Barriers to Creativity

1. ENTREPRENEURSHIP
Lecture No: 5
Resource Person:
Malik Jawad Saboor
Assistant Professor
Department of Management Sciences
COMSATS Institute of Information Technology
Islamabad.

2. Previous Lecture Review
• Role of Entrepreneurs in
• Economic Development
• The Entrepreneurial Process
• Carol Moore’s Model of Entrepreneurial
Process
• The Timmon’s Model of Entrepreneurial
Process
• 10 D’s of Entrepreneurship
• 9 F’s of a successful Firm

3. Objectives
• Understand Difference between Creativity and
Innovation
• Understand Paradigms
• Barriers to Creativity
• How to Spur Imagination

4. Creativity and Innovation
Creativity – the ability to develop new ideas
and to discover new ways of looking at
problems and opportunities; thinking new
things.
Innovation – the ability to apply creative
solutions to problems or opportunities to
enhance or to enrich people’s lives; doing
new things.

5. Entrepreneurship
• Entrepreneurship – the result of a disciplined,
systematic process of applying creativity and
innovation to the needs and opportunities in
the marketplace.
• Entrepreneurs connect their creative ideas
with the purposeful action and structure of a
business.

6. Failure: Just Part of the Creative
Process!
• For every 3,000 new product ideas:
– Four make it to the development stage.
– Two are actually launched.
– One becomes a success in the market.
• On average, new products account for 40 percent of
companies’ sales!!
• Creativity is an important source for building a
competitive advantage.

7. Can We Learn to Be Creative?
By overcoming paradigms and by suspending
conventional thinking long enough to consider new
and different alternatives!
Yes!

8. Paradigm
STUDENTS
BUSINESSMAN
ILLEGAL
IMMIGRANTS

9. Paradigm

10. Paradigm

11. Right-Brained, Creative Thinkers
• Always ask, “Is there a better way?”
• Challenge custom, routine, and tradition.
• Are reflective.
• Are prolific thinkers.
• Play mental games.

12. Right-Brained, Creative Thinkers
• Realize that there may be more than one
“right” answer.
• See mistakes as pit stops on the way to
success.
• See problems as springboards for new ideas.
• Relate seemingly unrelated ideas to a
problem.
• Have “helicopter skills.”

13. Left-Brained or Right-Brained?
• Entrepreneurship requires both left-and right-
brained thinking.
– Right-brained thinking draws on divergent
reasoning, the ability to create a multitude of
original, diverse ideas.
– Left-brained thinking counts on convergent
reasoning, the ability to evaluate multiple ideas
and to choose the the best solution to a problem.

14. Barriers to Creativity
• Searching for the one “right”
answer
• Focusing on “being logical”
• Blindly following the rules
• Constantly being practical
• Viewing play as frivolous

15. Barriers to Creativity
• Becoming overly specialized
• Avoiding ambiguity
• Fearing looking foolish
• Fearing mistakes and failure
• Believing that “I’m not creative”

16. Questions to Spur the Imagination
• Is there a new way to do it?
• Can you borrow or adapt it?
• Can you give it a new twist?
• Do you merely need more of the same?
• Less of the same?

17. Questions to Spur the Imagination
• Is there a substitute?
• Can you rearrange the parts?
• What if you do just the opposite?
• Can you combine ideas?
• Can you put it to other uses?

18. Questions to Spur the Imagination
• What else could you make from this?
• Are there other markets for it?
• Can you reverse it?
• Can you rearrange it?
• What idea seems impossible, but if executed
would revolutionize your business?

19. You Be The Consultant..
CASE
STUDY

20. The Creative Side of Entrepreneurship
Consider these situations:
• When St. Petersburg, one of the most splendid, harmonious cites in Russia, was being laid
out early in the eighteenth century, many large boulders brought by a glacier had to be
removed. One particularly large rock was in the path of one of the principal avenues that
had been planned. Submitted bids to remove the rock were very high since no modern
equipment existed. While the officials pondered what to do, a peasant presented himself
and offered to get rid of the rock for a much lower price. The next morning the peasant
showed up with a crowd of other peasants carrying shovels. They propped the rock up, dug
a large hole and pushed the rock in. This was an early example of creative thinking.
• Managers at the Cleveland Museum used a similar kind of creative thinking to ensure the
success of a dazzling exhibit of ancient Egyptian treasures. Taking a different approach to
marketing, managers held a free private showing to the town’s taxi drivers. Impress the cab
drivers, they reasoned, and the “cabbies” would recommend the new exhibit to their tourist.
That’s exactly what happened. During the exhibit’s run in Cleveland, the museum enjoyed
shoulder-to-shoulder attendance, thanks to the talkative cab drivers and creative museum
managers.
• In the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City, Dick Fosbury forever changed the sport of high
jumping. He approached the bar at a different angle and then curved his body over the bar
face up, kicking his legs over the end of the jump. “Fosbury Flop,” as the style became
known, transfers the weight of the jumper over the bar in stages. He broke the world’s high
jumping record by 6cm, but also had the satisfaction of creating a new style used by athletes
all over the world today.
Q1. What is a paradigm? How does a paradigm stifle creativity?
Q2. Identify a local businesss. What impact is this paradigm having on the business?
Q3. What can entrepreneurs do to throw off existing paradigms?

21. Lecture Review
• Understand Difference between Creativity and
Innovation
• Understand Paradigms
• Barriers to Creativity
• How to Spur Imagination

22. Quiz 1
• Date: 20th September
• BBA7 A
• Differentiate between
A. Corporate Castoffs & Corporate Dropouts
B. Immigrant and Minority Entrepreneur