Fostering creativity Without creativity, your business stands still as the world changes around you. You need to obtain today's results while simultaneously creating your future. To foster creativity: remove barriers and set up a culture that stimulates it. The creative person generates new ideas; the entrepreneur turns them into profits. Leaders are either personally creative or quick to exploit the ideas of creative people. Entrepreneurship is the process of marrying a good idea and a market need, Entrepreneurs take the risks, creative employees provide the raw material, Creativity depends on creative qualities, a supportive environment and opportunity, Innovation in organizations is very much like thought leadership except that the thought leader does not need to be personally creative. He or she can promote the creative ideas of others instead.

Creative qualities

There is no formula for identifying the creative person, but some are:

• independent - needing to think things through for themselves.
• inquisitive - having a seemingly unquenchable thirst to understand.
• iconoclastic - nonconforming - not wed to authority or the status quo.
• confident - feeling they can do something better than others.
• determined - convinced they will find a better way if they persist.
• learners - always keen to acquire new knowledge.
• intuitive - making leaps of imagination, not needing to stick to the facts.
• open-minded - no rush to decide, digging deeper, studying new angles.

To foster creativity:

• Remove barriers to creativity.
• Provide opportunities to be creative.

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