Enhancing Creative Thinking

The creative thinking described above is of great value in recognizing and shaping opportunities, which is essential to growing a business. The notion that creativity can be learned or enhanced holds important impli­cations for entrepreneurs who need to be creative in their thinking.

Most people can certainly spot creative flair. Children seem to have it, but many seem to lose it. Several studies suggest that creativity actually peaks around the first grade, because a person's life tends to become increasingly structured and defined by others and by institutions. Fur­ther, the development in school of intellectual discipline and rigor takes on greater importance than during the formative years, and most of our education beyond grade school stresses a logical, rational mode of orderly reasoning and thinking. Finally, social pressures may tend to be a taming influence on creativity.

There is evidence that one can enhance creative thinking in later years. Eureka! Ranch was founded on the principle that creativity is inherent in most people and can be unleashed by freeing them from convention. Oftentimes, executives will be doused with water as they step out of their vehicles onto the ranch.

Approaches to Unleashing Creativity

Many scholars have focused on the creativity process. For instance, Michael Gordon stressed the importance of creativity and the need for brainstorming in a recent presentation on the elements of personal power. He suggested that following these ten brainstorming rules can enhance creative visualization:*

10

Define your purpose

Choose participants

Choose a facilitator

Brainstorm spontaneously, copiously

No criticisms, no negatives

Record ideas in full view

Invent to the "void"

Resist becoming committed to one idea

Identify the most promising ideas

Refine and prioritize

'Special thanks to Dr. Michael Gordon, lecturer at Babson College, who granted permission to use these brainstorming rules, which he developed several years ago and uses in his educational and professional presentations.

Team Creativity

Teams of people can generate creativity that may not exist in a single individual. Continually, the creativity of a team of people is impressive, and better creative solutions to problems evolving from the collective interaction of a small group of people have been observed.

This can be problematic for the small business owner who has not built a working team or whose team is intimidated by the founder. Small business owners need to look in the mirror and make an honest assess­ment of the team. Food-processing entrepreneur Eric Johnson says of his company Baldwin Richardson Foods: "We began to grow in earnest when we decided that we would be a team of 'A' players. 'A' players are people who set high goals and collaborate to achieve them. You have to remember, zero is not the lowest addition a player can add to a team. Some folks are negative contributors. They become especially negative when they drag other people into mediocre performance."10

Big Opportunities with Little Capital

Ironically, successful entrepreneurs like Howard Head attribute their success to the discipline of limited capital resources. Thus, in the early 1990s, many entrepreneurs learned the key to success is in the art of bootstrapping, which, says Amar Bhide, "in a startup is like zero inven­tory in a just-in-time system: it reveals hidden problems and forces the company to solve them."11 Consider the following:

• The 2003 Inc. 500 study revealed that 61percent of the businesses had been launched with $50,000 or less. Further, the primary source of capital was, overwhelmingly, personal savings (80 percent) rather than outside investors with deep pockets.

• In the 1930s, Josephine Esther Mentzer assisted her uncle by selling skin care balm and quickly created her own products with a $ 100 ini­tial investment. After convincing the department stores rather than the drugstores to carry her products, Estee Lauder was on its way to a $4 billion corporation.13

• Putting their talents (cartooning and finance) together, Walt and Roy Disney moved to California and in 1923 started their own film stu­dio - with $290. By mid-2001, the Walt Disney Co. had a market capitalization exceeding $40 billion.14

• While working for a Chicago insurance company, a twenty-four-year-old sent out twenty thousand inquiries for a black newsletter. With three thousand positive responses and $500, John Harold John­son published Jet for the first time in 1942. In the 1990s, Johnson Publishing had expanded to print various other magazines, including Ebony.iS

• Nicholas Graham, also twenty-four, went to a local fabric store, picked out some patterns, and made $100 worth of ties. After sell­ing the ties to specialty shops, Graham was approached by Macy's to use his patterns on men's underwear. So Joe Boxer Corporation was born, with sales exceeding $ 1 million after just eighteen months.16

• Boo.com, an Internet fashion start-up, failed six months after launch­ing with a $200 million war chest. It reportedly had had no project plan for months. The New York Times quoted a former staff mem­ber as claiming that "employees routinely flew first class and stayed in five-star hotels." The Industry Standard reported that a Boo founder realized, much too late, that the business had needed "a strong financial controller."17

Real Time

Opportunities exist or are created in real time and have what we call a window of opportunity. The small business must seize an opportunity when the window is open and remains open long enough to achieve required market returns.

Exhibit 1.5 illustrates a window of opportunity for a generalized market. Markets grow at different rates over time. As a market quickly becomes larger, more and more opportunities are possible. But as the market becomes larger and more established, conditions are not as favorable. Thus, at the point where a market starts to become suffi­ciently large and structured (e.g., at five years in Exhibit 1.5), the window opens; the window begins to close as the market matures (e.g., at twelve to thirteen years in the exhibit).

Exhibit 1.5 Changes in the Placement of the Window of Opportunity

$1 billion

.N

'«

| $500 million

(13

$250 million $100 million

5 10 20

Time (years)

The curve shown describes the rapid growth pattern typical of such new industries as microcomputers and software, cell phones, quick oil changes, and biotechnology. For example, in the cellular car phone industry, most major cities began service between 1983 and 1984 for the very first time. By 2002 the industry had grown to $80 billion, expanding beyond voice to include text, wireless gaming, digital pho­tography, and downloaded custom ringing. But "number portability" (switching mobile phone companies without having to change your phone number) could mean as many as 40 percent of current users will change carriers.18

Finally, in considering the window of opportunity, the duration the window will be open is important. It takes a considerable length of time to determine whether a new venture is a success or a failure. And, if it is to be a success, the benefits of that success need to be harvested.

Exhibit 1.6 illustrates how the winners gain investment as the win­dow opens and closes and opens again over time. Another way to think of the process of creating and seizing an opportunity in real time is to think of it as a process of selecting objects (opportunities) from a con­veyor belt moving through an open window, the window of opportu­nity. The speed of the conveyor belt changes and the window through

Exhibit 1.6 Lemons and Pearls

	20
	19
	18
	17
	16
	15
	14
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c	13
0)
E	12
0)	11
>
c	10
o	9
4_
0>	8
E	7
^
z	6
	5
	4
	3
	2
	i - i
	0

Less than 3 years More than 3 and More than 7 years

less than 7 years

Number of years to appear

Losers | | Winners

which it moves is constantly opening and closing. This represents the volatile nature of the marketplace and the importance of timing. For an opportunity to be created and seized, it needs to be selected from the conveyor belt before the window closes.

The ability to recognize a potential opportunity when it appears and the sense of timing to seize that opportunity as the window is opening, rather than slamming shut, is critical. This is vividly illustrated by sev­eral quotations from very famous innovators. In 1977 Ken Olsen, pres­ident and founder of Digital Equipment Corporation, said: "There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in their home." Nor is it so easy for even the world's leading experts to predict just which inno­vative ideas and concepts for new business will evolve into the major industries of tomorrow. In 1901, two years before the famous flight, Wilbert Wright said, "Man will not fly for fifty years." In 1910, Thomas Edison said, "The nickel-iron battery will put the gasoline buggy . . . out of existence in no time." And in 1932, Albert Einstein made it clear: "There is not the slightest indication that nuclear energy will ever be obtainable. It would mean that the atom would have to be shattered at will."

Conclusion

Entrepreneurship is an opportunity to solve problems. The bigger the problem the greater the chance a venture will be high potential. In this chapter we implored you to think big enough and examine the scope of your small business and begin to visualize the size of the opportunity. When you form a bigger vision, the world of entrepreneurship, clearly illustrated in Exhibits 1.1 and 1.2, will open to you. You'll gain access to the capital markets, strategic partners, and growing customers. Remember, the great entrepreneurs are action oriented. Their vision is focused through the lens of desirable business and revenue model met­rics. They obsessively analyze and shape their vision into products and services that anchor the opportunity. In Chapter 1 we spent a lot of time discussing the characteristics of a high-potential venture. Many small-business people have spent their lives embedding an intuitive under­standing of their industry and business. As we continue our discussion of analyzing your business's potential and gaining resources to achieve that potential, we hope you will go from the intuitive to the intentional.