MaineBusiness.com

Your Personal Creative Economy

I just came across a piece in the Bangor Daily News titled, "Technology, Creative Economy a Challenge in Maine." Here's the part of the article that caught my attention.

"The creative economy is a term coined by economist and sociologist Richard Florida in his book "The Rise of the Creative Class". The creative economy consists of any and all people who run businesses that involve creation and innovation and are frequently entrepreneurial endeavors. These people are artists, writers, architects, scientists, software engineers and graphic designers, among others."

That's us! That's you and that's me and that's every independent knowledge worker. We spend our days coming up with creative solutions for our clients and then help our clients turn them into results. That means we face our own critical challenges.

First, we have to make the time and find the space to be creative. We might be good at getting ideas, but we're more likely to have them bubble up when we're comfortable and doing something that doesn't really engage the mind. Those are things like taking a shower or doing the dishes or exercising or driving.

Then, we have to capture the ideas so we don't lose them. A small digital voice recorder, a pocket notebook or a stack of index cards are all good ways to make sure we remember the good ideas we get. I keep a pad of paper and a pen on my bedside table. I'm always waking up in the middle of the night with the greatest ideas!

We need to make sure that we get enough mind-food, and by that I mean idea diversity. Think about it as a cross-ideation of good ideas. This "cross-ideation" is one of the aspects that has made my Ocular Forum so successful. Bringing a problem to a group of business owners in varying businesses generates solutions you would never have thought about on your own. Good ideas spring up from the things we experience and think about. We get better ideas - and solutions - when we get information from a variety of sources.

Lastly, but not leastly, we must carve out the time to turn our good ideas into practical processes and take action. Nothing will happen if you don't do anything. Once we have good ideas we have to poke and prod and twist and combine them into something that works and makes a difference for us or our clients. Then we have to do something.

Be BOLD and take the action to improve your own personal creative economy.

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