How you innovate is why you win

Everyone remembers the famous nine dots puzzle.

The goal of the puzzle is to link all nine dots using four straight lines or fewer, without lifting the pen and without tracing the same line more than once. To do so, you have to think outside of the box, both literally and figuratively.

The puzzle is cool the first time you see it. But useful as it may have been thirty years ago to promote lateral thinking, here’s the reality.

The old brainstorming games and creativity tricks are fine for handling the task of idea generation. But what people and organizations really need is a system to approach the creative process holistically and systematically, not just sporadically.

I began developing the playbook on personal creativity management about twenty years ago. Since then, I’ve continued to research, develop, practice and test that system. I’ve seen proof of its efficacy from clients, coworkers, colleagues and strangers alike.

The discipline of personal creativity management truly informs behavior, decisions, and actions, both on the individual and organizational level. Considering that we work a crowded marketplace, where anytime you make anything you compete with everything, how you innovate is why you win.

If you want to achieve greater output, faster execution, lower burnout, deeper focus and higher engagement, personal creativity management can be the game changer for you. People and teams who build a unique system for managing the comprehensive creative process, including ideation, organization and execution, will always have a critical competitive advantage.

And they won’t need to waste their time trying think outside the box and connect nine dots.

What creative problem are you not paying attention to because you never thought there was another way?