Going deep?

Entrepreneur, Sept, 2003 by Eric A. Sohn

Juanita Weaver's "Creative Zone" piece (July) was right on. Too few companies recognize the strategic value of creativity, which separates the leaders from the copycats.

I'd like to add one additional tip. Because there's a lot of information out there to assimilate, it's important to focus on "shallowness." Being shallow means getting paper-thin snippets of a lot of things rather than developing significant depth--initially, at least. Creative ideas come from synthesizing something new from multiple things you've already been exposed to. To maximize the number of toys you have to play with, you have to be efficient and shallow.

There are lots of great tools for developing shallowness. The best tools are book summary services, of which I prefer getAbstract (www.getAbstract.com), to replace book reading. For $299 per year, you get a five-page synopsis and review of a business text sent to you in PDF, Palm or MS Reader format, in addition to unlimited downloads from their library of more than 2,000 titles. I read 200 book summaries in six months that way.

Other efficient tools include newsletters (such as Communications Briefings or The Organized Executive), magazines that have executive summaries of articles (e.g., Harvard Business Review) and online portals like Yahoo!

Becoming shallow allows the entrepreneur to be more creative than his or her peers, while sacrificing little, if any, precious time working in the business.

ERIC A. SOHN

Chief Idea Officer

IdeaFountain Business Resource

Stamford, Connecticut