As a business-person, creativity is one of the most crucial traits to incubate. One of the most common hurdles preventing people from starting their own business is the lack of ideas; to start a new business you need an idea for making or selling something and a unique business model to make that happen. Without new ideas, you won’t have a business to build.

But, as a business person, perhaps you don’t consider yourself a ‘creative type’. So what do you do? Do you just wait until an idea comes along or do you get proactive? Of course, the latter is the correct answer but is it really possible to ‘force’ your brain to have a good idea?

Actually, there are a lot of things you can do to accomplish that…

Before we get started we need to think about what ideas actually are and about how they actually come about.

What is Creativity?

Essentially, a business idea is a result of creative thinking. Even if there’s no ‘product’ or the end result is in no way ‘creative’, you’ll still be using the creative part of your brain to come up with a novel and worthwhile concept.

Creativity boils down to the ability to link disparate concepts together in order to come up with something novel. That means spotting connections and thinking outside the box to recombine the data knocking around in your brain into something original and useful.

The question though, is if creativity is something you’re born with, or whether it’s something that can be learned. The good news is that research is suggesting the latter to be the case. Creativity can be learned, you just need to know how to hack your own thinking process to generate more of those ‘aha’ moments.

How to Boost Your Creativity

Increase Input

The first thing you can do to encourage your creative process is to ensure you have a high number of ideas going in to begin with. If you think of the brain as an input-output machine, then you need to increase the amount of input going into your grey matter if you’re going to help it output more ideas. The more you read, watch, and learn, the more raw data you will have to work with. Even if something seems unrelated to your business it may help you to get that ‘spark of genius’.

Relax

Real creativity has been linked in numerous studies to relaxation. When we’re stressed and focussed, chemicals in our brain such as adrenaline give us a ‘tunnel vision’ that keeps us fixated on the task in hand and prevents our mind from wandering.

So while you should be actively loading your brain with information, you also need to ensure you’re giving all that data time to settle in.

Reduce Stress

Stress triggers a fight-or-flight response that encourages steadfast focus. This is useful some of the time, but it’s by taking it easy that enables your brain to look at the big picture and spot those wider connections.

Studies have shown that even the simple act of lying back slightly in your chair can help to stimulate creative thinking,

Create a Calm Atmosphere

Part of relaxing includes indulging yourself in calm and peaceful surroundings. As such, looking at plants and other pleasant scenery can help relax your mind so it has a chance to process ideas and develop solutions. give your brain a chance to

Get Plenty of Sleep

Sleep is an important way to cement new ideas and form those all-important neural connections. And since your brain is active all day long, getting plenty of restful sleep is critically important to giving your brain a chance to recharge.

Talk it Out

Finally, try discussing your thoughts with trusted friends and bouncing ideas around. Conversation has a habit of moving between topics too and you’ll find that many more breakthroughs happen this way than when you isolate yourself.