Page - 34 - in Digital Entrepreneurship - Impact on Business and Society

the importance of combining data and creativity in today’s digitalised society is emphasised. The creative use of collected data on customer behaviour and pref- erences will determine the success of new innovations and business models. For instance, in amarketingcontext, the IoTwill havea significant impact oncreativity in designing advertising campaigns.Marketerswill be able to grasp every need of every individual customer thatwill sharehis or her preferences and informationvia IoTdevices (Hu2015).Anexampleof this canbe theuseofprogrammatic ads that couldbehighlypersonalised andpublished in a timelymanner.The IoTmeans that any object can be connected to the Internet and retrieve data. Like AI, this will allow for revolutionised ways of gaining customer insights and offering creative marketing content that is personalised to every individual’s needs. However, the technology could be integrated into much simpler objects, such as an electric toothbrush. The connected toothbrush can collect data on usage patterns and ulti- matelymake suggestions or offerings to the customers, such as changing the brush or scheduling a dentist appointment. Rather than simply pushing advertisements, the IoTcanwork as a tool to accordingly time theoffering to addvalue to the right moments when customers need it. The timing of such moments will play a sig- nificant role in customer satisfaction. Nomatterwhat role technologyplays, it still comesdownto thecreativeabilities ofmarketingdepartmentsand ideadevelopment.Theeffectiveandholisticadoption of the IoT inmanagement is perhaps the greatest barrier to overcome.Manyfirms still struggle to apply such technologies, aswell as to reshape their businessmodel to becomemoremeaningful and sustainable. To effectively connect both data and creativity, businesses must maintain a more holistic approach. This means that creative departments should be able to make use of such technologies and have access to data, whereas departments working with data should be empowered to think creatively (Balis 2018). Namely, data provides business with insights into customers to anticipate their needs,which can reduce clutter and refine advertising. Creativeprocessesworkingwith the IoT shouldbe encouraged across all platforms andwill becomemoremachine-driven in order to generate ideas based on content from acquired data.Moreover, the IoT draws a blueprint that every device in our liveswill eventually be connected to the Internet and function as a sensor for data collection, which is reinventing creativity with billions of IoT devices around the world. 2.7 SupportingCreativity ThroughDigital Technologies The digital age appears to challenge much of the existing work on the nature of creativity. Digital technology and related ICT can be seen as a set of tools to be used when appropriate in the creative process. Information and Communications Technologies provide new tools, media and environments for entrepreneurs and employees to be creative. Through ICT, imagination, expression, autonomy and collaboration can be heavily reinforced. Information and Communications Tech- nologies, when fully taken advantage of, can give purpose and foster originality. Unleashing the Creativity of Entrepreneurswith Digital… 35