cutting back people, a lot of negatives would have come their way – low morale, overwork, loss of critical skills.
The same benefits of creativity can be gained by small business owners and individuals. People use their creative imaginations to come up with new solutions, change their lives, start-up small businesses and overcome obstacles.
Nothing is impossible for someone who learns creative problem-solving, and understands the creative process and opens up to an opportunity mindset.
In my book “Breakthrough Ideas” I show you many simple and practical ways to come up with new ideas. It’s based on real-world experience, research into creativity proven methods and ideas that have succeeded. By the end of the first chapter, which will only take a few minutes, you will produce new ideas that could spark your personal breakthrough.
Here are few “golden rules” to help you with your creative problem-solving:
– Use simple techniques that are proven and which you enjoy it
– Personal breakthroughs come when you are prepared – practice, practice, practice
– See your world through fresh eyes
– You become more creative by using creative tools more often
– Connecting unrelated objects often leads to unexpected new combinations
– Letting ideas “cool” before evaluation lets you select the most promising ones so you can judge them more objectively
– Developing and actioning ideas follows a definite process and framework that is easy to understand and apply
Do you want to learn to speed up your idea generation? I’m going to strongly recommend that you check out “Breakthrough Ideas”. Just invest a few hours in yourself and you will find solutions faster and come up with more viable ideas.