Knowing How To See

Welcome Back to my Creative Blog!

Today we will be discussing my Organizational Problem through a creative-thinking strategy. As mentioned in my previous blog, my organizational problem is the importing of products from Nicaragua to the US. The products will be the merchandise sold in my business. 

Importing is not an easy task for any new business, because they have deal with laws, tariffs, quotas, and many other rules put upon imports. Because of its difficulty, I decided to take a course at the University of Florida called Business Creativity. The course has taught me different creative strategies that will help me overcome problems in the business. 

The creative thinking strategy that I will talk about today is “Knowing How to See”.

Knowing how to see was brought up by Leonardo Da Vinci. Knowing how to see is looking at a problem from many different perspectives, and that will allow you to expand your own solutions to the problem.

            This means that by expanding reframing our minds, we end up expanding our solutions. In reality, we need to put aside the tunnel vision.

            Using a Technique, from the strategy, I will implement the technique in order to convey my message more clearly. The technique is called Questions, and I will isolate the problems and think it in different ways. This technique will contain questions, and each will fall in a color category category. The category will identify as Green (creative),  Red (negative) and others. 

           

As said before, my problem is importing, and in the questions, I will consider the different types of importing that can be done from Nicaragua to the United States. Some will be out there, and will not make sense, but our goal is to be creative and thing outside our comfort zone. 

Color questions:

 Green

Green (fertile and creative): What if...? Suppose we...?

•  What if, instead of importing the products, and then shipping them to customers, we ship to customers directly from the suppliers? This will waive the tariff of importing the product, and just paying for shipping? Will this make the product cheaper? 

Yellow

 Yellow (neutral and objective): What is...?

• Would the Nicaraguan Government be willing to partner with my company to avoid paying tariffs, and making importing an easier task? and instead become a sponsor for Nicaraguan Tourism through the products we sell? 

Blue

 Blue (hopeful and positive): What can we do? What should we do?  

• Can we copy the design of the artists, and produce the products in the U.S. instead of Nicaragua?

 Red!! No Go

Red (negative): What can’t be done? What’s not possible?

• Can we use drones to import?, or Submarines?
• Is  teleportation possible for bringing products for a cheaper price? 

The Questions Technique from "Knowing How To See" strategy has allowed me to open my mind in regards to importing. There were some questions that made no sense, such as teleportation, but it kept my mind open to other options.

One solution that would be a positive, would be shipping the products from Nicaragua, instead of importing to the US, and then shipping to the customer, which is something I never considered before.

 This will allow the business to avoid tariffs, but the downside of it would be that shipping is not as advance in Nicaragua as it is in the US, and further research on it would be needed in order to implement into the business venture. 

Stay Tune to my Next Creative Strategy!

Best Regards, 

Ana Guevara