In the Creativity and Innovation course, Maryam Fadhilah presented the material Creativity as a Tool for Problem Solving on Tuesday (5/7/2022). Maryam Fadhilah has various experiences in business and social activities. She pursued her studies at MBA ITB after studying at SBM ITB.
Maryam Fadhilah introduced her Richie Garden business as the learning material. Richie Garden is now a family villa, restaurant, and provider of outing facilities. The Richie Garden brand has gone through various struggle to become what it is today. At first, Richie Garden was a family-owned vacant lot dedicated to cattle. Because there is a lot of unmanaged space, Maryam Fadhilah decided to use the land to build a business. Initially, the land was only an outdoor activity facility for customers. Later, the land also was used for education and farming.
However, due to operational difficulties, Maryam Fadhilah made a pivot. While continuing Richie as an outdoor activities facility, she changed her direction toward hospitality. After going through various challenges, including Covid-19, Richie Garden, originally named Richie The Farmer, has managed to sell many services and products. Such as restaurants, family villas, MICE (Meetings, Incentives, Conferences, Exhibitions), and outdoor activities (for companies, schools, campuses, and family gatherings).
“Creative thinking is the ability to think about things in new ways. People often say thinking out of the box, and it is true. Sometimes we have to go out to see things differently,” explained Maryam Fadhilah.
She added getting out of the safe zone does pose some risks. It could be risking reputation or even the comfort and safety zone itself. However, the ability to think creatively enriches our ability to survive in any situation. For example, in the business world, creative thinking can increase revenue by providing more services without adding employees. Creative thinking can also help marketing activities with minimal effort and makes management systems more efficient.
According to Maryam Fadhilah, we can train creative thinking ability. The ways are communication, open-mindedness, problem-solving, analysis, and organization. “Organization is often as irrelevant as creativity. However, by being organized, we can articulate our action plans better and meet deadlines,” she said.
Maryam Fadhilah also discussed the ideation process or creating ideas. In creating ideas for business needs, there are two types of approaches: a market approach and a product approach. The market approach often uses a customer journey map. Using these mappings, we can generate ideas for business. The product approach often uses the Design Thinking Process (design-based thinking process). The process consists of empathizing, defining, ideating, prototyping, and testing. We could generate ideas in business using one of the approaches or a combination of both.
Practically speaking, Maryam Fadhilah advises entrepreneurs to “go out.” From ‘going out’, which is rich in discussion and insight, we can practice skills that can help businesses. Going out also gives us its challenges to be able to deal with uncertainty.
At the end of the class, Maryam Fadhilah quoted Albert Einstein, “creativity is seeing what others see and thinking what no one else ever thought.”