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Every day people come up with a plethora of new ideas to work on but only a handful of them survive through the process of rigorous brainstorming, strategic planning, and design thinking. In recent times, people have become so creative that it lead to the discovery of new jobs and employment. But as the saying goes, “Too much of everything is good for nothing”. Since everyone is being creative in their own space, many people find it hard to think of new ideas and thoughts. This is what is known as Creative Block. It is a phenomenon that is faced by many people especially designers and business-minded people where you find it hard to think of new ideas or you are stuck in one place and are not able to proceed further. It can also be frustrating for many people since it is not easy to come out of a creative block and it can also provoke consternation. Creative blocks, in extreme cases, can also make you look feeble-minded to others which would be something that nobody wants when they try to think of others as not being able to generate new ideas can irritate a person and can make them follow an idea that might not even be a good choice leave alone best. In this case, nobody would benefit from that idea. The ideal nature of an idea or a plan should be innocuous and the people should get some benefit and satisfaction from it. There are many reasons because of why one can encounter a creative block such as being unable to generate new ideas, similar ideas that already exist in the market, not able to think out of the box, being stuck on one idea, unable to brainstorm a variety of ideas, etc. Creative block is generally faced by startups and small business owners as they are the ones who are desperately looking to expand their businesses. The reason is that the type of service they are providing may be present in the market or they lack some resources such as poor infrastructure, low investment, or capital. One can think of as many ideas as one wants but after that, there are many criteria that the idea has to go through in order to become an innovation. Accessibility, feasibility, and usability are some of the aspects that can become impediments to any type of growth if not put emphasis on therefore one has to take care of them while one works on a possible scenario. Innovation follows creativity as creativity means generating ideas, imagination, and brainstorming while innovation means successfully implementing the ideas. If you are stuck at the creative stage then it would be impossible to proceed further and start innovating. Moreover, while creativity is restricted by creative block, innovation can be blocked by the availability of resources. Not every good idea is backed up by supporting resources like infrastructure, capital, labor, and technology. Business development can be hampered at every step if the plan is not executed with prior planning and strategy. One has to think of creative ideas and have backups in case their “Plan A” doesn’t work out. There are possibilities that the planning and execution of a business strategy both fail or either of them fails. In all these cases, business development is hindered.

People can make erroneous assumptions in a split second when they don’t understand certain things. They start making their own conceptual models in their minds which might be noxious to the many types of businesses. Therefore, there is a necessity that we should understand human psychology, cognition, and emotion. Other factors that contribute to a successful business are loyalty, brand recognition, and market research, and all of these are a part of creative and design thinking. And in order to successfully implement these factors, you need to understand the power of strategic planning. Since all of these factors differ in nature, therefore we have to have a multidisciplinary team so it is easy to take care of different aspects of the plan. Another important factor is competition. There is a need to pay attention to the competition so as to know what other businesses are doing, what are they offering, and how they are offering. Otherwise, if we go out selling the same product with not much difference from the competitor who is already enjoying a higher place in the market then we won’t be able to make any profit and there will be certain discernible effects on the business. Therefore, we should have a Unique Selling Proposition (USP). USP can be anything from the characteristics of service, the way of offering, benefits, price, marketing/promotional strategy, quality, or even location and distribution. Hence, it is important to do thorough market research and have good knowledge about your product or service to make it easy for you to sell it to the people. To understand products or services, it is not enough to understand the design or technology, it is critical to understand business. Business strategies change from time to time, every few months or maybe years we see a very unique service or new product that is based on the latest trends. This is called Incremental Innovation. This happens when some minor changes are made in the existing business strategy, service, or products. It can either lead to improved services or a downfall if not executed properly. Incremental innovation is thus very common as everyone is trying to stay updated with the society and latest trends so that they can connect more to the people around them. But what these businesses really want is Radical Innovation which is not easy to achieve as most of these innovations fail. Even if they succeed, it takes a long time for them to be accepted by people thus lowering the probability of happening. Basically, in radical innovation, the existing business model is completely replaced by a new one. The complete changing process is what makes it hard for people to adopt such kind of innovation as they were familiar with the old business model. The change should be gradual and according to the people’s needs or else, it will fail. It takes time for people to adjust to changes, especially big ones. But the mindset will change, new trends will set in the environment and vulnerable factors will face a change but some things like business principles and business strategies will hold. The factors that will change include the way principles and strategies get applied according to emerging technologies, and advanced mediums for communication and interaction.

Design thinking is a great tool for businesses as it helps tackle numerous problems. Design thinking is more of a tool rather than a process because it is useful in almost all the stages of planning and executing a strategy. The concept of design thinking is that whatever service or product you are offering should be created keeping in mind human emotions, values, needs, and desires. Basically giving topmost priority to humans and keeping the thought process around them. Many businesses are not able to grow and startups are not successful because they are offering a service that they want to deliver to the people and not what people actually want. This is where businesses lack an understanding of human-centered design. No matter how good a product or a service is if it isn’t solving people’s problems and not meeting their needs then it won’t be successful. You need to address their demands and desires in order to make a product that actually solves their problems. Design thinking is what makes it possible. It allows us to think around the humans and take care of their emotions. Design thinking when combined with strategic planning can wield a powerful combination for successful planning. But one also has to pay attention to the intricacies of strategic planning as it involves numerous little tasks and problems which should also be taken into consideration or else they can become the reason for domino effect in your business plan. Another crucial aspect of a successful plan is Feedback. There is a need to understand that whatever you are doing, it is for the people. So it is important to know people’s opinions of your service. It is actually helping people by solving their problems? Do they want any changes? If yes, then what changes would they like? What is their experience? All these questions and more will help gather useful feedback that can be analyzed and used to improvise upon the services provided to people to enhance their experience.

For a business to experience unhindered growth, it is important that we understand our customers and their psychology so that we could provide them with the best services. Only then, businesses will be able to achieve unfathomable heights. Design thinking and strategic planning can be tools of utmost importance in executing a business plan because with their help we will be able to gather insights profoundly. They will also help us take care of the above-mentioned things like a creative block, innovation, human-centric thinking, and feedback and will assist us in making the most out of a business plan by communicating our idea to the public more clearly hence eliminating any kind of ambiguity. 

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