Creativity need not be intricate design on the inside of a gum wrapper or hurling a bucket of paint against your ex-girlfriend’s family photos. You don’t have to age bread and – I don’t know – build the Brooklyn Bridge out of it.
The ‘C’ word is about improving an existing process or creating a new, more desirable one altogether. It’s wondering, “Isn’t there a quicker, more efficient way of doing this?” Or, “How can I get people that use X to switch to Y?” Most of have these thoughts pretty regularly, but rarely do we sit down and really try to answer them. Creativity, then, is as much about thinking about the “what” of an idea as it is about the “how,” or how you can take it out of the clouds and turn it into something tangible. Continue reading →
As the title suggests, “How To Market To People Not Like You” is all about understanding people who are very dissimilar from yourself. In my case, that would be the entire world, more or less. Author Kelly McDonald does an excellent job of opening your eyes to entire audiences you aren’t getting. In other words, increasing your business by expanding into new markets rather than increasing your existing one(s).
I found the book extremely readable. My biggest fear when reading a “work related book” is that the material will be a bit dry, making it tough to get through even if the information is great. McDonald cites many examples of various businesses and people who had their eyes opened to audiences they weren’t even considering, targeting those audiences, and reaping huge benefits. Continue reading →
