Creativity – More from the Institute for Women's Entrepreneurship at Cornell

Starting a Business With Little to No Capital

Owning your own business offers flexibility, creative freedom, and unlimited income potential. Lacking financial resources doesn’t mean you are out of luck! According to this article in Forbes, it is possible to still start a business with limited funds. no money. Some tips from the article include: keep your day job while working on your business during your free time, choose a business idea that doesn’t require upfront capital (such as freelance writing, virtual assisting, or social media management), scale up gradually, and utilize free resources and networking opportunities. Check out the link to the article to read more!

Advantages of Nonlinear Workdays

According to this article in Fast Company, nonlinear workdays may better align with your best periods of productivity compared to the traditional 9-to-5 model. According to the 2022 Brain Health Report from Muse, a meditation tool provider, “people with the highest self-reported brain health scores—which include memory, focus, sleep, mood, productivity, and creativity—are those who make minor lifestyle changes, like adopting a nonlinear workday.” Nonlinear workdays are much easier to integrate for people who work remotely and whose work is measured on output versus hours – as well as entrepreneurs who are more in control of their own schedule. Check out the article to read more about integrating that approach into your workday!

When Women Step Into Executive Roles, Attitudes Towards Risk Change

Studies over time have found that when women step into executive roles at a company (CEO, CFO, director, etc), the company will experience an increase in profitability – in one study that increase was 15%. On NPR’s Planet Money podcast The Indicator, this reality is explored with Professor Corinne Post, a professor of management at the Villanova School of Business. One of the interesting findings in Professor Post’s research was that “after women were appointed to top executive positions, two things happened. A management team’s tendency to take risks dropped by between 13 to 14%, and then their willingness to become more innovative – their openness to new ideas – that increased by about 10%.” To hear more about the research and a discussion on the topic, listen to “The Indicator” podcast.

The Isolation Journals

The Isolation Journals is a site that was founded by Suleika Jaouad on the idea that life’s interruptions are invitations to deepen our creative practice. The Isolation Journals sends out free weekly journaling prompts. If you sign up, you will receive one in your inbox every Sunday. The website also contains journal entries from the community and provides the option to submit your work (you can even submit anonymously). Learn more and sign up for a weekly prompt here.

“The Giving Tree” Gets a Refresh

Shel Silverstein’s classic parenting allegory, The Giving Tree, is a story where the tree (referenced as she/her) gives up every piece of herself to help a young boy.

The story was always a bit disturbing – as if the badge of parenting – and more specifically, motherhood, was to give away all of oneself until one had nothing left. We recently came across this re-write that was imagined by playwright and screenwriter Topher Payne. Payne re-titled it “The Tree Who Set Healthy Boundaries” and you can read the newly edited version here.

Our favorite part is that the tree “took courses online and got her certification in small business management”….and went on to operate a profitable bakery (selling apple pies!) with the boy.

Wishing you all a Happy Thanksgiving – with healthy boundaries and successful business operations!

Are You Creative?

A recent piece in Fast Company mentioned that researchers from McGill University, Harvard University, and the University of Melbourne are collaborating on research to try to find a way to measure human creativity. Specifically, they are targeting one specific type of creativity – divergent thinking. This type of thinking enables individuals to generate a diverse number solutions to an open-ended problem (which is exactly what entrepreneurs are called to do every day).

Interested in taking the 4-minute test? Click here!