Entrepreneurial Imagination, Creativity, and Innovation 
Developing Creativity: Producing novel and useful ideas
Hinderances To Creativity
External Hinderances
Family: Anti-creative parent, poverty, spotlight sibling
Organizational: Climate, Leadership, Culture, Resoruces
Education: Encouraging conformity, and standardized tests :
Internal Hinderances
Fear of Failure
Perceptual Barriers: Habits and Routines, doing things the "right" way
Emotional Barriers: Fear, Anxiety, Anger, Love
Cultivating Your Imagination: The fuzzy front end of creativity that is created in the human brain
The Human Brain:
Imagination and Creativity
Executive Network: Walking, focused thought, working memory, self-control, goal-directed activities.
Goal-Directed Imagination
Root Cause Analysis
Sparking Imagination
Operative Unconscious: Active thought in Default Network
Imaginative Thoughts
Prospective Thinking: Creating a future reality in your mind.
Default Network: Imagination and regulating rest states
Disengaging From Reality and Perceptual Decoupling
Mindfullness: Being aware of your thoughts
Mental Solitude: Being alone with one's thoughts
Imaginative Play: Creating an imaginary world
Perspective Taking: Putting yourself in someone else's shoes
Defining the Problem
Alternative Realities: Mental fantasy that takes you out of the present reality
Upside Down Thinking
Counterfactual Thinking: Reconstructing the past to change the present or future.
Creative Process
1) Preparation
2) Incubation
3) Illumination
4) Verification
Conscious Creativity
Bisociation
Brainstorming
Analogical Thinking
Negative Brainstroming
1) Access Stage
2) Selection Stage
3) Evaluation Stage
4) Learning Stage
Abstraction
Biomimicry
Specficiation
Mind Wandering: Stimulus independent thought
Innovation
Idea vs Opportunity
Anchored in a product or service
Provides value for customer and startup
Timely
Sustainable
Opportunity Assessment
Market Validation: Desirability, Demand, Accessibility
Risk Assessment:
Industry Competitors, Economies of Scale, Cost Advantages, Supply Chain Risks
Resource Validation:
Human, Social, Tangible, Financial
Financial Validation: Can this be a successful business?
Product Market Fit
1) Is the right customer being targeted
2) What customer needs are unmet or underserved?
3) Does the value proposition correspond with unmet and underserved needs?
4) What is the minimum feature set to provide the customer with the highest value?
5) How successful is the customer experience with the product/service?
Various prototype strategies
Audience Building: Build a customer base
Wizard of Oz: Create the illusion of a functional product through manual manipulation
Crowd Funding: Sourcing funds from external parties in order to build prototypes
AB Testing: Two different versions of the product to see what adds value and what does not
Concierge Testing: Providing all services to potential customers directly and manually
Non-Functional Prototype: Create a mockup of the product
Narrative Story Board: Uses a story board to show customer interactions with product or service
Landing Page: Prototypes of web based services
Sustaining Innovation
Disruptive Innovation
Creative Destruction
Industries Changed Forever
Innovation Managment
1) Goal Setting
2) Cooperation
3) Idea Combination
4) Idea Vetting
5) Idea Testing
6) Innovation Execution
7) Innovation Assessment
8) Iteration
Product Service Ideas
Slight Improvements Year-Over-Year
Sustaining Innovation in People
Componential Theory of Sustained Creativity
Work Environment Components
1) Freedom
2) Consistent and clear commnuication
3) Challenge
4) Resources (Time, access and financial)
5) Firm Motivation
Improvements eventual surpass customer needs
Individual Components
1) Expertise
2) Motivation
3) Creative Thinking