A BRIEF GUIDE TO

BUSINESS
CREATIVITY
solving any business challenge
with innovative ideas

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A BRIEF GUIDE TO BUSINESSCREATIVITY

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A BRIEF GUIDE TO BUSINESSCREATIVITY

SOLVING ANY BUSINESS CHALLENGE

WITH INNOVATIVE IDEAS

You probably downloaded this document because you want to become

more creative. You did the right thing.

In this document, we present you with six simple steps. Six steps that will
improve your creative thinking dramatically.

After reading this document you will know the basics of creative thinking.
You will know how to come up with more ideas and more original ideas.

We hope you will enjoy reading this and we’d love to hear the results!

Yours creatively,
Jeroen & René de Ruijter

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A BRIEF GUIDE TO BUSINESSCREATIVITY

1. ASK THE RIGHT QUESTION

Every situation can be approached from different angles. How you define
a challenge determines where you will look for answers.

Before rushing towards a new idea… pause. Take a deep breath and ask
yourself; what is it I have to solve? Every question can be redefined and
every question should be redefined. Look at what you’re faced with. Can
you rephrase your challenge?

When you rephrase the problem, different solutions appear. Even the
slightest change in the definition of your problem can lead to vastly
different solutions. Compare the question ‘How can I do all this work
before next month?’ to ‘How can I get all this work done before next
month?’ The first question will steer you towards solutions like working
longer hours, working weekends, cancelling time-consuming parties or
simply working more efficiently. The second question, however, might lead
you to involve other people to get the work done together. Perhaps you
need to outsource the non-essentials to India, perhaps you need to hire an
assistant or maybe another department has to be involved.

Let’s look at some real-life examples of redefining a challenge:

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A BRIEF GUIDE TO BUSINESSCREATIVITY

Follow the rain

In 1954, the first commercial television network in the UK saw the light
of day. The broadcasting rights per region were being auctioned. Many
parties wanted in on the action and most of them employed analysts to
find out what were the wealthiest regions.

They understandably assumed that the wealthiest regions would generate

the highest advertisement revenues. They asked themselves: ‘How do we
get the broadcasting rights for the wealthiest regions?’

One man had a different approach. Sidney Bernstein reasoned that

he should probably focus on the regions where people spent the most
time actually watching TV. Therefore, his question was: ‘How do I get the
broadcasting rights of the regions where people watch TV the most?’

This led him to a different approach. Instead of focussing on the wealthiest

regions, he bid on the WETTEST regions.

Broadcasting in the rainy North of the UK proved to be a good decision

and Granada Television eventually became one of the most successful
British production companies in history.

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A BRIEF GUIDE TO BUSINESSCREATIVITY

Saving ink
We all know that ink is costly. In many offices employees are strongly
advised to cut down on their printing habits.

The question many companies ask themselves is ‘How can we bring back
the number of printed pages?’ However, there are many ways of redefining
this challenge. What if you would ask yourself ‘How can we save ink?’

This is exactly the challenge that Alexander Kraaij took on. He developed
‘Ecofont’, a font specially designed to save on printer ink. The font has
minuscule holes in every character that are invisible to the naked eye. Yet
remarkably, using this font saves up to 28% in ink consumption.

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A BRIEF GUIDE TO BUSINESSCREATIVITY

Treat them like babies

The last example I’ll give you is of the sheriff of Duval County, Florida. The
police chief was faced with a troubling occurrence. During spring break,
college students would visit the coast and get drunk. The students would
cause all sorts of trouble, and traditional approach did not seem to stop
them. Therefore, the police asked themselves ‘How can we punish these
youngsters more severely?’ It was decided that the unruly students would
be transferred to a county jail. Unfortunately, this made things even
worse. When the students got out the next day, they went home and
bragged to their friends about how tough they were. After all, they had
done jail time. After noticing this, Sheriff Dale Carson decided to approach
the problem differently. He redefined the challenge and asked himself
‘How can we embarrass these students for breaking the law?’

His solution was as simple as it was effective. “Since they were acting like
babies, we treated them like babies” said the sheriff. Instead of feeding the
inmates water and bread, the sheriff decided to feed them baby food. The
news of the new policy spread fast and suddenly it was no longer ‘cool’ to
tell your friends you had been jailed. One single day of serving baby food
was enough to put a stop to the unrest.

What is your biggest challenge? And how might you rephrase it?

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A BRIEF GUIDE TO BUSINESSCREATIVITY

2. CONNECT THE UNCONNECTED

Creativity is the practice of combining existing elements to create
something new. You can combine unconnected materials, techniques,
products, ideas, processes or even people and companies.

It doesn’t matter in what business you operate, every once in a while

you will encounter a problem that needs to be solved. Sometimes logical
thinking and past experiences will lead you to an adequate solution. Often,
however, existing knowledge and experience are not enough.

Creativity is nothing more than combining existing parts to create

something new. Therefore, evidently, it is in a creative’s best interest
to have a broad knowledge of a variety of unrelated topics. The more
unrelated facts and theories you have in your head, the more new
combinations you can make.

So, if you’re in charge of innovation at your company, or if you want to

increase the number of original ideas that you have… explore some new
subjects. Books and documentaries are a goldmine, but blogs on various
topics are great sources of new knowledge as well. And when filling your

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A BRIEF GUIDE TO BUSINESSCREATIVITY

bookshelf, don’t limit yourself to study books. There is no reason to

exclude fiction, biographies and novels. These sources too can give you
valuable insights.

Increase the chances of stumbling onto brilliant new combinations.

Expand your horizons. Make it a habit to occasionally pick up a book or
magazine on a subject that normally doesn’t appeal to you. And try out
new activities whenever you got the chance. Not only will you be the life
of the party, you might also surprise your market with the next great
invention.

Of course, reading about unconnected subjects will only get you so

far. To really give your company a boost, you might want to fly in
some professional ‘outsiders’. People from other fields will approach a
situation in a completely different way. After all, they have very different
experiences and knowledge. Because they look for answers in different
directions, they usually will end up with very different ways of tackling a
challenge.

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An astronomical solution
I recently met a manager of a major international steel company who
told me about a tough challenge they faced. They had approached all
other large companies in their industry to see how they had tackled this
issue. It turned out to be a futile endeavour. The other companies had
introduced similar approaches to those that the steel company had tried
itself (with unsatisfactory results). They also had encountered the same
disadvantages of those approaches. The manager then decided to take
a look at other industries instead. In the end, they found a simple yet
effective solution to their problems in a factory that processes potatoes!

The same steel company recently announced its collaboration with an

astronomical institute. To monitor the quality of the kilometres of steel
that roll out of the machine every hour, an unusual partnership was
needed. To detect the tiniest of inconsistencies in their steel, the steel
company will now use the powerful technology that astronomers normally
use to scour the universe looking for very small changes in the night sky.

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A BRIEF GUIDE TO BUSINESSCREATIVITY

Pilots in the hospital

Of course, unusual collaborations happen in other industries as well. What
to think of a Rotterdam-based hospital that joined forces with a large
airline? To reduce long waiting lists and -times, the hospital adopted the
airline’s passenger planning system.

Not just problems with planning were tackled by looking at other

industries. The hospital also wanted to improve the safety of its surgeries.
It copied the risk management method that a major computer chip
manufacturer uses.

To further improve the quality of its surgeries, the hospital turned to the
airline industry again. The ‘black box’ that is used in aeroplanes stood
model for a new procedure: all surgeries are now filmed so that they can
later be evaluated.

Efficiency and risk management are just two of many areas where insights
from other industries can prove valuable. As you might imagine, customer
service is a subject that is particularly suited for cross-field innovation. For
instance, hospitals are now looking at other businesses to see how they
could improve their service.

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A BRIEF GUIDE TO BUSINESSCREATIVITY

Patients who visit a hospital are often rather nervous. How could a
hospital put its patients at ease upon arrival?

Well, how about valet parking? A valuable lesson learned from the hotel
business. Patients who don’t have to worry about parking their car are less
stressed, listen better to instructions and therefore often recover faster.

Often ‘your’ problem has already been solved in a completely

different industry. What unrelated professions can you turn to?

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A BRIEF GUIDE TO BUSINESSCREATIVITY

3. GO FOR QUANTITY
The first idea is hardly ever the best idea. In creativity, quantity leads to
quality. The more ideas you generate, the bigger the chances are that you
will stumble upon something brilliant. So don’t stop at the first ‘good’ idea!
Push yourself to think of more ways to tackle your challenge. No matter
how good your idea looks… there is always a better idea.

In most organisations, the focus is on quality. If a manager would suggest

the employees should pursuit quantity instead, he or she would probably
receive some puzzled looks. Yet, at HatRabbits this is exactly what we
do. When generating ideas, our main goal is to generate as many ideas
as possible. What many people fail to realise, is that in creativity quantity
leads to quality. Look at it this way: the more ideas you generate, the
bigger the chances are that you will stumble upon a brilliant idea. It’s a
numbers game. When generating ideas, you will start out with the most
logical ideas. These ideas are reasonable, but they are usually not very
original. Only after a while, once you feel like you hit the bottom of the
idea barrel, you will start to think of ideas that are not as obvious. You will
slowly drift further from the logical path. This undeniably will lead you
to many ridiculous and impractical ideas. Yet it will also bring brilliantly
creative ideas in reach. Ideas you would normally never even consider.
I’ll illustrate this bold statement with a real-life example from Belgium:

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A BRIEF GUIDE TO BUSINESSCREATIVITY

If you can’t beat them...

If you’ve ever been in Ghent, Belgium, you know that it is a beautiful old
town. Medieval architecture remains as a silent witness to the days Ghent
was one of the largest and richest cities in Europe. A couple of years ago
however, a new trend threatened to conceal all this splendour at a furious
pace…

The municipality of Ghent saw itself confronted with a troubling

occurrence. Fly-posters for obscure underground parties and concerts
plastered the streets with their announcements. Every available (yet
inappropriate) empty wall and electricity box was soon covered with illegal
posters.

Had the responsible people at the municipality settled for their first good
idea, the result would probably be camera surveillance, more police on the
streets or higher fines for fly-posting.

But what if you dare to go past the first few decent, yet obvious, ideas?
What if you keep generating ideas to escape the boring mediocrity that
everybody expects?

The municipality certainly didn’t settle for an obvious idea… In fact, city

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A BRIEF GUIDE TO BUSINESSCREATIVITY

officials soon started to plaster the city themselves! Yet their posters had a
rather different message…

In a clever attempt to render the illegal posters useless, the officials pasted
a new poster on top of the illegal ones.

The text on the new poster? …‘CANCELLED’ or ‘NEW DATE’.

The campaign proved to be successful. While the fly-posters complained

that they didn’t think this was fair, they did cease their illegal activities.

If you are in a situation where you need to find a clever solution or a

new approach, don’t EVER settle for your first decent idea. Instead, try to
come up with as much ideas as possible. You will find that the chances of
stumbling upon a brilliant approach will be much much bigger.

Have you stopped generating ideas because you thought of

something good? Try to come up with some alternatives, there is
always a better idea.

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4. SUSPEND JUDGEMENT
Don’t be too quick to judge. Never shoot down a crazy idea in the idea
generation phase.

Most innovative ideas get nipped in the bud by statements like “That’s too
expensive”, “We don’t have the manpower for that”, “That will never work”
or “People will not take us seriously anymore…”

Creativity killers like these are commonplace in almost any organisation.

People are extremely good at pointing out all the flaws and risks of
an idea. It’s easy and it’s safe. Unfortunately, it also snuffs out every
innovative spark before it can grow into a feasible and valuable idea.

Of course, there is a time and a place for criticism. In fact, criticism is

mighty useful in an organisation. It keeps you from doing things that are
too expensive, impossible or hazardous to the organisation. However,
criticism should be separated rigorously from the creative phase. Using
critical thinking and creative thinking at the same time is like accelerating
your car, while braking at the same time. You’ll barely move and others
(the competition) will overtake you left and right.

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A BRIEF GUIDE TO BUSINESSCREATIVITY

Instead, accelerate first and use the brakes where needed to prevent
accidents. Let new ideas flow freely. Let them build on each other. Let
them sink in and only then use critical thought to evaluate.

The most remarkable ideas would never have surfaced if the people
behind them had let themselves be discouraged by the early critics.

I’ll illustrate this point by a real-life example from one of the most creative
minds of our time; Antanas Mockus.

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A BRIEF GUIDE TO BUSINESSCREATIVITY

Clowns & Cars

In 1995 Antanas Mockus was elected mayor of Bogotá, the capital of
Colombia. Mockus saw himself confronted with several serious problems
in the city. One of which was the terrifying number of traffic casualties.
Despite employing 3200 men traffic police, the city’s number of fatal
accidents was as high as 1750 per year!

Mockus realised that conventional methods would not solve this pressing
matter. He decided to try something quite audacious. He proposed to fire
ALL traffic police. 400 of them would be retrained as mimes. Their main
role would be to hand out red cards for traffic violations (and white ones
for good behaviour) and parodying those that did not obey the traffic
regulations.

Unsurprisingly, both fellow politicians and press were bewildered by this

unprecedented idea. How could their mayor come up with something this
ridiculous! Confused journalists asked, “But can they fine people?” Mockus
answered without flinching: “Of course not. That’s not their job.”

While it may have looked insane, Mockus had good reasons for this bold
experiment. He figured Colombians valued their honour much more than
their wallets. Therefore, the people of Bogota were much more afraid of

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being ridiculed than fined. Furthermore, using mimes would help fight
corruption. The fact that the mimes could not fine people, made bribery
much less likely to occur.

Mockus persisted. 3200 traffic agents were replaced with 400 mimes.

Traffic fatalities dropped by 68%.

Dare to be the Mockus in your field. Moreover, dare to allow the

Mockuses among your employees to share their ‘crazy’ ideas.
Postpone your judgement and you’ll create a powerful incubator for
innovation.

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5. BREAK THE RULES

Timothy Ferris once said, “Outside of science and law, all rules can be bent
or broken.” Challenge all assumptions and look for ways to break both
written and unwritten rules. When trying to solve a problem, people tend
to come up with the same ideas over and over again.

Most people find it hard to generate truly unique ideas. They keep thinking
about the same ‘logical’ and boring solutions.

The more experience people have, the more they are hindered by their
knowledge of ‘what should be done’. After years of excelling in a particular
field, you know exactly what works and what doesn’t. Consciously or
subconsciously you’ll decide to stick to best practices and you’ll certainly
try to avoid repeating past failures. Experienced professionals are masters
in avoiding mistakes and repeating what works.

While understandable, too much conservatism is dangerous. Written

and unwritten rules might be useful in everyday life, they can be nasty
limitations when trying to solve a tricky situation. Tough problems are
generally not solved with conventional means. Often a new, original
approach is required. The kind of clever and surprising solution you won’t
find just by using your experience.

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To find truly remarkable solutions you need to challenge your

assumptions. What rules (both written and unwritten) are in place? Can
you break through the framework of your perceived boxes?

Ask yourself what assumptions you make about your current situation.
Can you cut one of the main assumptions? Perhaps you can think of an
alternative, or maybe you can work around the presumed requirement
altogether…

Successful entrepreneurs are often masters in challenging assumptions.

They know that some rules are meant to be broken.

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Tax free suits

A couple of years ago, I heard the fascinating story of a Dutch vendor of
expensive tailor-made suits who was faced with a tricky business problem.

His customers, mainly businessmen, were very satisfied with the quality
he offered. What they were not happy about, was that they could not treat
the expenses as a business investment. For obvious reasons, businessmen
are keen on tax reductions. Unfortunately for them, Dutch law does not
allow tax deduction of tailored suits (or any other piece of clothing that is
not undeniably ‘work clothing’).

More and more often the poor salesman heard potential customers say
“I’m sorry, your suits are wonderful, but just too expensive. If I could
deduct the expenses from my earnings it would be different.”

This got the salesman thinking “Can I possibly challenge the assumption
that the tax authorities will never see my suits as a business investment? Is
there a way to make my services fully deductible?”

What the sly salesman did next is as brilliant as it is cunning. He

announced to the world that he stopped selling tailor-made suits. Instead,
he would become a personal styling coach.

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A BRIEF GUIDE TO BUSINESSCREATIVITY

Mind you, in the Netherlands a coaching session can be considered as

study expenses – which makes it fully tax deductible!

Of course, the coaching session would ‘coincidentally’ be the exact same

price a tailored suit used to be. And here comes the kicker… at the end of
the fully deductible coaching session, the client would get a ‘free’ tailored
suit to take home…

What assumptions do you make about your situation?

Are the assumptions really as inevitable as you think?

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STEP 6. EMBRACE THE BIZARRE

It’s much easier to tame a wild idea, than it is to make a dull one
interesting. Go for crazy.

A great way to come up with ideas that are out of the ordinary is
provoking. You make statements that are wrong, unreasonable or
downright impossible. The creative might say: “Let’s give our new cars
square wheels.” Or “Let’s design a new coffee mug without a bottom.”
Provocative ideas like these can get you fired if your superior is not
appreciative of creative ideas. However, they can also secure your job for
the next decade or so, when you figure out how to save tonnes of money
for your firm.

The provocation makes sure you’ll break free of fixed thinking patterns.
After making the provocative statement, you suspend your judgement
and you use your bizarre idea as a stepping stone to get to more feasible
ideas. You use your provocation as an original starting point to generate
interesting ideas that would normally not have crossed your mind. Make
sure your statement is as bizarre as possible. Steer clear of ‘safe’ realistic
ideas. Your statement can even be entirely impossible. The stranger your
statement, the easier it is to generate ideas.

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A BRIEF GUIDE TO BUSINESSCREATIVITY

There are several ways to come up with provocative statements. One easy
way to do it, is by exaggerating one single aspect of your subject. You can
exaggerate quantities, weights, speeds, frequencies, volumes and so forth.
You can increase or decrease, enlarge or shrink, speed up or slow down…
As long as it’s unrealistic, it’s a useful provocation.

An example of an exaggeration could be: “a phone with infinite buttons.” It

is not hard to imagine a challenge like that leading to the first smartphone
(with the possibility to add endless amounts of ‘apps’).

Stir up your market. What product or service can you improve or

revolutionise by using this technique? How about a book with a billion
pages? Or a book with just one single page… A hotel with infinite rooms, a
candy bar the size of a truck, an ambulance going at the speed of light or
a cab driving just one single meter every hour… Have some fun coming up
with exaggerations like these. Sit down with a colleague and make each
other laugh. Then take a close look at your fabrications. Think about ways
to travel from absurdity to ingenuity. ‘If we were to put these weird ideas
into practice, how would we go about it?’

What ideas does the crazy example stir in your mind? Can you bend
the craziness into something useful? Does it give you inspiration for
breakthrough innovations?

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THE END OR THE BEGINNING?

We hope you enjoyed reading this document as much as we did putting it
together.

You now know the basics of creative thinking. However, this was only the
tip of the iceberg. There is much more to discover...

If you are ready to take your creative thinking skills to the next level…
know where to find us.

If you are interested in our creative problem-solving services or in one of

our Business Creativity training courses, we would also love to hear from
you.

Shoot Us An Email

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A BRIEF GUIDE TO BUSINESSCREATIVITY

ABOUT US
HatRabbits is an agency that specialises in Business Creativity and
innovation.

As people are often confused about the meaning of creativity and

innovation, we use very simple definitions. We see ‘creativity’ as the mere
act of combining existing elements to create something new. ‘Innovation’ is
the successful implementation of a new idea.

Additionally, we distinguish ‘Business Creativity’ from ‘artistic creativity’.

Where artistic creativity mainly aims to create an emotional impact,
Business Creativity focuses on reaching business goals. These goals will
directly or indirectly result in financial gain.

While Business Creativity is clearly of great importance to businesses,

the same holds true for governments, non-profit organisations and even
individuals. Every organisation and every person will benefit from the
ability to use creativity when pursuing desired goals.

Business Creativity can be applied on different areas. Within the playing

field of Business Creativity, HatRabbits focuses on problem-solving and
new product development.

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A BRIEF GUIDE TO BUSINESSCREATIVITY

Problem-Solving
Whenever you encounter a problem, you could try to solve it with the
usual approaches. However, the toughest problems are rarely solved with
conventional thinking. You don’t want problems? Let’s get rid of them!
Unconventional approaches and unusual solutions are what you need.

New Product Development

To stay on top of your game, small improvements aren’t always enough.
Sometimes it’s necessary to explore completely new territory and
boldly go where no man has gone before. This is the domain of radical
innovation, disruption, and competitors crying for their mommy.

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Are you Ready to Become
A Creative Problem Solver?
Every week we publish a new article on Business Creativity. We share the
secrets of becoming a Business Creativity ninja. Solve every problem,
disrupt your market with outrageous new products and services and
change the culture of your organisation to foster innovation.

Click Here To Go To The Articles

The ebook you’ve just read has covered the very basics of Business
Creativity. However, this was only the tip of the iceberg. There is much
more to discover...

We’ve been researching, collecting and developing creative tools and

methods for years. The result is an extensive Business Creativity Toolkit
and the HatRabbits Model for Innovation.

We believe that with our tools every individual is able to come up with
surprising ideas and every organisation will realise valuable innovation.

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