Our fundamental relationship with creativity and those whom we consider to be “creators” is changing. Once, creativity at work was an expectation only for the few — writers, artists, designers, art directors, and employees in traditionally creative roles. However, creativity is quickly becoming one of the most sought-after qualities for all prospective job candidates, according to a LinkedIn study last year .

The COVID-19 pandemic has only accelerated the importance of creativity in the workplace. Many organizations are realizing that creativity plays a role not only in successful marketing, communications, and R&D but also in maintaining a productive and engaged workforce during these unprecedented times.

Psychologists have explained that this crisis might actually boost creativity , especially among Millennials and Generation Z, who are seeking ways to apply their creativity towards meaningful work. About half c onsider themselves to be creators , and they want to apply their talents to their jobs in ways that help them future-proof their skills.

Creativity was already important. It will only become more vital in the future. Here is my advice for business leaders to compete for the creators of tomorrow as well as inspire employees today amid this crisis:

Cascading creativity from the top-down

License for creativity, curiosity, and calculated risk-taking comes from the highest levels of an organization — and not just from the Chief Creative Officer. The entire C-suite from CEO to CTO needs to make creativity part of their organization’s ethos and cascade those values throughout their business.

Even in my role as Chief Commercial Officer, I’m constantly seeking new perspectives, ways of working and creative solutions to our customers’ most pressing problems. I encourage my team to do the same.

Effective creative outlets don’t even have to be work related. Stefanie Coleman, a management consultant at PwC, recently wrote about how a team-wide “doodle challenge” helped her colleagues connect, destress, and unlock different parts of their brains when working remotely during this pandemic.

The great news is that a culture where this kind of creativity is encouraged can have a significant positive impact on business performance. According to a global Adobe survey , businesses that invest in creativity are more likely to foster innovation (83%), have satisfied customers (80%) and provide better customer experiences (78%). Creativity is also shown to positively impact the bottom line, according to McKinsey .

Calling on everyone to be a creator

Unleashing creativity among your workforce is likely to be most beneficial for employees who don’t consider themselves to work in creative roles. Why? Because their room for growth is exponential. Creative thinking can be applied to any position.

Financial services professionals, for example, can augment presentations with graphic design, video, and web development tools such as Adobe Creative Cloud. Product managers can use apps such as Canvaom to display their work dynamically and publish to any device. The United Nations, meanwhile, is literally calling on all creators — asking them to use their creativity to fight this pandemic by helping them to produce engaging public health messaging.

It’s incumbent upon leaders to nudge even the most reluctant employees to flex their creative muscles. According to another McKinsey report , demand for higher cognitive skills, including creativity, will rise ~10% by 2030. After all, human creativity cannot be automated. So, believe it or not, creativity is a form of upskilling that can be naturally and seamlessly integrated into the day-to-day lives of all employees.

Why technology makes or breaks creative momentum

An inconvenient truth about creativity: it is simply not enough on its own. Everyone has the potential to be a “big ideas” person, but without the right tools and systems to execute, inspired ideas remain pipe dreams.

A global Spiceworks survey revealed how revealed how IT decision markers (ITDMs) and business decision makers (BDMs) select their technology tools and applications. Traditional criteria such as reliability, compatibility, cost, and security topped the list for both groups of decision makers, while qualities like product innovation and flexibility were of lesser importance.

However, today, companies should also determine which technologies will be most pertinent and empowering for specific disciplines’ creative capabilities.

Flexibility is a top consideration for younger generations, who seek technology that enhances creative endeavors at any time, while working from any place. Flexible solutions open up space for creativity by allowing users to work untethered from a single application or piece of software, which is especially important as the world shifts to working from home.

Further, emerging and innovative technologies , such as artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), might also influence creativity. As workers are inspired to deliver more creative content ( 60% of creative practitioners say they now spend more time creating content than they did three to five years ago), it’s likely they will need tools to help keep pace with the non-creative parts of their jobs that could be easily automated.

The creative revolution is well underway, only accelerated by our current circumstances. Whether businesses embrace or reject these shifting tides comes down to how they think about culture, individual creative opportunity, and technology.

We frequently talk about “Big C” creative ideas — the marketing campaigns, business initiatives, and creative solutions that capture the public’s attention. I firmly believe, however, that these bigger moments are actually comprised of “small C” opportunities — when individual employees use creativity as a differentiator to enhance their everyday work.

Why you should just hire an expert instead of paying for an online course to grow your business

This might shock you, but the e-learning industry will kill millions of businesses. Before you buy an online course, you should consider your options. I’ll lay it out for you and you can decide for yourself.

I ’m not against e-learning or online courses. In fact, my company offers courses and we have several trusted partners who offer courses. But digital education is not always the answer.

Seeing trends before they crest

In Zero to One , author and legendary investor Peter Thiel asks a question that is now part of every entrepreneur’s preparation process before raising money. He asks, “What important truth do very few people agree with you on?”

Thiel asks this question because those who view the world differently often see the biggest business opportunities before everyone else. Professor Rohit Bhargava writes about the power of trend-spotting in his latest book, Non-Obvious Megatrends , and I’ve written about it in my books as well. I call it “Getting in Early.”

Those who react quickly to a trend usually thrive, while everyone else scrambles to catch up. In the business world, catching up could take months or even years, and at that point it’s often too late. In a nutshell, correctly identifying trends separates the winners from the losers.

Unfortunately, this isn’t as easy as it sounds, and I fear the vast majority of the working world is following a false trend that will put them on the loser end of the equation. Don’t let that be you. I’m sure you’ve seen or heard this line at least once: “COVID-19 has changed the world forever.”

It’s a true statement. Many brick and mortar businesses will fold. Digital content and online services will explode. Immersive gaming, interactive media, and virtual reality will go mainstream. Working from home will be the new normal. And yes, the learning economy will flourish.

Companies like Verses , Zoom, and Teachable are bridging the gap and paving the way forward, but we need to understand how to navigate this new world properly. As with any transition, there are pitfalls.

E-learning pitfalls

The problem with e-learning is that we aren’t living in the Matrix. We can’t plug ourselves into a training program and become experts in the blink of an eye. There is still no silver bullet to replace the power of experience .

The e-learning industry is also full of lackluster courses created by people who aren’t actually accomplished at whatever they are teaching. So now we have an industry that promises you can become an expert in anything, via courses taught by anyone who cares to make one.

I’ve started multiple businesses that have collectively generated tens of millions of dollars in revenue. I’ve also started countless businesses that never got off the ground. I know that when you’re scrambling to get your product or service launched with limited time and resources, buying courses seems like a smart idea and potentially the only option.

You figure, “This stuff isn’t rocket science, and I don’t have enough money to hire a new employee, so I’ll just learn how to do it myself.” A few weeks later, you realize you’re drowning in courses and not getting the results you need.

So what are you supposed to do? You don’t have the money to pay for all the third-party products and roles you need to fill, but you also don’t have the time to learn how to do it yourself. Thankfully, every tragic event in history has a silver lining if you look hard enough. And COVID-19 is opening up a whole new playbook for how entrepreneurs can be successful.

Welcome to the Creation Age

Let’s look at how COVID-19 is affecting the workforce from a macro view. Tens of millions of people are out of jobs, and most companies aren’t hiring. The new trend that hasn’t crested yet is a marketplace for people to help each other directly — vs. buying and selling lectures.

I know what you’re thinking. “I’ve used Upwork and Fiverr, but it’s hard to find talented workers who can do what I need.” I’ve experienced this before as well, but times are changing. Among the millions of people entering the gig economy are highly skilled experts who were laid off. Startups and small businesses have never had access to this level of talent before because they were all tied down by full-time jobs at blue-chip corporations.

I call this new work environment the Creation Age. I wrote about it in Authorpreneur, which I published in early 2019, and we’re now standing at the precipice of this new era. The Creation Age will be sustained by an economy of individual Producers and Consumers.

The norm will shift from working at huge corporations with thousands of employees, to a fragmented but highly skilled workforce of consultants and small agencies who know how to do specific tasks. Companies will hire these experts for one-off projects or as contractors. The economy will revolve around the self vs. the corporation.

Because of the influx of skilled workers, companies will be able to hire talented individuals to perform the work they need vs. potentially wasting time and money with zero ROI trying to learn how to do something and failing to execute. How many times have you bought a course and never done anything with it?

Buying and selling courses the right way

Not all courses are bad. Companies like Smart Passive Income , founded by Pat Flynn, offer high-quality training that will give you actionable next steps and meaningful results. If you’re thinking about offering a course, do it the right way. Companies like Mirasee , founded by Danny Iny, teach proven strategies for creating courses that actually work.

When you’re faced with the decision of buying a course, think about what tasks or role you want to own in your business. You can’t be an expert at everything. Pick one to three areas where you want to excel and buy courses for those things.

For everything else, consider hiring an experienced veteran for one-off projects as needed. Now is the time.

Harness the trend before it’s too late

All of the changes brought on by COVID-19 were already happening: working from home, the gig economy, AR/VR etc. The pandemic just accelerated it.

The balance between hiring and learning is shifting, so be sure to ask yourself this important question before taking a course: is this something I should learn how to do, or should I just pay someone else to do it?

Full disclosure: Some of the businesses and experts mentioned in this article are clients of my company, LaunchTeam.

The next big cybersecurity threat is connected SaaS platforms

This article was originally published on Built In by Aner Gelman.

Text notifications about new messages on Slack. Linking Trello boards to Microsoft Teams. Using Boomerang to control a busy inbox. These apps and platforms — and their connections with each other — are all part of daily life in many companies today. They not only help make remote and hybrid work possible, but are key to building and scaling companies and products .

But the communications between thousands of SaaS platforms are also an emerging threat to corporate cybersecurity . Most existing cybersecurity solutions still do not offer adequate protection or a convenient way to monitor the communications between these apps and platforms, leaving companies vulnerable to cyberattacks and unable to effectively know or control which parties have access to sensitive corporate or personal data .

A handful of high-profile attacks — including a data breach at cybersecurity provider Imperva Security , in which attackers stole an API key that allowed the software to work on Amazon’s cloud, which ultimately permitted the attackers to gain access to sensitive customer data — have resulted from taking advantage of how SaaS platforms communicate with each other. In order to effectively protect themselves, companies need to understand how SaaS platforms are becoming increasingly vulnerable, what’s at stake, and what steps to take.

Current Cloud Security Options Don’t Protect SaaS-to-SaaS Communications

Cloud-based SaaS platforms have been growing rapidly for two decades, as they provide a convenient and affordable way to get tech services for both work and personal use. By now, most modern consumers are familiar with popular platforms, many of which can be customized, like Gmail and Salesforce.

Because SaaS is cloud-based, traditional cybersecurity measures, like firewalls that protected on-premise networks, data, and software, are no longer effective. So the market soon developed CASBs , or cloud-access security brokers, which are intermediaries between cloud-based services and their users or on-premise services. These can be software or hardware-based. But ultimately, they only protect connections between SaaS products and their users. This was fine — until more SaaS products started communicating with each other, doing things like sending a Slack message when a customer opens a support ticket.

More recently, SSPMs, or SaaS Security Posture Management solutions emerged. These have become popular, with research and consulting company Gartner naming them as a top tool in the future of cloud and SaaS security. While these do monitor more aspects than CASBs, they are only available for certain services, and even though they take a cloud-first approach, they are missing additional features, like overseeing the ubiquitous SaaS-to-SaaS communications.

Interconnected Apps Mean More Opportunities for Hackers

Slack popularized the notion of connecting different platforms to work together, and now most SaaS apps are communicating with each other. Each action a user takes, whether it’s sending a message or updating a calendar, may result in several other automatic actions and notifications in connected platforms, and other add-ons and apps for SaaS platforms require access to even more data on the platforms.

This means that if a hacker gains access to one platform, they potentially have access to all of that users’ different SaaS platforms and connected applications. In an age of increased cyberattacks, like recent supply chain attacks that often target organizations in order to gain access to more numerous or valuable targets — like what happened with the well-known SolarWinds attack — this leaves a lot of information extremely vulnerable.

What Can Companies Do to Protect Their Information?

Invest in SaaS security tools

Inventory apps currently in use by employees

Don’t neglect service accounts

Revoke all access from former employees’ linked accounts

Consider establishing an SaaS Operations department

Establish clear policies regarding use of third-party SaaS platforms

Companies need to invest more not just in SaaS security tools, but also in figuring out how many apps their employees are using, and what is being shared on them so that their cybersecurity departments have an accurate and comprehensive understanding of the potential threat landscape.

Organizations are becoming more aware of this, with 55 percent of information security professionals saying the top SaaS security challenge is a lack of visibility into SaaS usage and data. Once gained, they should use this intelligence to write clear policies regarding the use of third-party SaaS apps and platforms that takes into account their employees’ workflows.

Companies should be careful about things like service accounts being neglected, resulting in vulnerabilities like non-used API tokens that can be stolen and used to access privileged information. In addition to the threat of cyberattacks, the web of SaaS products also potentially leaves companies vulnerable to non-authorized users, or former employees, who may, through continuing email or message notifications and add-ons to platforms, have access to sensitive information.

While some automated solutions are emerging to address management of SaaS platforms, one immediate step companies can take is to dedicate a department to SaaS Operations, which oversees the purchase, security, and management of SaaS products a company uses. A recent survey found that 40 percent of IT professionals now see SaaS Operations as a critical new role.