Category: Entrepreneurship

Article Contributed by Haley Kieser

Innovation and creativity are the heart-and-soul of successful entrepreneurship. In today’s hyper-information marketplace, success and overcoming competitors is often about developing creative, thoughtful or out-of-the-box solutions to a problem. For example, ride share services like Lyft and Uber go against everything we were taught as children, but they’re among the most creative and groundbreaking solutions to an ancient dilemma: how to get from point A to point B.

It’s easy to find what the “best practices” are for any given industry. But what do you do when those methods and ideas fall short of your goal? You can plummet to the ground and watch your business or idea fail. Or, you can foster creativity and try something new. Even if that new idea fails, you still tried to explore what possible solutions arise and that might lead to a new insight.

But what if you’re simply not a creative person and your mind is hard and robotic? How can you foster these industry-leading ideas and make yourself, your company or project flourish? Fostering creativity is all about finding the necessary change to be made in your current processes.

Here are five ways entrepreneurs can boost their creative juices and discover new solutions.

1. Surround Yourself with Diversity

Creative thoughts are often molded by looking at a problem with a different mindset. The best way to create a new mindset is literally with a new mind. After all, as the idiom goes, two heads are better than one. Lone creative geniuses are largely a myth and truly great ideas often come from teams. To be creative, surround yourself with people who share your values and motivations but have differing skills, talents and backgrounds. This might mean exploring online forums, visiting local Meetup groups, or even working in a shared office space.

2. Use Time Wisely

Deadlines are both ripe with benefits and fraught with drawbacks. Setting a deadline itself makes you block out extraneous distractions and focus solely on the task at hand. But, you’re more closed off to ideas and solutions that you might find helpful. The rule of thumb is to avoid shirking deadlines in the name of creativity.

After all, completing a task is often a better outcome than trying to achieve perfection and never hitting the goal. So, reduce your stress levels and give yourself more time to think about problems, research the facts and come up with creative solutions. Keep your deadline and give yourself a healthy margin to meet it.

3. Embrace Failure

Truly great moments of inspiration and creativity don’t happen with an “aha” moment, but a “that’s funny” reaction to an unforeseen problem. Failure, in appropriate doses, is a good thing. It allows you to analyze what you’re trying and discover how and why that attempt failed. Creativity is grown in an environment where failure is encouraged. Reward yourself when you fail at a task or a new idea.

If you’re uncomfortable with failing, don’t worry, you can teach yourself to both embrace it, while having fun. Consider looking for local deals to try new tasks or activities you’ve never done before. For example, take a pottery class or learn how to swing dance. You likely won’t be good at them right off the bat, but by doing something fun and interactive you can teach yourself to fail in a stress-free environment.

4. Travel to New Places

Seeing new places, experiencing new cultures and trying new activities are among the best opportunities to get your creative juices flowing. Travel broadens your breadth of knowledge and empowers you to solve problems in new and unfamiliar situations.

If you have the money and the desire, consider taking a sabbatical year to backpack around Europe or Southeast Asia to show yourself new ways of approaching life and its problems. Simply by experiencing these different mindsets, it allows you to find new ways to tackle your own issues.

If budget or time is an issue, traveling to a neighboring state or city you’ve never been to before can also open new waves of creativity.

5. Leave Your Comfort Zone

Creativity, by its very nature, forces us to consider new opportunities and leave our comfort zone. If what was comfortable and natural to us worked, we wouldn’t need a creative solution. But the more comfortable you become with discomfort, the easier it is to enter those moments of clarity where trying something new presents a new solution.

These leaps and bounds away from your comfort levels don’t have to be very big. The new event simply must be different enough to make your mind consider new possibilities and jog a tangential link between what you’re doing and the problem at hand.

 

New research by an online services marketplace has found that the gender pay gap is virtually non-existent among self employed and freelance workers in the UK. The research found that women bidding for freelance and self-employed opportunities and jobs in sectors such as tutoring, photography and personal training earned virtually the same as men and in some cases more throughout the site.

The study, commissioned by Bidvine.com, an online local services marketplace where users can post jobs and ask local service professionals to bid for the work found that within their top five industry categories there was little to no gender pay gap between average rates of pay over the last 12 months. The study polled 150 men and 150 women from each of the top five sectors on the website, asking participants to provide their average hourly wages over the last 12 months, the results are below:

• Personal training (Male – £36 per hour / Female – £33 per hour)
• Wedding photography (Male – £650 per wedding / Female – £680 per wedding)
• Cleaners (Male – £11 per hour / Female – £12 per hour)
• Plumbers (Male – £73 per hour / Female – £70 per hour)
• Music teachers (Male – £28 per hour / Female – £28 per hour)
• Gardeners (Male – £21 per hour / Female – £19 per hour)
• Language teachers (Male – £25 per hour / Female – £28 per hour)
• Electricians (Male – £70 per hour / Female – £68 per hour)
• Singing teachers (Male – £30 per hour / Female – £35 per hour)

Although the results of the Bidvine study show that the gender pay gap is narrowing among the self employed and freelance workers, the latest figures from the Office for National Statistics puts the average gender pay gap at 14.1% across all sectors and age groups, a figure which has stayed the same since 2014. Co-founder of Bidvine.com Russ Morgan talked about the research saying:

“It’s great to see that, at least among the skilled professionals on our site, the gender pay gap is virtually extinct. The explosion of freelance and self-employed workers has seen a shift in how people value the work they do, and what their customers see as value for money for a job well-done.

Because Bidvine connects customers with professionals that can meet their exact needs, perhaps gender has become less of an issue.

We’re looking forward to the next 12 months, and hopefully, a significant change to the ONS figures this time next year.”

Biomedical engineering is vital for the effective functioning of modern hospitals and healthcare centers. Biomedical engineers design, maintain, and operate the machines and devices necessary to test, identify, and treat disease; without them, doctors would hardly be more effective at eliminating illness than they were a few centuries ago.

Yet, health tech isn’t an altruistic field determined to fund the best solutions and administer them fairly to every medical facility. Rather, endeavors to improve health tech begin and proliferate like all other tech startups in Silicon Valley: with idea pitches, venture capitalist backing, aggressive marketing, and ultimate wealth. Thus, ambitious biomedical engineers would be wise to learn the basics of entrepreneurship — and vice versa.

Fortunately, there is plenty of innovation in biomedical engineering to go around. Here’s how entrepreneurs and biomedical engineers can create profitable businesses in the field of health tech:

Understand Biomedical Engineering

It’s not impossible, but it is extremely difficult to start a business in a field you are unfamiliar with. Before you take any serious steps into starting a biomedical engineering business, you should be certain that you understand the details of biomedical engineering, both so you can appropriately guide your enterprise in the right directions and so you can appropriately predict the needs of your staff.

It is possible to study biomedical engineering online. Enrolling in an advanced program over the internet will provide you with the necessary exposure to the field without dramatically impacting your day-to-day responsibilities and schedule. Plus, such online courses typically train engineers for management positions, which is ideal for an aspiring entrepreneur. Because engineers are unique employees that require specific care and attention, obtaining a master degree that provides such unique training is advantageous before you launch your biomedical engineering business.

Develop a Business Plan

Ultimately, a biomedical engineering business is like any other business. Thus, to be successful like any other business, you need a plan.

A proper business plan isn’t a throwaway document used to woo investors; it is a comprehensive strategic resource that is integral to business success. You can learn the intricacies of building business plans through further education, perhaps in business administration, but if you utilize business plan software, the work is much less strenuous. Your plan should consist of seven elements:

• Executive summary. This is the elevator pitch which distills the important aspects of your business into easily digestible language. It must include your business’s value proposition.
• Business description. This will describe in detail what your business does. It should include your mission statement and goals as well as the structure of your business.
• Market analysis. This is an evaluation of your competition and your customers. It requires significant research, and it will help you make strategic decisions about your business and products.
• Organization and management. This is a showcase of your top talent. You should explain how and why you chose your management team. Additionally, you should explain your business structure.
• Sales strategies. This is where you establish your funding practices and your profit models. This should be a detailed section covering everything from price point motivation to web marketing strategy.
• Funding requirements. This will tell prospective investors how much you need to get started. You should be realistic and specific; undercutting yourself will set your business up for failure.
• Financial projections. Finally, you should summarize your current successes and predict your successes in the future. This should be based on accurate information and realistic forecasting.

Be Aware of Competitors

Biomedical engineering works toward the health and well-being of the population — but make no mistake, it is a cutthroat industry. If you skip the rest of business planning (but you shouldn’t) you should at least put significant time and effort into the third section, market research. To ensure your success, you should become an expert on your competitors; you should know what devices they specialize in, what their audience is, what their marketing strategy looks like, what their price points are, and more. For every competitor, you should compile a list of strengths and weaknesses, which you can use to carve out your own space in biomedical engineering.

During this process, it is wise to become gain the trust and support of true biomedical engineering experts. Especially if you lack thorough experience in the field, it is invaluable to have a network of experts providing advice and guidance. Ideally, these experts won’t be in direct competition with your budding business; instead, you should seek alliances with biomedical engineers across the country. Then, you won’t have to cut your mentor’s throat when your business gets big.

We all have that desire that makes us want to be entrepreneurs. The idea of having a crappy boss breathing down your neck is just not right. However, becoming successful at entrepreneurship takes more than just desire and sheer luck; it takes resilient, persistence, hard work, pain and sweat: And that is just to get you started. We will discuss few secrets that are vital if you are to become a successful entrepreneur.

Define What Success Is

Don’t get me wrong, but success has a different meaning to different people. To some success is just tons of money, to others it is having an empire, while to others it is giving back to society, and others is going on business trips. Whatever success it is to you, you have to define it and work towards it. You might amass a lot of wealth in your business, but if your definition of success is not wealth, then you will not feel satisfied or have the feeling of accomplishment.

Brace Yourself for Change

Being an entrepreneur means taking all the risks, well you will encounter things down the line that will shake you down right in the middle. You have to be prepared to take the challenges as they come. For instance, your competition might roll out a better version of the product you are selling. You need to know how to adapt to the change and how to plan and implement a comeback. You have to distinguish yourself from your competition by building your brand loyalty. Your customers are your most valuable asset, let them know why you standout by knowing how to adapt to change. 

Set Attainable Goals

The problem with most entrepreneurs is that they fail to set realistic goals. They set goals too high, and when they fail to attain them, they beat themselves up over it. Learn how to set short-term and long-term goals. When doing so, you have to remember what your definition of success it, your goals will depend on it. Set timelines that are rational six months to three years for short time goals and five years to 15 years for long-term goals. The 80:20 rule come to play when you are setting goals; 80% of your success will come from 20% of your actions. So spend quality time on what matters, and it will reward you.

Build a Team

You have to accept the fact that you cannot do it alone. You will need to have a team with a different set of skills as you. The team will complement what you lack and make your business run smoothly. Your team has to have the same mindset as you, and they have to believe in your philosophy, you will have to make them believe in you. Your team should share your ideas and your mantra; they will be the cogs in your machine (business), and it has to work to succeed. You must motivate them when they feel demoralized, remind them why you are doing what it is that you do.

Use Technology

You must have realized that everything today relies on technology. It is the new trend; you do not want to have a business that is going against the grain. To remain relevant, you will have to harness the power that technology offers to solve problems. Use social media for marketing it is a powerful tool that will position your business and reach your customer base. If you are old-school and you have little knowledge of the new technological advances, hire someone who will fill in the gap. Part of being an entrepreneur is in knowing your limitations as well as your strengths and acting upon them.

Becoming a successful entrepreneur is no simple fete; you will have to have what it takes. Most people fail because they do not know the secret. Lucky for you, these five tips should guide you through. However, do not limit yourself to the five tips, discover more and success will be yours.