How Does Your Business Stay Creative?

Ryan RydellAdvice, Blog, Random Stuff

RyCOM has a tag line that states “Creativity without the ego”.  Therefore, clients need to be assured they are getting the creativity they deserve, without all the extra pride, stubbornness and ego that is typical in other creative types.  Not that all people in the design industry are egotistical, but lets be honest…there are a lot of people that claim to be creative, and many are not that easy to do business with.

That’s were the problem is.  To remain relevant and keep your business booming, you need to stay innovative.  You need to keep your company on the creative edge.  Creative marketing and business strategies are crucial to your success.  Its unfortunate how many businesses miss this point.  Most business owners think one of 3 ways:

  • I am creative, and can do it myself
  • I don’t want to deal with an unprofessional creative type
  • I can’t afford to pay for professional creative services

I deal with a lot of different people, on a lot of different projects.  One of the major hurdles I face is convincing companies that what they are doing isn’t getting them anywhere. They haven’t met their obligation to innovation, progressive policy, and creativity.  Their problem isn’t passion – they have plenty.  Their problem is 2 fold – lack of creativity and/or lack of ability to develop it.

So what then shall they do?  Should a small company, struggling to find a way to expand, pay 10s of thousands of dollars in fees to a marketing firm?  Should they hire a marketing manager to do it all in house?  First and foremost you should understand what “creativity” is all about.  To safe time, I searched the definition of the word, and came up with something I think is very telling.  Read this definition, found on dictionary.reference.com:

[quote]Creativity: The ability to transcend traditional ideas, rules, patterns, relationships, or the like, and to create meaningful new ideas, forms methods, interpretations, etc.: originality, progressiveness, or imagination [/quote]

So there we have it.  Creativity is all about transcending the normal routine and coming up with something “original” or “imaginative”.  But if I may, allow me to expand on this definition a bit.

Creativity is more than just ideas & imagination.  Creativity is about adaptability, resources, sustainability, risk, process and open minds.  The very concept of creativity isn’t confined to “new ideas”.  To stay creative, and to really understand and utilize creativity as a business practice, is to forget about the end result and focus on the process of getting there.   The process of ideation is followed by what I feel is the most important part, and many times the most fun part, of my job…the implementation phase.

How can this idea meet this goal?  Answering this question is where true creative minds will flourish.

Is it creative to design a square business card?  No – that’s already been done, that’s not original.  Is it creative to develop a website on WordPress   No – that’s already been done, that’s not original.  The creative part is in the implementation and how it helps communicate your overall message.  The payoff isn’t found in the end product, the payoff is found in what the end product does for you.

Chew on that for a little while, and after you have thought about it, contact RyCOM to discuss how we can help your business stay creative.

I leave you with this great video I found:

[vimeo_video height=”320″ autoplay=”no”]http://vimeo.com/24302498[/vimeo_video]