Producing Quality Ideas

Creative thinking in a business environment will help improve the ability to:
* Increase sales * Develop the product
* Experiment with production * Investigate materials * Generate new ideas * Solve problems

Janet Gino, trained designer and visual consultant, says that developing creative thinking is a must for all potential entrepreneurs if they want to improve their products and keep up with pressures in the market place. In September, 1998, she and Raymond Renford travelled to India to conduct two on-the-spot courses. There she spread the message of creativity and its importance to the entrepreneur.

Gifts of flowers and palm leaf garlands greeted our Israeli team from the Golda Meir Mount Carmel International Training Center, Haifa, at the opening ceremony of the first two courses on small-scale enterprise in Tamil Nadu, India.

Although the on-the-spot courses we two Israelis taught were named "Women and Entrepreneurship," 28 of the 55 participants who attended the two courses were men involved in the economic development of the informal sector of Tamil Nadu. Our host, the Agency for Rural Development and Consultancy Services, Chennai, managed by Mr. Nawab Mani and his wife Mary, who are both past participants of MASHAV programs in Israel, had chosen the beautiful setting of the Madha Marial Ashram,

Mudichur, to conduct the courses. The serene environment was the perfect place to encourage potential entrepreneurs to think creatively.

With a larger percent of the population now entering the informal sector, offering a wide selection of products and services, the competition is great and growing fiercer. To survive, entrepreneurs have to be creative in their thinking if they are to keep ahead of the market competition, think up new ideas and develop better products.

The Indian participants were a lively lot. Their work backgrounds ranged from senior organization planners and business people to students and housewives. The creative workshops that they attended during the course were based on one assumption: Every human being has creative potential, in some it flows naturally and in others it must be nurtured. The "nurturing" on the course started with a number of hands-on thinking exercises which progressed into tasks involving product development.

Within an amazingly short time the group, by using creative thinking techniques, had created 12 novel ideas by modifying a bucket!

After this exercise the participants started to get new ideas quickly. Each was handed a list of 21 objects and told to combine two of the objects in order to create a new product. One participant combined "sock" with "shoelace" and designed a small bag from the toe of the sock, with a pull-string handle, suitable for storing sweet smelling herbs. Another idea was combining "bed" with "suitcase" to create a soft-sided bag which could open out into a mattress. Everyone agreed that it was an idea with potential, considering the long train journeys one has to make in India and the need for a comfortable rest!

Most training courses in entrepreneurship offer guidance on how to set up and organize a business. This area of instruction on the courses was given by Dr. Raymond Renford, Business Management Consultant, an experienced facilitator of international programs. But developing an ability to produce quality ideas is also very important. Being able to take different thoughts or unusual associations and connect them together into a new idea is the essential ingredient that makes up a creative person.

During the course the participants had plenty of opportunity to put creative thinking to use. In the workshop for packaging, the group was divided into pairs and given an egg, five wooden sticks, a cardboard roll and a piece of white paper. The task was to make a package/display and create a marketing strategy that would sell that simple egg for 500 rupees ($12). The idea behind the task was to demonstrate the power that packaging has in persuading a potential customer to buy a product, and its ability to change a simple commodity into a luxury item. After much cutting and gluing the participants were asked to persuade the rest of the group to buy their egg! Out of fourteen packages produced by the first course, the group was prepared to part with 500 rupees four times! One of the ideas best liked was an egg to be sold to pregnant women that would ensure strong, healthy babies. The creators of the idea pointed out that not only would the woman herself be interested in buying such a marvelous egg, but so would her husband and mother-in-law.

The advertising workshop also offered the participants a chance to use creative thinking techniques. After an introductory talk with slides, they were divided into four groups, each of which was given a product - a pen, honey, body cream or a watch. These products could be sold to various target audiences, different sectors of the population, and each product could be marketed by using several different methods of persuasion, influencing the customer to buy it. The task for the groups was to decide to which target audience they could sell the largest quantity of their product, and how they would persuade them to buy it.

After much creative thinking, exchange of views and drawing lay-outs rough sketches) for advertisements, the groups presented their ideas. The group which had honey to sell decided it could sell the medicinal properties of honey to sick people, its nutritious properties to mothers concerned about their children's health, and the taste of honey to children. Group members play-acted a television advertisement which they thought would sell their honey to young mothers. It was of children fighting over a honey pot (acted very realistically by the members of the group!) while information on honey's nutritional value was read out over the scene.

To get to this point of creative involvement, looking at a situation from many points of view, is quite hard work. Changing one's thinking habits is easier said than done. Unconventional ideas are often ridiculed or laughed at - the participants soon learned to separate imagination from judgment. When judgment is deferred, often an unconventional idea can be developed and refined into something original and new, evaluation of the idea comes later. Remember that the more ideas one has, the more likely that at least one them will be a good one!!

The atmosphere of creativity in the courses was infectious. During the second course, the instructors got up and sang the song "There's a hole in my bucket, dear Laisa, dear Laisa," which is a song about a bossy woman and a slow-witted man who wants to mend a hole in his bucket. The song was sung after the participants had just completed the bucket exercise, and so connected their work in creative thinking with the delightful Tamil Nadu tradition of singing poems to communicate thoughts and ideas.

The Tamil Nadu Minister of Social Welfare, the Honorable Tmt. Sarguanapandian, was the guest of honor at the official closing ceremony of the first course. Departing from the prearranged program she invited two participants to talk. Mr. S. Sekar, Senior Training Officer, RUHSA, and Ms. Immaculate Mary, Senior Counsellor, YMCA, spoke at length in the Tamil language about their experiences on the course. Then the minister spoke, also in Tamil, and after a few minutes there was a gasp from the audience and loud hand clapping. She had offered a government loan of 50,000 rupees ($1,200) to all participants who submitted a suitable project with feasibility study, with 20% of each loan becoming a grant, and she also offered to open the doors of her office to anyone having pwith the bureaucracy.

The course ended in a joyous atmosphere. The inclusion of creativity in the Tamil Nadu entrepreneur training program not only developed the Indian participants' ability to think of original ideas, but gave them new skills on how they could improve their products to make them more saleable. They finished the course with high motivation to go out into the market place, set up a business and succeed.