How To Kindle Your Creativity And Foster A Spirit Of Innovation In Your Team
16 December 2022
Being Solution-Oriented
Insights from 'Start Something That Matters' by Blake Mycoskie
When starting a business, you're sure to face many obstacles and have little time to devote to overcoming each of them.
When this happens, it's important to identify your resources and to get creative.
For instance, the author of Start Something That Matters was short on staff so he posted an ad for interns.
He also used his apartment as the company office until he got his company off the ground.
There are many stories out there of entrepreneurs stretching their resources.
Related Content: Watch More Emeritus Insights Videos From Best-Selling Books
It's one of the expected challenges of being a new business owner.
In fact, being in a situation with low resources is often the catalyst for innovation.
Some startups that are well-funded and well-resourced find themselves straying from their core values.
The extra funds sometimes even stifle creativity and promote frivolous decisions.
Embrace your situation if you're strapped for resources and let team camaraderie and creativity flourish.
Many excellent ideas have come from low-resourced situations.
For example, take a look at social media, when it first started to take over as a branch of mainstream advertising, established companies with plenty of resources didn't really put much effort into building their online presence.
On the other hand, cash-strapped startups focused their limited resources on developing a social media presence because it was the only advertising they could afford.
Today some of these companies still have a larger online presence than their more established competitors.
All of this to say, if you're not well funded from the beginning, don't worry.
Some of the most successful people started businesses out of their garages with their siblings and friends as unpaid employees.
Through your share of challenges, view each as an opportunity to reinvent your business.
Stretch your resources where you can and then use creativity to fill in the gaps.
About Emeritus Insights
Emeritus Insights is a daily learning platform with 5000+ lessons from the world’s best-selling books, top faculty, subject matter experts and exclusive lessons from Harvard Business Review. Get insights in bite-sized video lessons, share it with friends and colleagues and learn across a wide range of topics to shape your success.