By Martin Zwilling

An entrepreneur is literally “one who creates a new business.” The best new businesses are ones that have never been done before, so mastering creativity and recognizing creativity are key skills and mindsets. But how does one recognize and nurture creativity in a person or team?

In researching this question, I reviewed a classic book by Bryan Mattimore, “Idea Stormers: How to Lead and Inspire Creative Breakthroughs,” which details eight attributes of the most creative people, which seem to match the mindsets of some of the best entrepreneurs I know. Investors like me look for these in the people they fund, and you should be looking for them in yourself:

Forever curious. Endless curiosity is the number one indication of the creative mindset. It allows entrepreneurs to challenge what is already “known” to extrapolate that to an original idea. Curiosity infuses you with the determination needed to figure out or learn how to turn an original or innovative idea into a reality.

Always open to new things. Thinking this way can be viewed as quieting the opinions of the judgmental mind long enough to allow the creative mind the time and space it needs to generate interesting insights, associations, and connections. This opens creative possibilities, rather than categorizing new things into self-limited dead-ends.

Embrace ambiguity. This is the capacity to entertain contradictory or incomplete information without discomfort and anxiety. To the creative mindset, contradictions are an invitation to more focused creative thought, to resolve the paradox, and derive a new un-ambiguous potentially great idea.

Finding and transferring principles. There are two parts to this mindset. First is the mental habit or discipline of continually identifying the creative principles inherent in an idea in a given context. The second part is adapting the principle to another context to create a new idea. It’s the ability to work from the specific to the general.

Searching for integrity. This is the desire to discover, and the belief that there exists, an insight or connection that will unite seemingly disparate elements into a single integrated whole. When it happens, it’s exciting and magical, and it feels absolutely, positively, and completely right. Integrity doesn’t need to explain itself.

Knowing you can solve the problem. This is the confidence that you can tackle the difficult, even seemingly impossible challenges, with inevitable dead-ends, to make a creative breakthrough. As with a success mentality, knowingness is the persistence to make creativity a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Able to visualize other worlds. This is the most imaginative mindset, with the ability to visualize whole new worlds and everything in them. It’s the province of game designers and creators of new social media platforms. It’s imagining original themes, people with new roles, and things with unique designs.

Think the opposite. Some of the most creative entrepreneurs (and teenagers) always seem jump to opposite end of the spectrum from conventional wisdom. But many times, to think differently and creatively, you have to think illogically. Logic and common sense have a habit of leading us to the same conclusions.

Of course, it normally takes more than the right mindset to master the creative mind. Smart entrepreneurs leverage their startup creativity with techniques like involving everyone early and often, ideation, and attending to the details. Professional facilitation also helps. Most often, it’s a long hard road from a good idea to successful innovation.

The most creative entrepreneurs create more value and wealth, not only in physical products and services, but also in their intangible assets such as their brand, reputation, network and intellectual property. Of course, they are always looking to free up time and money for their next big idea. That’s really the best indication of a true entrepreneur.

The writer is a veteran startup mentor, executive, blogger, author, tech professional, professor, and investor. Published on Forbes, Entrepreneur, Inc, Huffington Post, among others.

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The number of countries with national suicide prevention strategies has increased in the five years since the publication of WHO’s first global report on suicide, said the World Health Organization in the lead-up to World Suicide Prevention Day on 10 September. But the total number of countries with strategies, at just 38, is still far too few and governments need to commit to establishing them.

Despite progress, one person still dies every 40 seconds from suicide,” said WHO Director-General, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. “Every death is a tragedy for family, friends and colleagues. Yet suicides are preventable. We call on all countries to incorporate proven suicide prevention strategies into national health and education programmes in a sustainable way.”

The global age-standardized suicide rate for 2016 was 10.5 per 100 000. Rates varied widely, however, between countries, from 5 suicide deaths per 100 000, to more than 30 per 100 000. While 79 per cent of the world’s suicides occurred in low- and middle-income countries, high-income countries had the highest rate, at 11.5 per 100 000. Nearly three times as many men as women die by suicide in high-income countries, in contrast to low- and middle-income countries, where the rate is more equal.

Suicide was the second leading cause of death among young people aged 15-29 years, after road injury. Among teenagers aged 15-19 years, suicide was the second leading cause of death among girls and the third leading cause of death in boys

The most common methods of suicide are hanging, pesticide self-poisoning, and firearms. Key interventions that have shown success in reducing suicides are restricting access to means; educating the media on responsible reporting of suicide; implementing programmes among young people to build life skills that enable them to cope with life stresses; and early identification, management and follow-up of people at risk of suicide.

The intervention that has the most imminent potential to bring down the number of suicides is restricting access to pesticides that are used for self-poisoning. The high toxicity of many pesticides means that such suicide attempts often lead to death, particularly in situations where there is no antidote or where there are no medical facilities nearby.

As indicated in the WHO publication released today, preventing suicide: a resource for pesticide registrars and regulators, there is now a growing body of international evidence indicating that regulations to prohibit the use of highly hazardous pesticides can lead to reductions in national suicide rates.

The best-studied country is Sri Lanka, where a series of bans led to a 70 per cent fall in suicides and an estimated 93 000 lives saved between 1995 and 2015. In the Republic of Korea – where the herbicide paraquat accounted for the majority of pesticide suicide deaths in the 2000s – a ban on paraquat in 2011-2012 was followed by a halving of suicide deaths from pesticide poisoning between 2011 and 2013.

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The hashtag #ShameOnTheChurches is trending in Kenya after a Sunday service at a Catholic Church descended into chaos when two MPs started fighting.

They had both addressed the congregation in the town of Kiharu, in central Murang’a county when the argument broke out.

People on Twitter have been sharing footage of the punch-up.

It is not uncommon for politicians to use church services to push their political agendas – as many of their constituents attend church on Sundays.

Much of the politics in the East African nation is currently dominated by who will run in the 2022 elections – and the ruling Jubilee party has divided into factions over the heated issue.

The MPs involved in the fracas were both from the Jubilee party, but from opposing factions.

The fight started when Kiharu constituency MP Ndindi Nyoro refused to hand back the microphone to Maina Kamanda, a politician from the capital, Nairobi, who was overseeing the political segment of the service.

“I can’t allow people from Nairobi to come and take over my constituency as if they know this area. I am an elected leader,” Mr Nyoro, is quoted by Kenya’s Daily Nation newspaper as saying.

Scuffles broke out and the county’s police chief Josephat Kinyua had to intervene to separate them.

Mr Nyoro’s supporters then rushed to his side to stop his possible arrest and the church became disorderly – and fighting continued outside the church.

Following the mayhem, the Catholic Church in central Kenya, where the issue of whether Deputy President William Ruto should run to be the next president is most contentious, has now banned politicians from speaking during its services.

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President Yoweri Museveni has advised girls that have been skilled in a variety of trades to use the vocational skills that they have acquired from their training to meet the needs of people, which in turn, will make them wealthy and prosperous.

The President was speaking at the graduation ceremony of 8480 female graduands who have benefitted from the Presidential Initiative on Skilling the Girl Child of the July- December 2018 intake who successful completed their training and obtained skills in bakery, hair dressing, knitting, tailoring and shoemaking. They were drawn from the areas of Kigowa, Mutundwe, Luzira, Wandegeya, Nakulabye and Katanga in Kampala District.

Despite the heavy rains that started early in the morning up to later in the afternoon, the colorful ceremony was punctuated by singing, dancing and all sorts of celebrations from the jubilant graduands and their families who thanked President Museveni for skilling them.

Musevebi, who earlier toured different exhibition stalls, said that Africans must stop taking jobs and money abroad because they have the capability to work here and became rich.

“Africans go and look for jobs outside yet we have the best weather and resources. People in dry places like Dubai are manufacturing things and making money. This is a sample. We are going to continue supporting such programmes such that we don’t take our jobs and money abroad,” he said.

He also noted that the youth must endeavor to train and acquire new skills like making cement blocks, oil from sim sim seeds and pavers from stones, among other new skills.

He reiterated his plan of forming Savings and Credit Cooperative Organizations (SACCOs) of the same skill-set in various districts in the country to enable them become prosperous.

“We will be doing this in various districts but for big districts like Kampala, we will treat the Divisions as districts. The same will also apply to big districts like Wakiso,’ he explained.

In her brief remarks, the Minister for Kampala City Authority, Hon. Betty Kamya, thanked President Museveni for reaching out to the needs of wananchi and for reducing the burden on parents who have to pay tuition for students.

The in charge of the Presidential Initiative on Skilling the Girl Child, Mrs. Lucy Nakyobe Mbonye, who is the State House Comptroller, advised the graduands to apply the skills learnt and make money as it was the objective of the project. She added that it would be a waste of money if they did not work.

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