The local bakery has fabulous bread. When I went there this weekend they had many Halloween cookies and other treats that one might expect at this time of year. Not only that, they created sourdough bread with spooky faces as you see in the picture. The inside was black! And, tasted like sourdough. How cool! Someone spent time to think how to make a commonplace item, a loaf of sourdough bread, into a special experience that delighted this customer.
In business, the constraints of budget, time, marketability, staffing, etc. can force one to innovate out of necessity. Can we automate? Can we outsource? Can we cut out unnecessary steps? Can we get our message out in new ways? Can we make our products unique? With constraints, we have to think more deeply about other ways of doing things.
In theory, this may be obvious. Yet, in practice it is not that easy. How do you stimulate creativity within your organization? One way I’ve seen it done is to ask the team to brainstorm around a specific problem – perhaps a common customer complaint that is not easy to solve or one thing that would delight the customer.
Another time I saw team members asked to identify one small thing that they would like to solve or see solved within the organization that cost under $1000. The issues were actually addressed. Seeing that problems were actually getting solved resulted in creative ideas flowing on a regular basis.
Have fun with it. Maybe, just try it once in November. See if you can find creativity in small places…..maybe it will flourish. And, enjoy the creative ideas flowing this week around Halloween which apparently has become our biggest national holiday!
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