{"id":9954,"date":"2016-05-31T10:00:37","date_gmt":"2016-05-31T08:00:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hatrabbits.com\/?p=9954"},"modified":"2017-06-15T18:38:21","modified_gmt":"2017-06-15T16:38:21","slug":"creativity-sustainability","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hatrabbits.com\/en\/creativity-sustainability\/","title":{"rendered":"Creativity & Sustainability"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last Friday we gave a lecture on the topic of business creativity and sustainability. This article is an\u00a0excerpt from our talk.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Every organisation needs creativity, and we are all obliged to find more sustainable ways of working. At HatRabbits we are convinced that anyone is capable of generating creative ideas. We also believe that every organisation can innovate in a sustainable way, taking into account the famous trinity; people, planet and profit.<\/p>\n

In this article, I\u2019d like to share with you three simple strategies that I hope will inspire you to search for sustainable ideas to innovate your business.<\/p>\n

1. Make new combinations<\/strong>
\nCreativity is all about combining existing elements to create something new. Strange combinations have always been the foundation of great inventions and innovations.<\/p>\n

Rubble + Lego<\/span><\/em>
\nIn many third world countries rubble (caused by war and natural disasters) is an important cause of several public health issues. While in the Netherlands we reuse 100% of our rubble, in developing countries rubble is still seen as useless waste. Often it is dumped in rivers and in nature.<\/p>\n

Gerard Steijn, a Dutch social entrepreneur combined the problem of rubble with Lego bricks and created what he calls \u2018The Mobile Factory<\/a><\/span>\u2019. The factory, the size of a shipping container, can be placed in any area destroyed by war or earthquakes. The factory takes in rubble and turns it into liquid concrete. It then transforms it back again, into stackable Lego brick shaped concrete blocks.<\/p>\n

One \u201cmobile factory\u201d can produce up to 10 to 20 buildings a day.\u00a0The houses built from\u00a0these bricks are cheaper than normal buildings (they don\u2019t need new building material), are earthquake-proof, and are much more comfortable than the tents most inhabitants are currently living in.<\/p>\n

By combining two seemingly distinct worlds, toys and construction work, a beautifully efficient new way of building (and getting rid of rubble) arose.<\/p>\n

2. Challenge assumptions
\n<\/strong>In every business, you can find many written and unwritten rules. These rules are often useful and necessary. However, they can also almost always be bent or broken<\/a><\/span>. Creativity is all about daring to challenge the obvious. If you want to\u00a0change things, you first have to change the way you look at them.<\/p>\n

Inglorious Fruits and Vegetables<\/span><\/em>
\nEach year we throw away a lot of good food.\u00a0Take fruit and vegetables for example.\u00a0A lot of it is\u00a0rejected simply because it looks weird or\u00a0unattractive. \u00a0Supermarkets\u00a0don’t want to buy unappealing fruit and vegetables. They assume that people don’t want to\u00a0buy straight bananas and\u00a0crooked cucumbers.\u00a0Intermarch\u00e9<\/a><\/span>,\u00a0a large supermarket chain in France, challenged this assumption successfully and showed that people do buy the ‘inglorious fruits and vegetables’ if you offer them the opportunity.<\/p>\n