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The E-Commerce landscape is notoriously fast-paced and fiercely competitive. No matter how great of a product you have, without innovation and creativity in your business, you’re at serious risk of being left behind.
This year’s D Congress theme is profitable creativity, a theme which we feel strongly about at Depict. Within our company, we have a deep understanding of the importance of creativity in business and we truly believe in profitable creativity. So, to help give you a sneak insight into some of the initiatives we take to nurture creativity in our workplace, we’ve put together this article.
Keep reading for some stellar examples of creativity in business, and inspiration on how to cultivate this for yourself.
First off, it is essential to understand what creativity in business is. The term may conjure images of elaborate brainstorming sessions, colorful drawing boards with extravagant ideas, or long discussions spent conceptualizing new features or products.
While these activities are certainly some examples of creativity in business, it is important to note that this is not the only way to boost creativity and innovation.
Creativity in business can also refer to encouraging employees to think outside of the box and take risks, which can lead to new ideas and opportunities. This isn’t limited to new features or products, but can simply mean coming up with more efficient ways of working, cost-saving processes, forming tighter teams, or setting new business goals.
One of the best examples of creative profitability in business comes from Google, which allows employees to pursue projects they are interested in, or learn new skills. This is done through their, now famous, 20% time rule.
In their 2004 IPO letter, Google mentioned:
“We encourage our employees, in addition to their regular projects, to spend 20% of their time working on what they think will most benefit Google. This empowers them to be more creative and innovative”
This freedom to explore creativity in the workplace has proved to lead to profitable creativity, as their 20% time has led to the innovation of now widely popular products such as Google News, AdSense, and Gmail.
So, how do we foster profitable creativity at Depict?
Well, we have a number of ways we do this, some of which we've listed below.
At Depict, we use the RAPID decision-making model to help with our innovation and creativity. Raising certain issues with a proposed solution, and allowing a select group to make comments on the solution in a set time frame cuts down on extended discussions with no agreement.
We’ve found that RAPIDs help to produce quick, solution-oriented ideas, as they lead to short bursts of focused innovation.
“As someone who is allergic to inefficient meetings, the RAPID decision framework has been super-useful to me for making time-efficient and well-informed decisions. The format ensures that everyone has a chance to reflect on the issue and voice their opinion, which decreases the risk of groupthink and increases the likelihood of reaching creative and innovative solutions.”
Alex Hamben, Customer Success @ Depict
Allowing our team to share their extensive knowledge over a delicious lunch is a great way to get everyone excited about the Depict product, and open the floor to collaborative ideation.
Knowledge-sharing lunches are also a great way to skill share, challenge the normal processes and procedures, and ensure nobody feels as though their role is stagnating. At Depict, we’ve found these sessions to truly be a silo-breaking experience, where creative ideas can be passed between departments.
Getting the whole gang together is one of the greatest ways to nurture business creativity in an authentic, no-pressure environment.
We’re a remote-first company, so to ensure we get to benefit from these collaborative-brainstorming moments we ensure to get the team together quarterly. This takes place during offsites, where the team is together for at least a week at a time.
During these offsites, we’ve benefited from in-person unconference sessions, issues identification workshops, and impromptu hackathons. The conversations we’ve had at these offsites have led to some of our best business creativity ‘lightbulb moments’, and we’re constantly looking forward to the next one.
Giving kudos is one of our most important values at Depict. Ensuring any creative thinking, innovation, change, and hard work is recognized has been one of the most effective ways to keep the creative flame alive, and show that it is appreciated.
From official quarterly awards ceremonies to simple kudos over Slack, those who show true innovation and creativity in our business are sure to feel the love. Afterall, we want it to be known how important it is to us.
If these examples of creativity-inducing business activities have got you riled up and ready to innovate, we’ve got more inspiration for you on our blog.
Why not check out these articles for an idea of how to get creative in the fashion E-Commerce industry:
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