points of view on creativity, creative process, and things alike and akin

All nuance considered, the Kodak empire was built on film. The company’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization has no one cause, but if there was one primary driver, it was the rise of digital photography and the end of film, and Kodak’s inability to adapt to that change.

Here’s the part of the story you probably don’t know. The digital camera, the ultimate cause of Kodak’s decline, was invented by Kodak.

Now, given the nature of technological invention, it is likely that some other company would have invented the first digital camera, but let’s stay with this line for a moment, and say that by inventing the digital camera, Kodak brought about its own decline.

Well, no and yes.

Kodak did bring about its own decline, but not because of the invention of the digital camera. Kodak was the instrument of its own destruction because it clung too fast to the business of film. It was not an either/or decision: it was a yes/and. Kodak’s path forward was to embrace both worlds, the one they were leaving and the one they were entering.

Kodak invented the digital camera in 1975, but did not truly begin the company’s move into digital until 2004. Clearly, we can see with hindsight, this was too late. True, few could have foreseen the speed with which film was eclipsed by digital, but Kodak did not have to foresee this in order to be ready. They brought about their own decline not by inventing the digital camera, but by closing their eyes to change for far too long.

It was never a film-or-digital decision, until it was. For a long-enough time, it was a film-and-digital decision, and Kodak failed to make it.

The question for the rest of us is this: what is changing in your industry that you are choosing not to embrace? Remember, it’s not either/or; it’s yes/and. What’s your yes/and?

Much of the time, creativity is a team sport. One essential aspect of team creative performance is the climate in which the team works. The climate affects the level of engagement people have in their work, and I would posit that — since creativity is a decision — that a worker must be engaged in order to be creative.

Here’s the bad news:

Majority of American Workers Not Engaged in Their Jobs.

Here’s the good news: if your organization is filled with engaged workers (which does not happen accidentally; you have to work at it), you are going to out-think and out-create your competitors.

[OmniSkills can help you assess and improve your creative climate. Email us to learn more.]

Ideas are cheap. Plentiful. Less than a dime a dozen. Ideas are not creativity. Novel solutions, crafted from ideas, make up creativity. What is the difference between having an idea and having a solution? The hard work of actually doing something.

From Poke the Box, by Seth Godin:

• The first imperative is to be aware—aware of the market, of opportunities, of who you are.
• The second imperative is to be educated, so you can understand what’s around you.
• The third imperative is to be connected, so you can be trusted as you engage.
• The fourth imperative is to be consistent, so the system knows what to expect.
• The fifth imperative is to build an asset, so you have something to sell.
• The sixth imperative is to be productive, so you can be well-priced.

I can find a thousand books and a million memos about the first six imperatives. They were drilled into you in countless moments in school, and plenty of graduate schools and bosses are delighted to help you with them. But when it comes to the seventh imperative, it seems as though you’re on your own. The seventh imperative is frightening and thus easy to overlook or ignore.

• The seventh imperative is to have the guts and the heart and the passion to ship.

To promote his new book Anything You Want, Derek Sivers has created a series of interesting animated videos. Here’s one that’s appropriate for creatives, about the way we judge our own ideas.

Obvious to you. Amazing to others. from Derek Sivers on Vimeo.

Creativity equals change.

While the word “creativity” is tossed about so casually that it has become a kleenex word (that is, it has become generic rather than specific), there are some of us still fighting to reclaim it. So: creativity is the work of producing something new and valuable. When introduced to others, this new thing (product, solution, theory, method, etc.) by its very nature is a change.

Which raises a question: don’t we all resist change? Isn’t change bad?

Actually no, and no. First, let’s consider resistance. As humans we crave change. Not in everything, and not all the time, but we have an inborn need to grow and learn and develop. When we are not changing, we say things such as “I’m in a rut.” This is not to suggest that there is never resistance, but to emphasize that the commonly-held belief that we all resist all change is just not true. What we do resist are those things that cause cognitive dissonance: senseless change, random change, change that is clearly not for the better.

But: why do we seem to resist change even when it’s positive? I believe that we are reacting to the fact that change is difficult. It’s not about the change, it’s about the hard work of change. Which may also be why true creativity is relatively rare: creativity is not the sudden idea, it’s the hard work of forging a novel and valuable solution out of that idea.

Finally, is change bad? Here’s the answer, as succinctly as possible. Seth Godin said, “Change is not a threat, it’s an opportunity.” And that, precisely, is how creative people think.

This is a recommendation for Art & Copy, a 2009 documentary about advertising and the people who create it, which serves as a reflective glimpse into creatives and creativity, ideas and environments, vision and persuasion, and creating art for the sake of commerce.

I watched it just a few days after visiting the World of Coca-Cola in Atlanta, which celebrates all things Coke, and serves as a tour into the advertising arc of that product. I left the Coca-Cola exhibit feeling a bit unsettled – this is the celebration of a soft drink, after all – but after seeing Art & Copy, I thought better of it. Art & Copy shows how advertising can be a mirror into our culture at any given time. The best advertising talents know how to look at the culture and capture it; they don’t create it.

Film web site: artandcopyfilm.com, and streaming at Netflix.

In upstate New York, where I grew up, we decorated the eaves of our homes with icicles. Real icicles. Snow collected on the roof, and is it melted, it created lovely ice stalactites. (Lovely and life-threatening. I’ve seen icicles as big as a second grader.)

In Charlotte, NC, we hang icicle lights from our roofs, perhaps in nostalgia for the icicles of Damocles. I deeply dislike this chore. There is nothing easy: an hour or more up on the roof, untangling, wrangling, stretching, hanging, and trying to avoid plummeting.

Here’s the idea, free for anyone who will build and sell it to me: embed lights into the gutters. They wouldn’t be icicles (no loss there), but more like rope lights. They would be long-lasting LEDs, and they could be programmed in different colors for different occasions. A string of red for Valentine’s Day. Red and green for Christmas. Orange for Halloween. Red, White, and Blue for Independence Day.

And independence for all of us from hanging those darn lights ever again.