Creativity — a talent or a skill that can be learned?
And how it can be a crucial factor in the development of startup stories
“ If you start believing in your own greatness it is the death of your creativity. “
1 How to think of something creative?
The main bug of today’s industry is the overwhelming desire to be innovative, unique, and exclusive. Never seen before. However, instead of asking ourselves whether there is a particular quest in specific industries for this skill, we tend to create even more and then implement all those ideas into everything we can.
Often, in this illusion, instead of being rewarded for enthusiastic endeavors, there is an over-saturation of the market with the expansion of creatives and visuals among all channels, so that you can no longer chill on Instagram like a proper human being. Ads are gonna pop out immediately and distract you. Creative ones, tbh.
Instead of scrolling and mild annoyance because we can’t watch the stories in peace and satisfy our hormonal dose of happiness, what if we wondered about what was behind those creatives? Of course, in most cases, we won’t do it, because we don’t have time.
But, hypothetically — let’s suppose that we have made up our minds, what do the people at the creative agencies behind these commercials do? How do they brainstorm all those ideas, and what does their thought process look like? We might also ask the most crucial question in the whole story if we dig deep enough — if they can do something this big for a company, why wouldn’t they do the same thing for a very own, private business? What if they drop all their creative and timeless ideas at work and then go home super exhausted and sleep by tomorrow morning?
2 Tool vs. science
To discover what remains of this great creativity for our personal project, let’s start with the creative process itself. It starts from the formation of a broad objective image of our self. Have you ever heard that a visionary looked at a narrower picture of anything? Think broadly and push your imagined boundaries.
The brain is a muscle.
And we can build it and work on its volume and resistance. Let’s start with the idea that to form a particular idea, we might use some predefined templates. However, what if, in this case, we did not have the right formulas to explain specific calculations that led us to form the final thought? We were not taught this at school, nor can we see this inexplicable phenomenon in informal, traditional education.
Elon Musk himself stated that the faculty symbolically represents an institution where we do some default tasks and learn many things by heart so that we can forget them as soon as possible.
But, in fact, we learn little or almost nothing tangible and directly applicable in everyday life, not to mention the abstract themes like the development of startups or small businesses.
This then leads us to the conclusion that we need to change behavioral patterns and create new formulas for our flow of thoughts to result in different views and ideas that are further classified as innovative, or, in this case, creative. The brain is a muscle. It can be built. And it is possible to change both the way we think and the way we create, the way we come up with ideas, with just a little will and the right intentions.
Don’t think outside the box — Imagine it doesn’t exist
Let’s put things this way. Let us imagine that letters are a tool. Techniques for creating words and sentences structure are a tool. The Internet is a tool. So we can draw the premise that we live in a world of tools.
Steve Jobs realized early on that we were living in such a world and used that for his entrepreneurial ventures. Besides, he sought to be in the right place at the right time.
He was more willing than others to take risks and make mistakes, but also to learn from them.
He has had a wide range of experiences in his life. He was stubborn about putting his ideas into action.
This further leads us to ask ourselves — If all we thought was science at school, in fact, is a tool in real life — then what does that abstract noun mean, entrepreneurship? Does it constitute a set of tools that are valid for use in the creative process of founding a startup? In other words, what differentiates entrepreneurs who use these same tools differently from “ordinary” people?
The answer is the craft in which they use these tools.
Transforming the value of simple content.
So entrepreneurship is defined by the craft that we use in everyday life, and creativity is a set of tools that we learn to use overtime to accomplish stages in entrepreneurial ventures. Also, all of these tools are there for us to use them to prove something higher. Whether we compute the level of innovation or estimate the timeless factor of a specific idea. Something that will overshadow people the first time they come across it. Later comes adaptation and mainstream. For sure, the iPhone didn’t use to be found on a charger by the bed of many people in the world overnight.
Now, with this approach, we can see how small people are. What is a pity is that people, throughout life, consciously reject that incredible potential of dealing with matters and laws higher than them and begin to adapt to the patterns, structures, and expectations of the community. They begin to become content with the aspect that they are now adults and that there is no place in their life for something foolish like an entrepreneurial venture, a passion project, or, far from it, the pursuit of their dream that they have secretly kept working.
The audacity to transform talent into skill
But if we look even a little closer, we will also see a pattern that people consciously or unconsciously stand in their learning process in one aspect and do not know further what to do with it. And only then, many questions are raised, and we can clearly see how many people are buried in their own ignorance within what is supposed to be real knowledge. This is the point where we might get stuck if we do not use the tools properly and subconsciously make the decision to live trapped in repetitive cycles.
Even though entrepreneurs sometimes get beat up, they often don’t get trapped in those behavioral patterns.
We are all, somewhat, craftsmen
So, we figured out that entrepreneurship is a set of tools that we use for a higher purpose, aka creation. This further means that every job, creative or not, is based on the use of tools. And all this becomes pure philosophy with the way tools are used. Indeed, we will not expect a lawyer or dentist to be creative as we fight for our lives, on the other hand. However, it is quite realistic that an Account or Copywriter in a creative or experimental agency seeks to look at things differently and set new directions in the cognition of a creative new age.
Now that we know that all tools, including the phone itself, are a set of specific algorithmic tools, we can see to what degree we are evolving as a community.
Does the startup community have a future?
It is up to us to decide — will we be brainwashed and harness the talents and skills we have to create the lifestyle we deserve, or will we choose to spend on Instagram a few more hours? The answer is pretty straightforward.
Originally published at https://balkanup.com on March 16, 2020.
