Mind Mapping for Innovative Entrepreneurs

Any entrepreneur is faced with the difficult task expanding. Rather than maintaining a flat level of growth, an entrepreneur must propel a company on a new trajectory, reinvent the framework so that it does more. Innovation is one way of growing your business and mind mapping can be very helpful to come up with new ideas:

Business expansion can take many forms. It can mean adding new products or services, widening the range of an existing service with more employees or new locations, or simply eliminating wasteful practices that cost time and money. The essential goal is that the company’s assets and profit will increase, whether the results are immediately visible or incorporated into a long-range goal or plan.

Innovation in Practice

Innovative entrepreneurs are always those who are in search of new, original ways to make their organisation grow. Repeating the same practice will yield similar results. In order to accomplish growth, a new element must be introduced.

According to Info Entrepreneurs, an online group of business experts, innovation could mean a single major change, such as creating and marketing an entirely new product or it could mean, “a series of small incremental changes” that slowly build a new vision for the company. The task of an innovative entrepreneur involves both the invention of new ideas and envisioning how to put them into practice.

In his book, “Idea Stormers: How to Lead and Inspire through Creative Breakthroughs” Bryan Mattimore outlines eight ways in which creative people generate original ideas. Two concepts figure importantly and describe the basic attributes required for successful entrepreneurship.

The first is curiosity, remaining open to all possibilities, even scenarios that may seem unlikely or illogical.

The second is the capacity to visualise in detail a version of reality that doesn’t yet exist, such as the details of a new concept or the solution to a problem.

These two abilities create a powerful combination, enabling an individual to chart a sure path through obstacles that others might see as insurmountable.

Why Mind Mapping Works

It’s easy to see how the creative process can work, but putting it into practice is more of a challenge. Fortunately, mind mapping can actually help entrepreneurs generate innovation. Mind mapping can show connections between two ideas that might at first seem unrelated. These techniques can help strategists extrapolate a specific situation into a general concept and envision the results of any long range plan. Risks and problems can be anticipated even before they become apparent.

Mind mapping is effective because it helps to mimic the natural neural network in our brains. Neurons communicate with each other by sending impulses across minute gaps called synapses. More complex cognitive processes integrate several unrelated areas of the brain to accomplish a single task.

In a similar way, our thought processes integrate pieces of information to build a complex representation of the situation. Mind mapping can help to nurture this natural process by arranging and linking ideas and ensuring that important relationships become visible.

Mind mapping has significant advantages over general notetaking or traditional brainstorming techniques. There’s even mind mapping software that can allow several people to work on a project at once, without struggling to read handwriting or understand hand-drawn diagrams.

Mind Mapping for Entrepreneurs

In the past, entrepreneurship has been dependent on a single individual being capable of implementing the entire creative process. Mind mapping has changed that by making innovation accessible and interactive, a development that is open to different kinds of input and adjustable to the needs of different companies. This can allow a group of innovative entrepreneurs to expand their organisation together and establish a consistent and reliable pattern of growth.

Over to you now. Have you ever tried a mind mapping approach to introduce innovation in your business?

Source: business-achievers.com