The Path to Creative Brilliance

Wouldn't it be awesome if we could just say "Hey I need a really good idea for X", brainstorm for a bit and then end up with a great idea.  This is rarely the way it works.  Creativity needs time to simmer.  Your ideas also need time to grow.  Sometimes you have great ideas waiting to come out but you are just not ready yet.  Great ideas lie on a path and you have to travel down it before you can find them.

A perfect example of this is Steve Jobs and Apple with the development of their mobile products.  We all know that the iPhone came out well before the iPad.  But did you know that they actually started off trying to develop the iPad?  Part way through development they knew what they had was good but realised it wasn't great.  They did see however that what they had was ideally suited to a phone.  They went on a tangent and thus was born the iPhone.  Several years later after the technology had matured, and they knew a lot more about how mobile devices should function, is when they came back and finished off the iPad.

Whether you like or dislike Apple and/ or the iPad there is no denying that it has been a success.  After being on the market for almost 2 years now they still command a leading market share (an estimated 90%).  There are many reasons for this success but a strong contributing factor is that they took the time to get things right.  Instead of deciding to build a tablet and shoe horning whatever they had into that (a strategy that largely led to tablets of lackluster performance by others for a decade before the iPad release).  They instead looked at what they had and built products utilising those strengths, learning from them and coming back to the tablet when they were ready.  And the results speak for themselves.

The Path

You should do the same with your creative pursuits.  In creating creative brilliance, sometimes you are just not far enough down the path yet to realise those goals.  It is at this point that the truly creative doesn't give up, or make do with good enough, but works out what they need to do to progress down the path.  It may be that:

• you need to understand the problem better.
• you need more experiences to draw inspiration from.
• you need to meet the right people to collaborate with.
• there isn't the right technology available yet to implement your ideas well.
• something needs to happen to cause an epiphany.
• etc.

Whatever it is,  be proactive , get out there working out where the path is and what you need to do to progress down it.  Creativity is not just about having awesome ideas but setting yourself up to be in the right place to realise those ideas.

You're on your way to becoming a Highly Creative Person.