#3 Types of Entrepreneurial Thinking Styles That Are Proven To Work!

In this article, I have identified THREE types of thinking.

1. Creative thinking – creativity, which is simply creating something new.
2. Lateral thinking – which we have identified a combination of logic and creativity
3. Intuitive thinking – includes a combination of both lateral thinking, and instinctive sensors developed through personal experience.

1. The Three Entrepreneurial Thinking Style

People can think on three levels. Let us look at these in more detail…

2. Creative Thinkers

The first trait I will like to speak about is creative thinking. I think this trait is the most common trait found in entrepreneurs…

Creativity is simply being able to think of something that is completely new in the world. For example, creative people are artists, painters and writers. Whilst businesses see creativity as those people who find new ways of approaching and solving problems.

Thinking outside the box…

This means creative people look at something in a way that is new and different.

Actually, psychologists say in the Big Five Personality Theory that openness to new ideas is one of the traits for success.    

Thinking outside the box is just another jargon that everybody throws around in conferences. It isn’t necessary at all in every single instance. For example, guys from Israel set up a simple e-commerce store selling Jewish arts internationally. JudaiWebStore is now one of the largest online retailers for Jewish arts. yeah

2.1 Copy Cat Culture

There are also countries that lack creativity. For example, Kenya is the home to many entrepreneurs. In fact, there is a high density of small businesses and micro enterprises. But, these businesses lack differentiation.

Copy Cat culture has immerged where it is safest to replicate the existing business ideas seen to be working. This means there are huge opportunities that these people miss.

These businesses compete purely on price profit fall and markets become unviable. The majority of these businesses do not see their second year anniversary.

2.2 Steve Jobs on Creativity

Steve Jobs referred to meditation as the main source of his creativity (Isaacson 2011), which is resonated within the head making connections in current time non-judgementally (PsychAlive, 2013). Based from (Colzato, 2014 p 10) mediation is need for convergent thinking to operate defined as: “a process of identifying the “correct” and “unique” answer to a well-defined problem.” which coincides with popular description of entrepreneur characteristics (Read, Sarasvathy, and Wiltbank, 2010).

However, there are some downsides to creativity. Moreover, it is not always necessarily useful to us and it is not productive.

Overall, creativity are just ideas, they do not come to life on their own. Usually, someone with a unique set of skills has to implement them. In addition, just like the thousands of ideas we have every day most of which are not practical and not feasible.

I do not think creativity is a concrete trait on its own for success. However, I also think that you cannot be successful without it.     

3. Lateral Thinkers

The second trait I would like to think about is lateral thinking. I do not think we see this trait very often… In addition, I think we see lateral thinkers more commonly working in organisations.

Lateral thinking is somewhat more complicated than creative thinking but built on the roots of creativity. It is the combination of being creative but using that creativity in a logical manner.

But, how does logic and creativity work together?

I think it is logical to assume before we start any new business venture that we outline who are target audience is… details about the market we aim to enter… and learn how our competition is currently operating in the market.

But, you know what? With all of the people I have met over the years, they do NOT have one of these things.  

Is there any surprise that 90% of businesses fail when they do not know who their target audience is?

By applying logic to your creative endeavours, you can begin to eliminate those approaches that do not correlate to the information you have collected. This will then reduced significantly your chances of failure.

By lateral thinking, you are able to focus your time of the most important tasks, which provide most value to your potential audience. Overall, the more research you do the better chances of your success.

4. Intuitive Thinkers

Intuition is the most powerful type of thinking to reap success. It fact it is so powerful the best inventors of all time speaks about this.

Intuition is the aspect of using your mind to think of creative solutions whilst reflecting from your own personal experience and your understanding of how the world works. It is the process of logically connecting all the pieces of your imagination and tuning it in with the reality of the world.  

Tesla on Intuition

Nicola Tesla is without a doubt the greatest inventor that has ever walked this earth. Being that he passed away more than 70 years ago, we still use his inventions today. In fact, 80% of the technology we use today was only possible because of Tesla’s work. Furthermore, he speaks about intuition repeatedly throughout his life, as the source of all his creations. 

Steve Jobs on Intuition

Even Steve Jobs goes to as far as saying intuition is more powerful than intellect, and in other quotes you will find him talk about intuition in various different way.

Overall, try to reflect on your personal experience and engrain these experiences into your ideas. By logically connecting ideological ideas with rational aspects of society then you will form real value that people will want to pay for.  

However, it is important to remember that intuition is not possible without creativity. It is the ability to come up with new ideas through a mental process of connecting existing concepts.