The Creator Mindset Book Summary - The Creator Mindset Book explained in key points

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The Creator Mindset summary

Name: The Creator Mindset
Rating: 4.2 (131 reviews)
Author: Nir Bashan

Nir Bashan

92 Tools to Unlock the Secrets to Innovation, Growth, and Sustainability

4.2 (131 ratings)

25 mins

Topics

Innovation Success Creative Flow Leadership Sustainability

Table of Contents

The Creator Mindset
Summary of 7 key ideas

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Key idea 1 of 7

What’s in it for me? Unleash your creative potential to catapult your career or business to new heights.

There’s a crisis in the business world today. That crisis? A lack of creativity.

Businesses have become far too reliant on a limited, analytical mode of thinking that uses numbers, spreadsheets, and profit statements to guide every decision. While good accounting is certainly important, too many leaders are missing the creative drive that underpins innovation and growth in any business.

This needs to be corrected if businesses are to endure the realities of the twenty-first-century economy. In a world where ideas can be more valuable than physical goods, and where consumer tastes change faster than the market can keep up, it’s essential that businesses become more creative, adaptive, and flexible if they’re to survive.

That’s where these blinks come in. They’ll show you how to incorporate more creativity into your day-to-day thinking, which will help to improve your business, your leadership skills, and, ultimately, your bottom line.

In these blinks, you’ll learn

how Steve Jobs once turned to an unlikely source to save Apple from bankruptcy;
how a mistake gave rise to the million-dollar Post-It note industry; and
how Johnson & Johnson used a national crisis to its advantage.

Creativity is an essential ingredient for any successful business.

Believe it or not, Steve Jobs was once kicked out of Apple by the board of directors because they believed they could run the company better than he could. As a result, there was a time in the company’s history when it wasn’t doing so hot.

The new leadership decided to put creativity on the back burner in favor of more analytical objectives. In practice that meant they cut funding to research and development, shelved promising new tech, and put all their effort into cutting costs and maximizing profit margins. This strategy worked for a time, but without any major updates to its products, the company eventually began to falter.

Soon enough, Apple was on the brink of bankruptcy; as a last resort, the board brought back Steve Jobs. Once again in control of Apple, Jobs came up with a creative solution to save the company – a solution that shocked everyone.

The key message here is: Creativity is an essential ingredient for any successful business.

Jobs’s plan was to convince Apple’s largest competitor – Microsoft – to invest in Apple. The board of directors thought Jobs had lost his mind because Apple and Microsoft were in a fierce legal battle at the time. Yet, to their astonishment, Jobs successfully convinced Bill Gates to make a $150 million investment and save Apple from disaster.

A lack of creativity brought Apple to the brink of ruin, and it was a creative solution that saved it. This is a lesson that businesses today would do well to keep in mind.

Without creativity, a business will only ever be operating at half its potential. Creativity is what enables a business to adapt in a changing economy. Creativity is what drives innovation. And it’s creativity that gives a brand its unique and individual character.

Apple didn’t achieve such astounding success just because its directors were good at sticking to a budget. It got there because it was able to create fresh and innovative products time and time again, generating unique and joyful experiences for its users.

The truth is, you’ll never win consumers over with numbers and arguments. Spreadsheets have never given anyone that warm and fuzzy feeling inside. But creativity? That will always strike an emotional chord.

So long as you can offer a creative product – or offer a traditional product creatively – you will find an audience. And if you can find an audience, you’ll find your market and your niche as well. It’s that simple.

We all have the capacity for creativity – we just need to practice it.

At this point, you might be thinking: But I’m not creative. I don’t paint or play a musical instrument. I have a serious profession. I’m a manager!

Stop right there. You are creative! Creativity is as central to the human experience as eating and breathing. We all use creativity in our professions, no matter what we do. If you’ve created a coupon to attract more clients to your business, that’s creative. If you’ve automated a process at work and saved yourself a bunch of time, that’s creative, too.

You can unleash your creative side by overcoming your fear of making mistakes.

As adults, we make up all kinds of excuses to avoid engaging in creative pursuits. We say things like, “I don’t have the time to learn” or “I don’t have the talent.”

But think back to your childhood – you never used to make excuses like that! When children want to do something, they do it. If they see building blocks, they think, Let’s build a spaceship. If they see a keyboard, they think, Let’s play a tune. And if they fail the first time, they just try again.

Humor, empathy, and courage are ideal qualities in a leader.

What’s the most valuable asset a business has? Here’s a hint: It’s not machinery. It’s not patents, either, or even real estate. It’s people. People are the most valuable asset a business has because they possess something that none of those other things ever will – creativity.

But do businesses today make the most of their staff’s creativity? Not as much as they could. To tap into their employees’ creative potential, leaders first need to possess the right qualities.

The trinity of creativity is a powerful tool for gaining a fresh perspective on your business.

You might be ready to start applying creativity to your business, but it’s not always easy to know where to start. So why not go back to basics, and take a good look at what you already have in place? After all, when you have a firm grasp of how your business operates, it’s also easier to envision how it could operate differently.

Sound daunting? Well, that’s where the trinity of creativity comes in. The three parts of the trinity are concept, idea, and execution. By considering each one with regard to your business, you can gain new insight into how it works, which can have profound implications for how you think about and run it.

Business leaders must be ready to embrace good ideas whenever they emerge.

In 1975, a man called Steve Sasson invented the world’s first digital camera while working for the photography company Kodak. The device weighed 8 pounds and looked more like a homemade bomb than a camera. It consisted of 16 batteries, a cassette recorder, and dozens of circuits all wired together. The photo quality was, frankly, terrible – the photos were just 0.01 megapixels and in black and white. But still, it was the world’s first digital camera.

However, Sasson’s digital camera was not well received. In fact, none of Kodak’s management liked or understood the invention. It was even perceived as a threat to their analog photography business, so the company didn’t pursue it.

In times of crisis, creativity will help your business not just survive, but thrive.

On September 29, 1982, twelve-year-old Mary Kellerman woke up with a sore throat and a runny nose. Her parents gave her a pain reliever and put her back to bed. But a little later, they discovered Mary lying lifeless on the bathroom floor.

Mary was one of seven people who died in the span of a few days. They were the victims of poisoning; someone had tampered with the drugs, inserting cyanide-laced capsules, seemingly at random, into bottles of Tylenol.

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What is The Creator Mindset about?

The Creator Mindset (2020) is a comprehensive guide to incorporating creativity into everything you do. Far from being something that only artists possess, creativity is in fact an essential ingredient in any successful career or business. Unfortunately, most of us squander our full creative potential by not realizing we have it to begin with. Get ready to unlock the latent creative talent that’ll give you and your business an edge over the competition.

Who should read The Creator Mindset?

Professionals who want to improve their careers and businesses
Leaders who want to inspire their employees to be more creative
Anyone who wants to think and act more creatively

About the Author

Nir Bashan is an award-winning entrepreneur who has worked in advertising, entertainment, consulting, and public speaking. Today, Bashan is a world-renowned creativity expert who teaches top leaders around the globe how to harness the power of creativity to increase sales, push innovation, and grow their businesses.

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