It may be a bit of a business cliche, but there is a reason that the phrase ‘thinking outside the box’ crops up so often when it comes to entrepreneurialism. It’s a crucial ability to see things differently that will help you innovate and develop new ideas, and stay one step ahead of your competitors at all times.

The fact is that an organisation needs rules and governance to keep it stable, but these very necessary factors can become constraints that stop you from thinking differently and ultimately, lead to a blinkered approach. Conceptualising challenges in a new way is a huge advantage for any business leader, so it is a skill that you should seek to develop. So how do you know when you need to overcome some limits? What techniques can you use to challenge your own biased ways of thinking?

Look Outside Your Sector

We all become used to focusing on industry trends and what a handful of our closest competitors are doing. But this can become an inward-looking spiral which encourages us to tread the same old pathways. Real innovation often comes from looking at a completely different sector laterally, and understanding what lessons we can learn from other, unconnected businesses. This can be as simple as using Google Trends to understand what wider topics and companies are gaining attention. Or it could mean making a case study of an industry leader and looking at what they are doing differently which has potential to translate across to what you do.

Set up a Side Hustle

Sometimes we are zeroed in on the running and day-to-day workings of our business, and a good way to challenge that mindset is to set up something else. Not only will you diversify your income and gain a new source of revenue, but you will learn things which can be transferred to your main business. This could be as simple as developing a wordpress directory plug in, setting up a temporary ecommerce site around a large sporting event or looking into dropshipping – something which will be fairly easy to maintain but can make you look at problems from a different angle.

Do Some Online Learning

Learning something new is a surefire way to shake up set modes of thinking. There is a wealth of courses to be had at the press of a button these days. Whether it’s brushing up your management skills with LinkedIn Learning, taking an online course in time management to make your days more productive, or even something more formal such as taking an online MBA, you can only stand to gain, both in opening your horizons and your perspective, and the new skills you will be learning which can feed back into your business. You could even just download a language learning app and start to develop a new language. The opportunities are almost endless, and with distance learning you can fit them around your existing commitments. There’s nothing like the act of learning something to challenge your preconceptions and force you to see things from a different point of view.