Insight-driven growth for business and lifestyle
Chesney Bradshaw
I met a consultant and trainer the other day who told me how busy he was, never being able to stay much at home because he was flying to different cities. Such is the demand for his service that it’s hard keeping up with it all. It’s a fantastic story when specialised training is in high demand and you are one of the few suppliers who have a top-notch product. Continue reading “It’s so different when you create something of your own”
A team of researchers designed a creativity test and gave it to a group of 45-year-olds. Less than 5% of this group were judged to be creative according to the test. The researchers tested other ages: 40, 35, 30, 25 and 20-year-olds. The 5% finding was essentially constant for all these groups. At 17 years old the percentage of creative individuals increased to 10%. They also tested five-year-olds and the creativity score rose to over 90%. The research team concluded that most people are highly creative at the age of five.
This doesn’t mean that people in their mature years are not creative. Other research shows that creativity can be increased through training and rewiring your brain to look for opportunities. Everyone has creativity but it can lie dormant if it is not nurtured and used. Continue reading “How to kickstart your creativity”
A small business owner was battling in a shopping centre where the demographics had gradually change. Instead of running a full men and women’s wear retail store, he came up with the idea to reconvert it into a smaller, focused store that caters for school clothing. He has also narrowed the range of clothing to six or seven schools. Within a year the business is doing well and the business owner has put it on a new, surer footing.
Start-ups and small business owners need to come up with new ideas all the time not only for new products and services but also new ways of positioning their business, locating their operations and responding to competition. But if they’ve got urgent problems they need to attend to them urgently. Continue reading “Do you suffer from a shortage of new ideas for your business?”
On a recent Sunday we went out to lunch in the country at a restaurant called Gilroy. The restaurant has a microbrewery attached to it or one could say that the microbrewery is attached to a restaurant. This restaurant/microbrewery has a great lesson for small businesses not only microbreweries on getting their products into the hands (and mouths) of the buying public. Continue reading “Why some small businesses battle to get their products in the hands (or mouths) of customers”
I was reading an expose in an entertainment magazine how an executive producer has been responsible for a long-standing TV soapy going from 1,653,000 to 569,000 viewers in one year.
The executive producer is still in her job. Long-standing fans complain about the pathetic storylines. The executive producer doesn’t even seem to be involved in the early stages of production as she should be. Top actors are leaving the show. The show has gone from winner to loser.
There are a lot of questions to ask about such a dismal failure. Where does one start? Why have things gone so bad? Continue reading “How to destroy creative capital”
