Nineteen Articles That Will Empower Your Mind For Entrepreneurship and Creativity

In order to help people get off to a good start for the new year I wanted to share some powerful articles that have helped me over the years with understanding creativity and entrepreneurship at a higher level. I hope that you can takeaway something and learn from some of these empowering articles that I have chosen to include. Below I have summarized some articles that discuss the changes and innovations occurring with the modern business world in regards to structure and creativity.

This article talks about learning how to communicate effectively. Having the ability to talk and network will take you much farther, as the digital world replaces a lot of face to face interaction. Learn how to build up your character as well as your teamwork skills so you can develop quick synergy with other people.

In order to make way for the future of innovation and business opportunities it is critical to find a niche to get into and become a world-class problem solver. Many companies are looking for creative individuals to help with discovery, invention, and creation. Learn to recognize what your true gift is within all your talents and use that to push you towards new opportunities. Overall you will learn that the more you can solve problems for brands the more recognition you’ll earn.

This post is inspirational and discusses how some of the most successful entrepreneurs started out with little money or a struggling past with high school and college courses. This article also mentions how Thomas Edison was considered scatter brained and went through hundreds of failed experiments. The future of job creation and opportunities are depending on start-ups. With a reported 70% of job creation depending on new firms and new businesses. Small businesses are the largest employer in the country, representing 53 percent of the country’s workforce and contributing to 46 percent of the nonfarm private GDP.

Did you know, that about 34 percent of artists in the U.S. are self-employed? That is about 3.5 times the national workforce average, according to a paper released today by small-business organization the Kauffman Foundation that cited research from the Census Bureau’s 2011 American Community Survey. In order to shape the future we need affordable living costs for our artists to create and design our future world of city landscapes in a world which truly thrives.

With the rise of freelancing gigs and independent online news publishing it is becoming increasingly common for people to look into doing their own publications. Entrepreneurs want to have the freedom and incentive to pick their own schedule and create their own hours by putting in a lot of hard work first initially.  The most important takeaway is to create a highly desirable product, and learn how to sell it effectively to your niche.

This article mostly speaks upon how the idea of students with MBA’s and business students in general have a tendency to not expose their idea until it’s perfect. Or they fail because they’re too headstrong, and they keep pushing the idea when the whole world is saying no. Other students flip around too fast from idea to idea, and some never quite quit the day job because they don’t have any confidence in their idea. So there’s a zone between being headstrong and lacking resolve that students have to live in. As mentioned in the article, in most jobs, somebody gives you work. But if you’re an entrepreneur, you must decide what’s going to happen or nothing will happen. It’s this notion that there’s total ambiguity, and it’s all up to you. This is the most important concept of taking on the venture of starting your own business and being your own boss.

Very few MBA programs teach students how to sell. In entrepreneurship you are constantly selling to a new employee, investors, customers, and partners. So when students are about to launch, they don’t realize how much selling they’re going to do and how much they are going to have to put themselves in front of people over and over again. In any kind of sales there’s a lot of rejection, so there’s a lot of emotion that comes with being told ‘no’ nine times out of 10.

How would it feel to have remarkable intellect? You don’t have to be super intelligent in order to be creative, you just have to know how to produce ideas and execute on taking action with those ideas. The key to unlocking the brain is to use it in as many ways as possible by creating new experiences. Trying new foods, taking a different route to school or work, reading a random book, visiting a foreign country, doing things spontaneously, and experimenting with the objects you have around you are all ways to build up your experiences and the number of resources to pull from in your brain attic.

In order to become more creative, you don’t need to go through more school. As stated by Maria Konnikova, “A mind that can find connections between the seemingly unconnected can access its vast network of ideas and impressions and detect even faint links that can then be amplified to recognize a broader significance, if such a significance exists. Insight may seem to come from nowhere, but really, it comes from somewhere quite specific: from the attic and the processing that has been taking place while you’ve been busy doing other things.”

The more time you invest in experiencing and thinking, the more likely you are to come up with something truly original and grand.

It has been shown that mind maps are a great way to help create knowledge banks such as graphs that display information more in depth with images versus just having words.

One of the most important factors to consider with creativity and creative thinking is to look at how much time you spend consuming information through observation, television programming, and reading. It has been shown that the brain is in two very different states when it is trying to absorb information versus create something. It has also been said that when you are in a creative space it is important to be in a happy mood such as feeling joy, relaxation, or love. It’s also valuable to be analytical and to be able to ask questions such as ‘what has happened.’ as well as ‘what could have happened.’

This post talks about how creative people are the types of people who come up with ideas that take one out of their comfort zone and trigger feelings of uncertainty which can create fight or flight reactions. They say this is why creative people don’t really last that long at corporations and that innovation is much tougher to create and sustain the bigger that an organization becomes.

According to Philosopher Isaiah Berlin there are two types within organizations. Hedgehogs who are valued in companies due to their usage of formulas and “best practices” to present ideas. They are the ones that speak to what people know. Their ideas reinforce comfort and certainty in the changing world. Meanwhile, Foxes are the innovators who seek to connect unrelated dots and push boundaries. Foxes can see “where the puck is going” while most only see where it is right now.

This article mentions that there is too much bias against Foxes who are less likely to receive leadership positions. Most organizations are fearful of taking risks, but really in order to stay ahead of customer competition more organizations should value creative thinkers and artists who are willing to take risks and embrace change.

This is a great article it discusses how smart entrepreneurial minded people should build and organize things. People focus way too much on the inspiration, but, like conception, having a good idea isn’t much of an accomplishment. You need the action and follow-through, which involves the right people, know-how, money, resources, and years of hard work.

As mentioned by Andrew Yang, in order to successfully launch a business and products you need the following to set up while you are on the side of working a job.

  1. Research your idea (figure out the market, talk to prospective customers about what they would like, see who your competitors are, and so forth).
  2. Undertake legal incorporation and trademark protection (the latter when necessary; most companies don’t need a trademark at first).
  3. Claim a web URL and build a website or have it built; get company e-mail accounts.
  4. Get a bank account and credit card (you’ll generally have to use personal credit at first).
  5. Initiate a Facebook page, a blog, and a Twitter account if appropriate.
  6. Develop branding (e.g., get a logo designed, print business cards).
  7. Talk it up to your network; try to find interested parties as cofounders, staff, investors, and advisers.
  8. Build financial projections and draft a business plan (if necessary).
  9. Engage in personal financial planning (e.g., cut back on expenses, budget for startup costs, and so on.)
  10. Create a mock prototype and presentation for potential investors or customers.

This post really goes in depth covering how creative people are more inclined towards entrepreneurship due to being idea creating machines. Every hobby, project, and new friendship becomes an opportunity to get creative and start a new money-making endeavor. If you constantly have ideas swirling in your head such as blog post topics, creating a collaborative workspace, to hands-on skills you’d like to develop, write it all down. It isn’t uncommon to have dreams of modern design, exotic food recipe’s, good health habits, and travel destinations. The reality is figuring out how to effectively manage time in order to make money to support your dreams and aspirations.

Having lots of ideas can be good, but it can also leave you feeling scatter-brained and overwhelmed. You may feel like you want to start something but you might be stuck and not know where to start. This article discusses how to get your ideas out of your head and onto paper.

One might ask what is a creative entrepreneur? Tom Morkes comes up with a very nice definition of what it is to be a creative entrepreneur…

As mentioned above it comes down to putting a vision into action and embracing all steps of the process including the uncertainty of the future which can often include failure. The ultimate goal of entrepreneurs is to enhance other people’s lives and teach other people how to create, innovate, and inspire.

This is a great article, which discusses how modern technology has enabled all of us to become authors and creative types with blogging on WordPress platforms, film-making and videos on YouTube, photography on Instagram, and design on Etsy. All you really need is some sort of skill, art, or craft along with an audience that you can sell and market to. The most transformation aspect of our modern businesses is the availability of eCommerce and selling to a larger online audience that reaches across the globe.

Are you a author, artist, or teacher? How would you like to be able to profit from your knowledge and expertise?

This article is very interesting, it is from 2012, however it is still really relevant to our phase change with our economy as more jobs have been depleted with manufacturing jobs declining, along with agricultural positions. We are in a phase change with the types of job positions available in the United States. There is a crisis in the economy due to outsourcing many factory workers and farmers jobs. As a result we must adjust from a current service economy and move forward into a creative economy. As stated by the author of the article Steve Denning, it is unlikely for people to become wealthy from mowing lawns, cutting hair, exporting raw materials, and marketing and selling goods made in other countries. If our economy becomes too service dependent it will sharply lower people’s incomes along with the standard of living. The solution is for the United States to drive innovation and to focus on long-term customer value. What we really need is manufacturing, and services in a creative economy that is driven by job creators within the U.S. economy. The question is what will it take to facilitate the needed changes in our modern economy of job creation? One thing is for-sure, we all need to focus on the opportunities that the future relies upon.

So you want to separate yourself from the pack of your college peers? This article written by Michael Ellsberg discusses the importance of knowing how to communicate effectively and knowing how to write compelling emails, letters, sales pitches, and proposals that will set you apart from the masses. If you are a mediocre communicator it will be much more difficult to become a leader and expand your impact in the world.

This article is quite relevant for entrepreneurs due to the fact that entrepreneurs are idea machines. Ideas should be classified into different categories. According to Dharmesh Shah ideas should be classified into the following,

1. Ideas that could become new companies.

2. Ideas that could become new products for existing companies.

3. Ideas that could become great new features for existing products.

4. Ideas that could improve existing features of existing products.

The important factor to remember when coming up with ideas is to figure out which ones are worth pursuing. When you spend time on an idea, you are simultaneously saying “No” to other pursuits. What you need to do is figure out if there is a market for what it is that you are selling and providing. You also need to apply filters and figure out what isn’t worth pursuing and cross various ideas off of your list. As mentioned by Dharmesh Shah, you will save yourself time in your schedule and your sanity by discarding non-marketable ideas.

This is an interesting post that discusses the benefits of mind wandering and human intelligence. According to cognitive psychologists having your head in the clouds can help you engage in pursuits that are more meaningful. What this is in essence is spontaneous cognition that is focused on pursuing dreams and goals that hold a deeper meaning. In order to do this one needs to use attention, insight, intuition, memory, and stored information that is accessed through mind wandering.

According to psychology professor from NYU Scott Barry Kaufman there is positive constructive daydreaming, “These rewards include self- awareness, creative incubation, improvisation and evaluation, memory consolidation, autobiographical planning, goal driven thought, future planning, retrieval of deeply personal memories, reflective consideration of the meaning of events and experiences, simulating the perspective of another person, evaluating the implications of self and others’ emotional reactions, moral reasoning, and reflective compassion… From this personal perspective, it is much easier to understand why people are drawn to mind wandering and willing to invest nearly 50 percent of their waking hours engaged in it.”

More research by neuroscientists show that day-dreaming can involve the same brain processes that are associated with imagination and creativity. By day-dreaming it gives one a moment of introspection in order to solve life’s biggest questions. By diving deeper into consciousness it allows for improved cognitive function, reduced stress, and balancing our focus along with our wandering minds.

With the average graduate starting out with a lot of student loan debt, it is very important to become familiar with financial terminology and start creating a road map to pay off student loan debt. Before you graduate start to look at different companies that you would like to get your foot into the door with and look at doing an internship or working part time to start building up real world experiences. Read this article and start planning for the future.

Are you ready for an INCREDIBLE 2018? Be sure to check out my page and get in contact with me. I hope you enjoyed this post, and have a Happy New Year!