Creativity and Innovation

Creativity

Creativity is a function of knowledge, curiosity, imagination, and evaluation. The greater your knowledge base and level of curiosity, the more ideas, patterns, and combinations you can achieve, which then correlates to creating new and innovative products and services. But merely having the knowledge does not guarantee the formation of new patterns. The bits and pieces must be shaken up and iterated in new ways. Then the embryonic ideas must be evaluated and developed into usable ideas. In other words, there really is a process.

Three important levels of creativity:

1. Discovery: The lower level of creativity is discovery. Just as the name implies, it's when you become aware of or stumble upon something--discover it. For example, there is art called "discovered art." It might be a rock with a unique shape or a piece of wood with an interesting pattern. If you have ever purchased a piece of natural stone or wood art, that art was discovered art. Many inventions start with a discovery.

2. Invention: A higher level of creativity is invention. For example, Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone. But you have to ask yourself, "Would the telephone have been invented without Bell?" The answer is yes. Eventually the telephone would have been invented because the science was there. It might have taken longer, but it would have happened. So while invention is higher than discovery, it's something that is going to happen. If you don't invent it, someone else will.

3. Creation: Creation is the highest level of creativity. For example, the stage playOthello is genuinely a creation. Elizabethan drama would have gone on without Shakespeare, but no one else would have written Othello. Similarly, there are things that only your organization can create! The key is tapping in to what those things are.

10 Strategies for Increasing your Creativity and Innovation

1. Truly creative people have developed their ability to observe and to use all of their senses, which can get dull over time. Take time to "sharpen the blade" and take everything in.

2. Innovation is based on knowledge. Therefore, you need to continually expand your knowledge base. Read things you don't normally read. 

3. Your perceptions may limit your reasoning. Be careful about how you're perceiving things. In other words, defer judgment. 

4. Practice guided imagery so you can "see" a concept come to life. 

5. Let your ideas "incubate" by taking a break from them. For example, when I'm working on a big business project, one of the best things I can do to take a break from it is play my guitar or the flute for a few minutes, or take a ride on my motorcycle. It shifts my brain into another place and helps me be more innovative and creative. 

6. Experience as much as you can. Exposure puts more ideas into your subconscious. Actively seek out new experiences to broaden your experience portfolio.

7. Treat patterns as part of the problem. Recognizing a new pattern is very useful, but be careful not to become part of it.

8. Redefine the problem completely. One of the lines I've been sharing for the past few decades is: "Your problem is not the problem; there is another problem. When you define the real problem, you can solve it and move on." After all, if you had correctly defined the real problem, you would have solved it long ago because all problems have solutions.

9. Look where others aren't looking to see what others aren't seeing.

10. Come up with ideas at the beginning of the innovation process ... and then stop. Many times we come up with several ideas and start innovating, and then we come up with more ideas and never get a single idea done. At some point you have to turn off the idea generation part of the process and really work on the innovation and execution part in order to bring a project to life.

Initiative

Chu Jenn Weng

One of the entrepreneur characteristic is initiative. The initiative means that who is willing to start something, not being left behind and willing to put themselves in challenging situations. Chu Jenn Weng is an entrepreneur who showed the trait of initiative. Chu Jenn Weng is one of the founder Vitrox Corp Bhd in Penang, Malaysia. Chu Jenn Weng was starting up his own business with his partner Siaw Kok Tong in machine vision. Chu Jenn Weng willing start up a business after visiting Hewlett Packard garage in USA and nowadays he become a successful entrepreneur. 

In year 1998, Chu Jenn Weng and his partner start up own business. The operation was operate in bedroom, garage and was moved to Krystal Point after business expand. In year 2000, he was converted from partnership to private limited company and was named ViTrox Technologies Sdn Bhd (VTSB). During start-up level, he was touched upon in every field of the business, starting from sales and marketing, R&D of vision system, part purchasing, finance, service and support.

In year 2005, Chu Jenn Weng was accepted a certificate of merit from Outstanding Young Malaysian (TOYM) Award under Business Economics and Entrepreneurial Accomplishment category. In year 2011, he was accepted Ernst & Young Malaysian Technology Entrepreneur and Outstanding Entrepreneur Award for Asia Pacific Entrepreneur Award (APEA).

Chu Jenn Weng also showed the initiative through target in year 2013 that the target of “555 strategy”, means that the annual turnover of MYR 500 million and has 500 employees. But in the year 2015, Chu Jenn Weng change the plan to the ‘Asia expansion strategy’ of focusing on China, Taiwan, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Philippines and Indonesian markets. Besides that, direct sales force and strategic sales channel partners through reinforcing the group’s presence in North America and South America.

Based on the history of Chu Jenn Weng, can know that he willing to start up a business and have interest in job will become a successful entrepreneur. Besides, he also believe that Malaysian can expand business to global market.

Perceptiveness

One of the characteristic possess by the successful entrepreneur is perceptiveness. Perceptiveness means very well in understanding things and make it clear. Perceptive people are showing an accurate and deep understanding, knowledgeable, and able to see what others cannot. They are able to learn from experiences and transfer that knowledge to new situations.

Every successful entrepreneurs have good perception in seeking the opportunities and become successful in their career. For example, the Smart phone company such as Apple, Samsung, they have good perception in get the opportunities that come out with the touch screen smart phone instead of the ordinary hand phone. They have perception in knowing what the customer’s needs and come out with the solution to fulfil the customer’s requirement. All of this entrepreneur have perceptiveness characteristic which cause them successful in their business. Entrepreneurs who perceptive have an ability to find out more opportunities in the related field. They recognize market dynamics and know how to adjust profitably. Entrepreneurs do not avoid problems but take the problems as opportunities or challenges.

Gerald Pencer, who is Cott’s entrepreneurial CEO is a perceptive entrepreneur. Gerry took over the Cott, which at the time being, it was a not popular soft drink manufacturer when he was 44 years old. Now, it is the world's largest producer of retailer brand pop and it is worth over $1 billion. 

Gerald Pencer showed perceptiveness characteristic when he have took over the Canadian soft-drink manufacturer Cott Corporation and he faced a problem in compete with popular soft drink manufacture, Coca-Cola and Pepsi. If Gerald Pencer does not come out with solution, the Cott may not be well known and success like nowadays. Gerald Pencer have turn this problem become an opportunities. He got the research which indicated that soft drinks were one of the popular selling items in supermarkets. Thus, Gerald Pencer developed Cott as a private-label bottler by made contract with supermarkets and other retail stores to supply a various types of soft drinks that could be packaged under the retailer’s brand. Cott’s product come out with a whole new way of distribution, one that allowed retailers to earn more by giving customers a more cheaper soft drink. Today, Cott is a well-known and the world’s largest retailer brand or private label soft-drink provider.

Foresight

Goh Peng Ooi

Foresight is the ability to see what will or might happen in the future. The entrepreneurs have a good foresight to know about future business environment. In other words, they well visualize the likely changes to take place in market, consumer attitude and taste, technological development and take the necessary and timely actions accordingly. So, foresight is planning thing for the future.

 Example of entrepreneur who showed this trait is Goh Peng Ooi. He is founder and Executive Chairman of the Silverlake Axis Ltd. Through his foresight of the future technology demands of the banking industry, he has built Silverlake to become a leading provider of state-of-the-art digital economy solutions and services for the banking and financial services, payments, retail, logistics and insurance businesses. He is an excellent example of entrepreneurs who have the foresight and vision to challenge the status quo and ask questions that some haven’t even thought of yet. Through his innovativeness and entrepreneurial efforts, Goh has, over a 25-year period, helped transform the digital landscape and act as an enabler for growth opportunities. He has provided comprehensive methods and tools, business

Ethical consciousness

Bill Gates

The development of ethical consciousness is the responsibility of the entrepreneur, because his or her vision created the venture. Ethical consciousness is the willingness and ability to identify moral and ethical contexts and dilemmas, examine the implications of one’s own behavior for the lives of others.

One of the example who showed this trait is Bill Gates, which is from the sector of Information Technology. He is the chairman of Microsoft Corporation. He is one among the world’s famous personality and also he owns around $79.2 billion (Forbes, 2015). He is interested in doing favour for poor people and also he established the world’s largest foundation trust for charity named “Bill and Melinda Gates”. To concern in charity needs, he transferred his position to Mr. Steve Ballmer in 2006. This changes him as an ethical person. Even though he is one among the world’s richest person he doesn’t want to keep all his assets by themselves. Instead of that he came forward to help the poor.

Ability to learn from mistakes

Robin Chase

Everyone makes mistakes and mistakes are an essential part of that what makes people successful. Mistakes are a crucial step in learning, growing, and improving one individual. What is most important is when people make mistakes, they should take a responsibility to fix the mistake and learn from the mistake. It goes same as an entrepreneur. Entrepreneur should have an entrepreneur’s characteristics in order to be success in their business. Many of the successful entrepreneur show this characteristic and one of them is Robin Chase. Robin chase show an entrepreneur’s characteristic in ability to learn from mistake. She have learn from the mistakes that have been done in the pass, then she put things right and avoid from doing the same mistake again next time. 

Robin Chase is a successful entrepreneur in the field of transportation service. She is the co-founder and former CEO of Zipcar, founder of Meadow Networks, CEO of Buzzcar and GoLoco.org. All of these is a business related to transportation, for example the Zipcar is a car rental company which main ideas is car sharing. 

One of the example from the transportation entrepreneur, Robin Chase is when she in her company, GoLoco. GoLoco Company is an online ridesharing community company. She has make a wrong decision which they develop their tools first before they engage to their first customer. They build the website and software which cost a lot to the company. This meant that part of their learning was undoing their first guesses. This is the mistake that she have done and when she prepared her next company, she did not did the same mistake again. Robin Chase was able to learn from her past mistake and avoid to doing the same mistake again. 

Another mistake is when Robin Chase made a pricing miscalculation when she was in the Zipcar Company. It causes a big problem to the company which almost cause the company sank. The daily rental rate was too low, thus they have to increase it but she already made promise to the customers. She have to fix things right, thus, she directly told the customers about that and make apologize to the customers. Some of the customers was unhappy and some customer is alright with that. People have to be honest when things aren't going right, and fix them as quickly as possible. These were key issues for Zipcar Company that time that they had to solve or die. This is how Robin Chase survived from the huge screw-up. After she have made this kind of mistake, she learned from her mistake and be more careful and details in doing things which causes her company more success in the future and became an successful entrepreneur. 

Time competence

Robert Kuok Hock Nien 

Robert Kuok Hock Nien was born in October 6, 1923, in Johor Bahru and he was the youngest among three brothers. Tan Sri Robert Kuok, the richest man in Malaysia was possessed by time-competence trait in built up his empire. 

In 1963, Tan Sri Robert Kuok anticipated the sugar market price will rise and kept 200 thousand tons of sugar in preparation for the future market. Unfortunately, the prices of sugar not even remain but also went down. However, at the end of August 1963, a huge typhoon hit Cuba, which was a major sugar production in the world. It caused tremendous damage to the sugarcane plantations and granulated sugar output in Cuba. The timing of typhoon hit on Cuba was rather unexpected. The typhoon in Cuba had an influence on the production of sugar and the international sugar prices kept rising. He seizes the opportunity and sold out the sugar that he had stored before. Thus, he earned a lot of money. Tan Sri Robert Kuok seeks out and seizes all opportunity appeared in his sugar business and thus earned a nickname “Sugar King of Asia”.

 

Versatility

Tan Sri Dato’ Seri Dr Jeffrey Cheah Fook Ling

Versatility is one of the characteristic entrepreneur. Versatility means that having a lot of different skills or qualities. Versatility allow to suit to numerous of different circumstances. Tan Sri Dato’ Seri Dr Jeffrey Cheah Fook Ling was an entrepreneur who showed the trait of versatility. Tan Sri Jeffrey Cheah is the Founder and Chairman of Sunway Group. 

He began his career as an Accountant at a motor assembly plant in Malaysia. In year 1974, he resign his first career and build up his own business that is a small tin-mining company. From this action showed that Tan Sri Jeffrey Cheah was a versatility man because he was transform from accountant to entrepreneur. Besides, he also showed that the trait of versatility in growing up from small tin-mining company to Sunway Group.

Sunway Lagoon theme park, Sunway Pyramid shopping mall are under Sunway Group holding. In addition, Tan Sri Jeffrey Cheah also invest at field education such as Sunway College. He also organize a foundation name Jeffrey Cheah Foundation. With the strive of Tan Sri Jeffrey Cheah, nowadays the Sunway Group expand into a conglomerate encompassing 12 business core in property and construction such as education and healthcare.

Tan Sri Jeffrey Cheah was received some award based on his achievement. In year 1993, he was voted “Property Man of the Year (Malaysia)” and received “CEO of the Year (Malaysia)” in year 1996. In year 2005, he was received “Asia’s Most Innovative Chinese Entrepreneur Award”.

Based on his experience, he is one of the entrepreneur that have trait of versatility. The reason is he change the job from accountant to different in his earlier life. He investment in many field and make contribution for the economy and also country.

Integrity and reliability

Li Ka Shing

Integrity means the firm adherence to what is right and proper to do. It is more about on what to do and who to be. Entrepreneurs with this trait will consider the welfare of others when they doing their business. Integrity refers to a general sense of honesty and reliability. Reliability means ‘fairness and straightforwardness of conduct. Integrity and reliability are the key factor for the entrepreneurs to be success. 

The example of entrepreneur who have this trait is Li Ka Shing. Through the reputation for remaining true to his internal moral compass, he was able to build a business empire which include banking, construction, plastics, and retail outlets and so on. In 1956, when he was in plastics business, he had promised a buyer for a six month production. But the competitor of the buyer offered him a higher profit but Li Ka Shing did not make a deal with the competitor because he already promised the buyer as his supplier and Li Ka Shing says that building the best reputation is important. Li Ka Shing treats peoples with honesty and sincerity. Li Ka Shing says that a single individual cannot accomplish much. “A single individual cannot build a company. It need the effort of many individuals to build a company. A company needs a good structure, employees and organization. If everyone works in concert, then you can success.” by Li Ka Shing. 

Decisive

Steve Jobs

Decisive means having the power or quality of deciding and have the ability to make decisions quickly and effectively. It is a key component of the entrepreneurial personality. The entrepreneurs have to take real action on their idea after they had over thought things and waiting for the moment. 

Steve Jobs is an Apple's visionary co-founder. Decisive is one of the traits that made Steve Jobs successful to operate the business. We can know his decisive from the aspect of the way his operate the company.

Actually, Jobs was a decisive leader. For example, he always had a strong feeling about a particular direction he wanted the company to go. When he formed Apple in 1997 and the company was in financial crisis. Jobs acted decisively. He cancelled 70 per cent of Apple's products and laid off more than 3000 people, turning a $1 billion loss in 1997 into a $300 million profit in 1998. After that led the resources and funds for Apple to survive and turned its finances around. Steve Jobs never depended on market research so his did not invite users into his design studios. Rather, he invited top designers Apple’s Jony Ive. Jobs visit Ive's studios on a daily basis to discuss the designs of forthcoming products. Jobs were a perfectionist, frequently rejecting work that wasn't up to his standards. He and his team were dependent on themselves and their intimate feeling to develop products that users did not even think they needed such as the revolutionary iPod or iPhone. Apple was listed in the Fortune 500, becoming the youngest firm on this prestigious list. Today Apple is known for such innovative products like the iPhone, iPad, iPod and also continues the Mac line of computers.

Then he started work building products that became Silicon Valley legends. In 2001, Apple released the iPod music player. Customers loved its elegant click-wheel interface and it is easy to get music from CDs onto their iPods. Apple had sold more than 200 million iPods in the end. After that, Jobs announced the iPhone in 2007. It sported a revolutionary touchscreen interface that transformed mobile phones in much the same way the Macintosh had transformed personal computers 23 years earlier. Apple has sold 500 million iPhones. Apple expanded on the iPhone's success in 2010 with the iPad, a tablet computer based on the same software. Apple has sold 200 million iPads.

One of the Successful Entrepreneurs - Tony Fernandes

Tony Fernandes

One of the successful entrepreneurs in Malaysia is Tony Fernandes. Tan Sri Anthony Francis “Tony” Fernandes was born in 30 April 1964. He is the founder of Tune Air Sdn. Bhd. He is the entrepreneur who introduced the first budget no-frills airline, AirAsia to Malaysian with the tagline “”Now everyone can fly”. Fernandes managed to turn AirAsia into a budget airline public-listed company. Forbes Asia valued Fernandes’ net worth at $650 million, ranked him at number 28 on the Forbes list of Malaysia’s Richest. He believes that someone who try their best will survive in the unprotected world. For him, being global means making bold decisions and to be global means to be competitive, ensure transparency, and be able to deal with criticism. When something is wrong, try to change what is wrong. Then focus on survival and keep growing. 

Tony Fernandes has talent in music. He is an amateur guitarist and Grade 8 pianist, Tony Fernandes also the youngest Managing Director of Warner Music Group (Malaysia). When Time Warner Inc. announced its merger with America Online Inc, Fernandes pulled the trigger and left to pursue his dream to introduce the first budget no -frills airline. He bought Air Asia with just 25 pence in September 2001. He was not competent with airlines and its various business propositions. He said “It really was a little bit of stick your finger in the air and hope for the best. But we were good marketing people from the music business, we just went out there and felt the market and said if you halve the fare, there’s an enormous untapped market.”

Tony Fernandes was sent overseas to study when he was 12 years old. He had to fend for himself from the time he arrived at Heathrow and he said that “the great thing about being thrown into deep end is you either sink or swim”. When he back home during half term, flying was too expensive to be affordable, so he set out to make it possible for everyone to fly. Air Asia is born from that and Tony Fernandes is determined to enable people in the Indian sub-continent to afford to fly with cheaply instead of spending days travelling from one city to another. Tony Fernandes started his business with a very little money and no experience in the airline industry. 

When Tony Fernandes first takeover Air Asia Company, it is a heavily indebted subsidiary. Tony Fernandes mortgaged his home and use his personal savings to buy the company. This is a big bet which if he failed at that time, he may lost everything. But he considered the risk and decided to take the challenge. After one year he made a great effort, the company had clear all the debts. Besides just an ordinary earning profit airline company, Tony Fernandes would like to make Air Asia to be known all over the world with global appeal. He has said that, he was terrified of failure not because he is afraid of failure and he rather fails than not try at all. He is not going to failed because the company takeover 300 staff who were going to lose their job if he failed. Tony Fernandes builds human capital, he hires people with the right attitude and then gives them the opportunities to earn promotions. He also believes in succession-planning and that bosses should leave and allow the new person to be the boss. “Air Asia creates individuals, not clones” he says. 

Tony Fernandes experienced fails in the ventures in Japan and Europe. Tony Fernandes says that Japan was a disaster and his partner did not understand what they want. In June 2013, Air Asia parted ways with Japan Nippon Airways (ANA) with 49% stake in Air Asia Japan to ANA. Both airlines had clashed over management and operational by losses to RM113 billion. During that time, Tony was plan to re-enter the Japanese market and he is on the lookout for financial partners.

Tony Fernandes highlight five demonstrates of entrepreneurial traits which are initiative, ability to learn from mistakes, integrity and reliability, versatility and foresight that assist him to be a successful entrepreneur in his venture. 

In the initiative traits, Tony Fernandes use the “walk around” management style to make sure that the appropriate decision can be taken immediately by gaining the experience at the workplace. He took an initiative to spend a few days in a month working in his airline as he say that he can learn a lot from there. There were one scenario when Air Asia moved the plane from 737 to the Airbus which is slightly higher off the ground, his staff told him that they need a belt loader that cost a million US dollars. At first, he refused to do so as it was costly but when he working together with his staff, he has experiences the inconvenience without belt loader when he loading the plane. Finally he makes a decision instantly to get a belt loader. If Tony Fernandes do not have initiative trait by worked together with his staffs, he would not knowing the issues and troubles that staff facing and could make a big wrong decision which will troublesome staff and influent the morale of the organization. 

In the integrity and reliability traits. Tony Fernandes show this trait by not create too much of the bureaucracy and could impede the growth of the business. This is because if the bureaucracy is too tight with the relationship between the employers and employees, it is difficult to shape and will impact to the organization and the organization will faced the problem in achieve the organization objective due to the poor communication between employers and employees. Therefore, he decided do not made the bureaucracy in his organization. So that, all the employees in his organization can free to access his office to have a discussion and needed an urgent solution. He also contribution of an ideas for the benefit of his organization and also it is well accepted. Moreover, most of the organization focus on the profit with considers their employees, but Tony Fernandes focus on the employees, followed by customer. If employer created a happy workplace to employees, they will look after every customer.

In the ability to learn from mistakes traits, Tony Fernandes is brave to face all kind of the problem that occurs in his business and he will try to solve the problem quickly. For example, when there is a confirmation authority that an Indonesian Air Asia was crashed on the way to Singapore, Tony Fernandes is not evade the responsibility. He make a good carrier on all its commitments to the passengers’ family and make a compensation payments. This clearly shows that Tony Fernandes did not evade from the problem and he is responsibility to solve the problem he faces. This ethical action have made the staff have a faith in him and cause him success in his career.

Tony Fernandes showed versatility traits as he possess many skills. He worked as an auditor at Virgin Atlantic before. Besides accounting skills, he also talent in finance which from year 1987 until 1989, he worked as a financial controller for Richard Branson in London. Tony Fernandes also has the talent in music where he is an amateur guitarist grade 8 pianist. He was a Warner Music executive in Malaysia. Moreover, Tony Fernandes was admitted as an Associated Member of Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA) in 1991. In 2001, he purchased Air Asia and became its Chief Executive until now. With the versatility trait he possess, he has the knowledge and skills such as accounting which help him to success.

In the foresight traits, the success of Tony Fernandes is come from the decision of him bought the AirAsia in 2001. Instead of start building over new company, Tony Fernandes bought an existing airline which at that time, AirAsia was losing money and got a lots of debt. He took many effort to enhance AirAsia. One year after his takeover, AirAsia had cleared all its debts. Tony Fernandes has turn the company from heavily-indebt company become profitable, producing a profit and launching new routes from first its hub in Kuala Lumpur until all over the ASEAN with lower price ticket, thus, it attracted a lot of people to flight with AirAsia. He show foresight attributes which he make AirAsia become one of the successful and biggest Airline Company in Malaysia.

As a conclusion, Tony Fernandes is a successful entrepreneur. He is a brilliant leader which has his owned way for leading people. He is also a successful leader. For a leader it is quite difficult for making a good communication or connects with employees, but Tony Fernandes make it easy. The ways he use to deal with different problem is good and bring a lot of success. He encourages a workplace that satisfies and motivates his employees to continue striving for excellence. Moreover, Tony Fernandes also think that patient is very important to be success. To become a successful entrepreneur we need to try hard. A successful entrepreneur cannot do it by itself.