What Is Creativity in Business? It Means Differentiation, Not Art

The Short Answer

What Is Creativity in Business?

Creativity is the ability to generate, combine, adapt, or improve ideas in a way that produces something useful and meaningfully different. In business, that means differentiation: a reason your work stands apart from everyone else’s.

This is rung two in Become Your Version of Rich by Dr. Paul Borosky, DBA, MBA. It sits on top of motivation, because creativity needs something to point at. Ready to use it now? Go to how to be more creative. Looking for the process side of getting better? See continuous improvement. Everything here lives inside the Become Your Version of Rich guide.

The Definition

Two Tests Every Idea Has to Pass

The definition has two halves. Hold onto both.

Here is the definition in the words of Become Your Version of Rich.

Different is not automatically better. Dr. Paul is blunt about it: if an idea adds complexity or strangeness without adding value, it is decoration, not creativity. Run every idea through both tests before you fall in love with it. The differentiation you want shows up on the customer’s side of the counter, not yours.

Not Only Art

Why “Not the Creative Type” Is an Expensive Mistake

Most people hear “creativity” and picture a painter, a musician, or an advertising team. If they do not see themselves that way, they file the subject under not me. Dr. Paul calls that an expensive mistake. Creativity helps you solve problems differently, improve ordinary ideas, and build something that stands apart from what everyone else is doing.

Look at three examples from the chapter. A man at Dr. Paul’s gym turned the dullest machine in the room into a dance floor, ballroom dancing on a treadmill. A long-haul trucker solved the loneliness of the job by building a morning chat group with other women drivers, and it grew into a real network. Benjamin Franklin turned a handful of tradesmen into the Junto, a club that sharpened each member’s thinking and business, and pooled money to open a subscription library. None of them painted anything.

The trucker is the telling case. She did not think she had done anything creative. It came naturally, so she assumed it did not count. Her problem was that she never used it on purpose. The moment you apply creativity deliberately, it opens up opportunities you would have walked past.

What the Research Says

Creativity Runs on Ordinary Thinking

Psychologist Robert Weisberg spent decades on this question. His argument is that creative advances at every level, from world-changing breakthroughs to the small daily improvements anyone makes, run on ordinary, disciplined thinking available to everyone, not on a special faculty a few people are born with. The Durham Commission on Creativity and Education reached a similar place from the schools side, describing creativity as the capacity to imagine, conceive, express, or make something that was not there before.

A practical finding sits on top of that. In research on new product ideas, analogies drawn from more distant fields tended to produce more original ideas than analogies from close to home, provided the idea was far enough away to shift your view and close enough to bridge. That is why borrowing from another industry works. It is also why the quickest route to a creative idea is rarely staring harder at your own market.

Sources: Weisberg, R. W. (2020), Rethinking Creativity: Inside-the-Box Thinking as the Basis for Innovation, Cambridge University Press. Durham Commission on Creativity and Education (2019), report summary. Dahl, D. W., & Moreau, P. (2002), The influence and value of analogical thinking during new product ideation, Journal of Marketing Research, 39(1), 47-60.

A Modern Warning

Polished Is Not the Same as Creative

Artificial intelligence is a useful tool, and Dr. Paul uses it every day. The trap is handing it the creative work. When everyone leans on the same tools with the same prompts and accepts the first output, results drift toward sameness. The emails sound alike. The websites look alike. A machine trained on everything tends to return the average of it.

That is also the opportunity. The person who still adds a real creative edge stands out more than ever. Use AI, but keep your thumbprint on the work: supply your own experience, push back on the first answer, combine ideas from unrelated fields, add specific examples and opinions, rewrite it in your own voice, and test it on real people.

In Lake Mary, the competitor that hurts most is often a national name down the road. Dr. Paul walks through a Lake Mary competitor scan.

Where It Stops

Creativity Is Like Garlic

Dr. Paul’s favorite picture of creativity is garlic. Used well, it makes almost everything better. Use too much and it overwhelms the dish. The goal is not to keep adding. The goal is to add just enough to make what you are building impossible to ignore.

Two points follow. First, creativity is a neutral tool. The same spark can build a library or a better weapon, so its value depends on what you aim it at. Second, creativity does not replace hard work. It makes the work stand out, which is why it needs the rung below it. Creativity has to point at something you are already driven to do. See how that goes wrong in why BlackBerry failed.

How This Helps a Business Student

Use the Two Tests in Class and in Your Plan

Textbooks mention creativity everywhere and define it rarely. Two tests give you something concrete to write down.

One Honest Caution

Borrow the Principle, Not the Property

Do This Tomorrow

Three Steps for Tomorrow

1. Pick one real problem or one boring task. Ask: how can I make this better? For a customer problem, ask how you can solve it better for your customer.
2. Write down two or three genuinely different answers. Do not judge them yet.
3. Find one idea from a different industry and ask how it could transplant into yours.

That is the on-switch. For the full process, including how to pressure-test and when to stop, read how to be more creative. When you have a differentiator worth keeping, the business plan templates give you a place to write it down.

The Book

Chapter 2 Goes Further

This page defines the term. Become Your Version of Rich shows the full method and the people who prove it.

• The seven-step creativity method and the stop rule
• Nikola Tesla and Benjamin Franklin, two ways creativity plays out
• Napoleon, and why creativity with no destination does not save you
• The BlackBerry cautionary tale
• Daily Actions, and a 30-day plan built to make you ship

Get the Book on Amazon →

Keep Going

More From Chapter 2

FAQ

Common Questions About Creativity in Business