Insights on Balancing Creativity and Practicality in Business

As businesses strive to innovate and push boundaries, they must also make sure their aspirations are grounded in the pragmatic reality of the market. We know that balancing these seemingly opposing forces is an art form, but we also know that no one can explain it better than the successful entrepreneurs themselves. Let’s find out how!

Aligning Creative Solutions with Well-Defined Business Goals

Creativity is great, but it should always align with company goals. Creativity, essentially, is the act of coming up with an innovative solution for an existing problem. In order to be practical and useful, we have to first do the thing that many creatives skip: defining the problem. In my experience, a lot of creative energy is spent on finding a problem for an already existing creative solution — rather than finding a creative solution for an already existing, well-defined problem.

It takes a bit of work and muscle, but when you create for the sake of creating, you are putting the cart in front of the horse, a solution searching for a problem. 

To avoid that, clearly define what problem you’re solving: look at existing customer data, talk to customers or prospects, try to understand the problem from their perspective, and see what creative solutions you can come up with. This can be a direct creative solution to the problem or a creative way to grab attention, highlight the problem, and present the solution that your product or service provides.

Bernard Meyer, senior director of content & creative at Omnisend

Know When to Focus On Each

What you really need is to know which to use when. Creativity is exactly what you need when you start a project and when you’re marketing. Practicality is needed to solve problems along the way (which is creative, too, btw). Hold off on the practical details and reasons why something couldn’t work when you want to dream up new ideas.

Instead, do things that you wouldn’t normally do — go for a walk, dance, play with your kids, sing, bake, sit in the bath, talk to random people in the street, and let your intuition get to work for you. And if you get an idea that fires you up inside, trust it — it’s telling you something important. You can always decide why it won’t work out later and will learn loads along the way.

Lynn Coleman, copy coach, copywriter, creator of the Magnificana Method & owner of Your Epic Business

Consult With an Accountant

Get an accountant you can trust. Entrepreneurs thrive on creativity and innovative thinking, but a good accountant is your reality check. Big ideas need a solid financial foundation, and your accountant can help you understand the full financial implications of your ideas so you can execute them in a realistic way.

Discussing what’s possible or not with someone who understands what is possible or not in the context of what you can afford means you can still execute your creative ideas but in a way that is detrimental to your business’s bottom line. 

Gianluca Ferruggia, managing director of DesignRush

Prioritizing Practicality

The thin line between creativity and practicality is where many businesses have found themselves mercilessly dangling. As fresh-faced entrepreneurs ready to offer the world our very best, we all have found ourselves at this junction of decision at some point — creativity vs practicality.

After years of dabbling, I came to the conclusion that practicality always wins. If your product or service must be creative, then it must also be practical to succeed. Creativity without practicality is a disaster waiting to happen (conversion-wise) or a product going nowhere.

Practicality means that it has a purpose, and it is easy for many to find themselves using it. That it is creative is just the icing on the cake.

Practicality also means that It is highly likely to address a pain point and, therefore, likely to already have an audience/market. So, you are less likely to struggle with introducing your product to the market.

I believe that future entrepreneurs should focus more on how their product or service can be practical for their audience and build campaigns around these practical, relatable features for an easier transition to success.

Kyle Leman, co-owner of Crossroads Foundation Repair

Do a Thorough Market Research

When I first started Auckland & Beyond, I was bursting with creative ideas for unique travel experiences. However, in order to turn them into a sustainable business, I realized I needed to validate them with market research. So, I conducted surveys, talked to potential customers, and analyzed industry trends.

I discovered that travelers demanded more affordable and authentic experiences, so I focused on creating immersive, budget-friendly adventures that highlighted the local culture and hidden gems.

By combining my creative ideas with practical market research, I was able to balance innovation and meeting customer needs. This way, I built a successful and sustainable business and stayed on top of evolving travel industry trends.

I’ve learnt that one should never underestimate the power of market research — it can guide your creativity and ensure that your ideas are innovative, practical, and appealing to your target audience.

Peter Hamdy, owner & founder of Auckland & Beyond

Minimum Viable Product Approach

The minimum viable product (MVP) approach simplifies your offering to address specific needs effectively.

In my role as President of Mammoth Security, we apply the MVP concept in the security industry. We begin with it to tackle clients’ core security challenges, and then we craft solutions that meet immediate needs without undue complexity.

For new entrepreneurs, the MVP concept conserves resources and accelerates market entry. Feedback from early users guides refinement and expansion, which aligns your creative ideas with practical market demands, setting the stage for lasting success across industries.

Eugene Klimaszewski, president of Mammoth Security

Risk Management as a Practical and Creative Solution

For future entrepreneurs, I would emphasize risk management. While managing risk is often seen as a practical aspect of business, it, too, requires a great deal of creativity and foresight.

Consider this experience from my own firm. We constantly operate in an environment where damage — whether by natural disasters or other incidences — is a common occurrence. However, instead of approaching this with strictly practical solutions, we had to get creative. We brought in loss management teams to evaluate possible threats and develop recovery plans. This preemptive, innovative step meant we were also proactively preparing for the damage instead of just reacting to it.

A risk shouldn’t just be mitigated but also transformed into an opportunity for strategic planning and innovation. Yes, you need the practical skills to evaluate potential threats, but it’s the creative thinking that prepares you to respond in the most effective way. Always view risks through a dual lens of creativity and practicality to achieve sustainable success.

Scott Friedson, public adjuster & CEO of Insurance Claim Recovery Support (ICRS)

Market What You Already Have

I own a collegiate apparel brand (Nudge Printing) and am dealing with this regularly. Do we make new designs/apparel, or do I just market the ones I already sell? More often than not, it is better to market what you already have. I focus on maximizing the current products that I already know and have processes for. Otherwise, you can end up with a lot of products, and you’re unable to manage it all (I’ve been there, too).

Gabe Viscomi, owner of Nudge Printing & Fabricated Customs

Navigating the Artistry-Practicality Spectrum

Growing a brand that is both artistic and practical requires a careful harmony between vision and reality. Entrepreneurs should really consider creativity as their competitive edge. At Or & Zon, we select unique, handcrafted pieces from global artisans, and that sets us apart from the mass-produced market.

In our business, the practicality comes into play when we consider sustainability. We advocate for ethical production and sustainability on every step, which involves practical decisions such as choosing artisans who share these values and setting up an international supply chain that respects these principles. Successful entrepreneurship in any creative field also requires an understanding of your customers. Translating the beauty and uniqueness of handmade products into an engaging online retail experience was our practical response to customer needs.

Guillaume Drew, founder & CEO of Or & Zon

Outcome-driven Brainstorming

Brainstorm all the possible outcomes if you implement varied levels of creativity and practicality. This lets you decide objectively about what amount of innovation and realism you’d like to include in your project. Brainstorming allows you to plan for shortcomings and avoid making mistakes you were able to foresee. In this way, you’re guaranteed better results because you’ve already assessed the situation from all angles.

Stephen R. Hasner, managing partner at Hasner Law PC

Realistic Creative Ideas

Creativity is what could lead to increased success. However, you need to be able to implement those creative ideas. Not every great idea is realistically implemented. You need to have parameters on what looks realistic for your company and what doesn’t. If the creative ideas can be implemented within those parameters, then great. If not, then it might need to be adjusted until it can. The point of creativity and innovation is doing what no one else is doing, but always within reason.

Dan Gallagher, VP of operations at Aegle Nutrition

Creativity in the Practical Legal Industry

As a business leader in the legal industry, it’s easy to assume that my business thrives on practicality. There’s not usually much creativity when it comes to legal practices, which thrive on logic and reason. However, in these kinds of industries, it’s essential to lean into creativity to make sure you tell a story that’s truly unique. Here’s how a legal expert can bring more creativity into their business. 

If you work in a traditionally dry or logical industry, like law or engineering, it can be hard to find opportunities to show your team’s creativity. That’s when you really have to be creative about how you get creative. Incorporating creativity into your business practice can assist you in problem-solving, serving customers, and staying ahead of the competition. It can also help you stand out as a business and tell your story in marketing endeavors. Creatively building your brand isn’t always easy, but it’s a rewarding challenge that pays off again and again.

J. Tucker Merrigan, managing partner and attorney at Sweeney Merrigan Law

Budgetary Constraints

Your budget should direct whether you can invest more in creativity or practicality in your business. It usually costs more to implement creative ideas than to follow practical techniques. If you have a substantial budget, you may be able to spend more capital applying unique approaches to your business. However, if you’re on a low budget — as is usually the case for start-ups and small businesses — it may make more financial sense to use practicality as the foundation for your venture.

Thaddeus W. Wendt, CEO of Feller Wendt LLC

Practical Benefits of Investing in Creative Endeavors

I do not see creativity and practicality as mutually exclusive. Actually, they should go hand-in-hand! I’ve found that oftentimes, it is very practical to spend your resources on “creativity,” whatever that may be. Take the time to do something that gives you a mental reset so that you can come back to a problem with fresh eyes. Give yourself the space to be able to come up with unique solutions instead of directing all your energy to marginal improvements. This is harder to do than it sounds because brute-forcing something seems more guaranteed. However, unique solutions often have significantly more upside.

Andrey Shostak, real estate investor & owner of Sellthehouse.info

Choosing the Perfect Team

As a business leader and entrepreneur, your main focus should be on vetting and choosing the right people to build your team around, and this is your biggest and best chance to strike a balance between creativity and practicality in business. It is your job and responsibility to build and train a mixed team (or teams!) of creative and practical people, managers, and team leads to secure sustainable long-term growth and success.

Max Wesman, chief operating officer of GoodHire

Prioritize Business Impact

How to strike a balance between creativity and practicality is one of the toughest questions, especially for a startup like us that can only afford to execute a fraction of all the ideas we have. 

I try to strike a balance by always encouraging creativity but then honing that creative energy by prioritizing business impact and risk level at that current point in time. So, the team might come up with a bunch of wonderful and random ideas.

Then, it’s important that we evaluate the potential benefits and risks associated with executing each idea, rank them, and work through the list, updating as we go. That way, we’re always putting our energy into the things that have the most impact at any given time.

Take our AI-powered English proofreading and paraphrasing tool, Engram. We’d had this idea to add a translation feature since a year ago, but we didn’t prioritize it because we had more promising items in our roadmap. But after checking off some of those higher-priority items, we reevaluated this idea and decided that it was the right time for us to launch it. Now, it’s become one of Engram’s core features, and our users are loving it.

Seung Oh, CEO & co-founder of Data B, the SaaS startup behind Engram

Do a Test Run

I founded Vashon Island Coffee Dust nearly 3 years ago, my most creative venture yet. We make spice blends to flavor coffee without sweeteners. I’ve found small batches to be the secret to creativity. Early on, we not only keep our recipe batches small but also print small runs of labels, order small quantities of packaging, and experiment with small marketing ad buys.

Every small batch allows us to learn, adjust, and creatively try new flavors, packaging, and marketing ideas. As we dial in each of these areas, we make bigger runs, but now we’re betting on proven strategies. There was a time when I would put every Coffee Dust label through my home printer. This allowed me to play and try out new ideas without a huge investment. I’d test those ideas at a market a few days later.

I learned to let go of worrying about efficiency early in my product development process in lieu of fast feedback and quick iterations. As we scale what we’ve learned, we continue to apply this same idea to new products and marketing, allowing our creativity to shine and harnessing that into fabulous products we know people love.

Christy Clement, founder of Vashon Island Coffee Dust

Keep Customers Happy

I think, at first, you might not find a balance. But, as you get more customers, whether as a solopreneur or in a team, you’ll start to have deadlines. Having to meet these deadlines means you need to be both practical and creative at the same time. Often, it’s the customers who help

you find this balance. The key thing is to know when you really need to stick to your main goal of giving value to your customers. This is very important for keeping them happy, but you also need to keep being creative. Basically, you begin to break down your creative process into different stages so you can handle your work in smaller, easier parts.

Thomas Franklin, co-founder & CEO of Bitinvestor

Building Trust and Human Connections for a Competitive Edge

The online market is heavily frequented by billions of people, and consumer trust is at an all-time low. Regardless of the market or sector, customers and clients always want to be aware of who they are dealing with. They require a valuable and trustworthy individual. By setting yourself apart and presenting yourself as the authority in your field, you and your target audience gain greater credibility.

Customers interact with the people behind companies, not the company itself; therefore, showcasing your humanity through your brand will increase sales. Before deciding to become partners or clients, people want to know your values. The more people will view, share, and react to your material, the stronger your brand is. The fact is, you already have a personal brand, even if you’re not aware of it. You should take charge since people will find you online nonetheless. Instead of interfering with people’s interests, we should strive to be those interests.

Olly Gaspar, adventure travel publisher & photographer at We Seek Travel

The Vital Role of “Me Time” and Human Connections

I know when I feel my creative juices drying up or I am often tired or unmotivated, it is time to shake things up.

A mentor once told me that to be successful, “me time” is not a luxury or pampering. It is maintenance! Respecting my time on the calendar and taking myself as seriously as I take my most important clients is the least I can do for self-care because if I am not at my peak performance, I am not going to be useful to anyone else either, so I create more balance and manage my creativity by giving myself permission to say “No.” Whether it means sleeping in (no to an alarm clock), meditating, taking a walk, delegating more work, or just turning off your phone and computer (no, I will respond later on my own schedule), simple acts of letting yourself relax and enjoy the moment are the very best gifts you can give yourself.  

Practically speaking, just disconnecting from technology periodically and focusing on cultivating human, face-to-face relationships, even meeting for virtual coffee or drinks, can accomplish so much more than e-mail exchanges, social media posts, etc. Technology helps advance the conversation, but it will never replace the human interaction that maintains balance and builds trust over time.

Paige Arnof-Fenn, founder & CEO of Mavens & Moguls

Creating Quality Content

My podcast has allowed me to build a six-figure one-on-one coaching business, so I know creating quality content IS the practicality in business.

I place lots of white space on my calendar to generate ideas for topics for my podcast that will align with the services I’m offering. When I take the time to articulate my ideas and client results in the content I create, it leads to more growth.

That time is a non-negotiable. For example, if I spend 20 hours doing one-on-one calls, I know it’s equally important I spend 20 hours on creating content that matters to my ideal client. That’s how I’ll draw in my best clients who want what I’m offering. As an aside, it also keeps my existing clients happy because they get even more value from me in the podcast; it’s like a bonus for them.

Future entrepreneurs should practice creating content relevant to the people they want to attract to their business. Not only will their content begin bringing in clients, but it will also help them refine their ideas over time. The more refined their messaging becomes, the easier it will be to bring in best-fit clients.

Dina Cataldo, J.D., master certified coach for lawyers

Don’t Settle for Mediocrity

I work in the creative world. I own a marketing agency and am involved in all stages of the advertising agency process. We’ve been able to succeed by taking the ordinary and turning it on its head. As you can imagine — that requires unique insights, individuals, and talents. One of our core statements is that we “don’t settle for mediocrity.” Yet is it practical to die on the “creativity hill” if the client doesn’t “get it”?

Well, just like my industry, the answer is somewhat “gray.” I don’t believe that anyone who enjoys what they do wants to produce mediocre work. They want their bold position or strong strategic assessment to be looked upon with excitement and then get lost in the energy to move forward and begin building the unique. Yet, as I stated, sometimes it just doesn’t work that

way. When you do run into that barrier, take a breath and try not to sweat it. But make an effort to explain your rationale, the whys, and why nots. That’s all any of us can do. If they still wish to go in a different direction yet still maintain the relationship, move forward — that’s practical.

We can’t win them all; shoot for a high winning average and be ready to take on the next challenge.

Dan Altenbernd, CEO of H2M Brand Haus (Instagram, Facebook, Twitter) 

Clarity and Psychological Safety

When we first began working with companies around the world implementing our Courageous Cultures tools and techniques we tried two approaches.

Sometimes, we say, just say bring us ANY practical ideas to improve the organization.

In this scenario, people learned some critical thinking and problem-solving skills, had fun, and got to know one another better. It wasn’t a complete loss. But most of those ideas weren’t implemented, reinforcing the “nothing ever happens, so why bother” statistic.

With others, we got very specific about what a good idea would accomplish. Leaders identified three or four areas of the organization where they really wanted ideas and were very clear about any constraints the teams needed to consider, and then they applied the tools.

Similar process. Similar time investment. A significant difference in the number of ideas implemented.

In the worst-case scenario, when psychological safety and strategic clarity are both low, most ideas will be negligible, and people are unlikely to have or share them. Frustration is highest in this scene, and people are likely to give up, quit, or leave.

When clarity is high but psychological safety is low, people will have ideas, but they might be too nervous to share them. You’ll have invisible ideas, along with the frustration that first sparked our original research. This is the challenge that most people deeply committed to psychological safety are working to solve.

When psychological safety is high but clarity is low, you’ll end up with lots of ideas. There may be some good ones, but it’s tough to see them. You’ll spend significant time listening (and responding to) ideas, which eats up time from implementing the good ones. You’ve got a pile of unmanageable ideas. This is a challenge that many people deeply committed to psychological safety are faced with and why some leaders shy away from encouraging workplace innovation, “We don’t need more ideas, we have too many already, we just need to execute.”

When strategic clarity and psychological safety are both high, you’re more likely to get remarkable Ideas. When you have more remarkable ideas, there’s less frustration and more usable innovation.
Karin Hurt, CEO of Let’s Grow Leaders and the author of Courageous Cultures and Powerful Phrases for Dealing with Workplace Conflict (TEDx Talk)