Innovative Businesses Prioritize Creativity

Human beings are meant to be creative. Year after year, entrepreneurs and employees alike are constantly driven to transform the world around them into something new, useful, and impactful in both their careers and personal lives.

One problem we witness too often in society is the treatment of creativity and business innovation as mutually exclusive occurrences. Trust me when I say they are directly connected far more than the average person realizes.

Most notably, older organizations are the ones that place creativity in one column and positive disruptions via innovation in another. The fact that many Americans work for organizations that have been around for many decades makes this divide between creativity and innovation all the more concerning. For example, Citibank started as the City Bank of New York in 1812, making them over 200 years old!

The Test of Time

Older organizations, especially those as old as Citibank, have been through a lot. Some have been through the Great Depression, world wars, the Great Recession of 2007–09, and now, most recently, the coronavirus pandemic and subsequent economic downturn.

This can certainly be viewed as a positive feat: For a company like Citibank to withstand so many outside disruptions, they have to be doing…