Creativity Killers

What are the 2 absolutely critical ingredients for creativity to succeed? How well does the world provide them?

As Warren Buffet famously said, you cannot get a child in one month by impregnating 10 women simultaneously. Similarly you cannot force creativity in to an assembly line process. While Hollywood discovered that super hero sequels are the greatest bankable story lines for a blockbuster, not every sequel is a hit and neither is every remake. Irrespective of how much the world wants it, creativity cannot come against a tight timeline and a mass production scale.

Two critical ingredients are Patience and Scarcity. All great ideas take time to take shape and evolve into something impactful. They also need to be sufficiently scarce that their value is deeply appreciated. The Italian masterpieces that the world values so much are unique and are not mass produced.

However once the creativity takes shape into the commercial world, there is an incredible urge to do it faster and bigger/more. These tend to kill the very aspects that make creativity itself in the first place. A masterpiece becomes a commodity once its mass produced and the quality suffers as the process is fast tracked. In a world where luxury product makers are listed on stock exchanges that need quarterly earnings growth, there is no time for ingenuity. Forced growth forces compromises that eventually show up.

Truly creative enterprises struggle with this balancing everyday. One sees balance of power alternating between 'creatives' and 'spread-sheeters'. Some bring 'special editions' to latch on to the scarcity aspect. Some take leaps of faith on new ideas that eventually end up being useful in ways different from originally imagined. Some try to resist the temptation to 'templatize' everything while some cannot.

Those who get it right, find the rewards compounding for years and decades!