Chief Product Team 
Wondering how to drive product innovation through a creative mindset? This article will give you some tips on how to achieve that.
Drive Product Innovation Through a Creative Mindset
A creative mindset in product management can fuel a lot of product innovation. This is not just about coming up with a new feature or functionality, but it involves delivering new ways to engage with your customers.
This requires a creative mind and is generally the result of the interaction of three factors:
- Personality
- The environment in which you work and live
- The core values that drive your thinking
Let’s talk about each of these factors and how they affect a creative mindset in product management.
Personality
People are born with different kinds of personalities. Of course, some people have a more creative personality than others, but this has little to do with your job title.
A salesperson can have a very creative personality, and so can a developer. It’s not about the job title, but rather the way you view the world around you and how you interact with it.
If you love to create things and to solve problems, then this is probably one of the traits that make you good at what you do as a product manager.
Being creative isn’t something that’s easy or simple to define or put into words. But, it’s something that’s felt within an individual and it’s also recognized by others around them.
The Environment
The environment in which you work plays an important role in your ability to be creative because it influences the way you think, act, and feel.
For example, if you work in an environment where creativity is encouraged and supported by leadership, then your creativity will thrive.
This doesn’t mean that if you don’t work in such an environment, then you can never be creative—but it definitely makes it more difficult!
Likewise, if your company has a negative culture where creativity is not encouraged, then this will hinder your ability to be creative on the job.
The core values that drive your thinking
Core values drive the way you think. If you have a passion for creativity and design, then your thinking will be affected by this passion.
You’ll notice that you’ll tend to be more critical of everything around you and you’ll look for ways to improve things. You’ll also see opportunities that others don’t see because you’re always looking for them.
Your creative thinking will keep you from being satisfied with the status quo. So, it will drive you to try to come up with something better.
On the other hand, being creative and having a creative mindset can help you come up with new, innovative ways. Then, it allows you to engage with your customers and meet other organizational goals.
If customer satisfaction is an organizational goal, then coming up with a new feature that makes customers happy can help meet that goal.
The Bottom Line
The bottom line is that creativity is a mindset. It’s not a tool or a technique. You can use tools and techniques to help you be more creative. But, it’s not something that you can just turn on and off like a switch.
Hopefully, this article has given you some tips on how to create a creative mindset.
