The Ripple Effect: How to be An Everyday Innovator
7/31/2018
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When it comes to developing fresh approaches that lead to significant growth and powerful transformation, many leaders of businesses and nonprofits struggle with out-of-the-box thinking.
In fact, research shows that 98 percent of adults don’t consider themselves creative and 80 percent of Americans report feeling an increasing amount of pressure to be productive rather than creative at work. This difficulty that business leaders have to both find the creativity inside them and set aside the time to be creative.
Josh Linkner, a two-time New York Times bestseller, founder of four tech companies, and co-founder of Detroit Venture Partners. A celebrated innovator, Linkner shared tangible strategies on how business and nonprofit leaders can harness creativity in everyday situations and tasks to drive meaningful results.
To help you inject creativity into your business or organization, Linkner shared five key innovation principles
Get curious
Challenge the underlying assumptions of your business or organization by asking questions such as “why,” “why not” or “what if?” Curiosity leads the charge when it comes to assessing the viability of your current processes and protocol, which can lead to nontraditional approaches and successes.
Crave what’s next
As a business leader, it’s important to first shed the past so you can focus forward. You won’t achieve long-term success by sticking to the status quo. Lean into change and utilize forward thinking.
Defy tradition
Rather than focusing on aspects that you can’t control in your business, channel your creative thinking toward factors that you can. Don’t rely on traditions to move your business ahead. Instead, ask yourself “what can I flip?” By doing a “judo flip” on challenges, processes and traditions, you’re much more likely to have a breakthrough that leads to a stronger outcome.
Get scrappy
As small business and nonprofit leaders, it’s easy to resist steps toward innovation when you’re in a resource-constrained environment. Don’t wait for external resources or support to move forward. Get scrappy and find ways to make changes without capital or resources.
Adapt fast
Innovation doesn’t always have to be big and bold. Respond and react quickly, and flip tragedy into triumph as adjustments are needed in your business or nonprofit. By breaking big ideas or problems into tiny experiments, you’ll be able to learn and adapt quickly.
Is your business or organization stuck in the mundane? Are you repeating the same marketing strategies day in and day out? We can help you challenge the norm by pushing the boundaries of innovation. Contact American Speedy Printing to get started.
Joe is passionate about helping SMBs. He’s spent the last 30+ years building the American Speedy Printing Marketing • Print • Mail brand – and sharing best practices and marketing trends with his customers. Through research, in-person visits and this blog, he hopes to engage with and empower local business owners and marketing professionals.
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