Only You Can Make Creativity Profitable

By Mark Fulton

When asked to reveal the secret to his awesome affluence, multibillionaire J. Paul Getty responded: “My formula for success? Rise early, work late, strike oil.” Who says the super rich don’t have a sense of humor?

Unfortunately, for someone itching to be the next Bill Gates, J.P.’s advice leaves a little too much to the imagination. Being an early bird and a workaholic may improve your chances for success, but you may just wind up with dark circles under your eyes and a messed up home life. As for striking oil, you’d be better off launching the next Amazon.com if you want to make millions.

So what do Bill Gates, Michael Dell, Ted Turner and other modern-day Rockefellers have in common with the tycoons of the early 20th century? Actually, more than you might think. They all saw an opportunity to meet a need; they exercised creativity and innovation to develop a product or service to meet that need and they did what was necessary to bring that product or service to the marketplace — often overcoming sizable obstacles and neutralizing naysayers in the process. They were entrepreneurs one and all.

The dictionary defines an entrepreneur as “a person who organizes, operates, and assumes the risk for a business venture.” That covers just about everyone from the neighborhood kid with a lemonade stand to Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon.com. Yet the basics of launching a successful business enterprise are the same, regardless of how sophisticated your business may be. Everyone who sets up shop and prays for customers must first identify a need, create something to satisfy that need and deliver that something with quality and at a fair price.

Identifying a need can be as simple as realizing that hot summer days produce thirsty people or that folks will buy books via the Internet at reduced prices. Meanwhile, delivering a product or service may mean finding the perfect location for a lemonade stand or leaping over the hurdles involved in operating an online bookstore.

However, it’s the stuff in the middle — the creativity and innovation required to turn a vision into a viable product — that is the true secret of entrepreneurial accomplishment. Creativity and innovation are the linchpins that keep the wheels from falling off your wagon along the road to success.

Before going further, let’s define a few terms (at least, the way I define them). Creativity is the power to think effectively; to use our brainpower to its ultimate capacity; to journey beyond the bounds of rationality and conventionality. Creativity is a combination of imagination and inventiveness.

Innovation is the act of introducing something new. Americans worship at the altar of originality. We all say that we don’t care if we have the latest electronic gizmo or business accessory, but there’s that nagging little voice that says, “Yeah, but wouldn’t it be nice to upgrade?” If it’s faster, bigger, cheaper, better — we want it. Innovators have an avid market in America.

OK, let’s assume you are brimming with creativity and that you have come up with an innovation that you think will make you millions. Now what? How do you take your brainchild to the bank? In their excellent book, The Great American Idea Book, authors Bob Coleman and Deborah Neville tell you how to turn a dream into cold cash.

The book is divided into four parts: The basics of ideas, the art of ideas, the machinery of ideas and the business of ideas. It is loaded with stories of people who transformed a notion into a ticket to financial independence.

Another way to stoke your creative furnace is to learn from the example of others. The July issue of Inc. magazine features a cover story on 10 start-up businesses that hit it big. You can visit the Inc. web site at www.inc.com to get the lowdown on innovators who struck pay dirt with games, flowers, pet accessories, ice cream, boat maintenance, home safety equipment and an effervescent tablet that can help you fight off the germs that infest schools, hospitals and airplane cabins.

According to Dun and Bradstreet, an average of 165,000 companies were born in each year from 1995 to 1998. Meanwhile, from 1995 to 1997, an average of 75,500 businesses croaked. There are a lot of challenges to getting an entrepreneurial enterprise out of the garage and onto Main Street. And unless creativity and innovation are the fundamental ingredients for your business venture, you might as well be drilling for oil in your back yard.


© Copyright 1999 Mark S. Fulton