Creative People (Are Set To) Rule The World
Experlio The world is entering a new age.
Post the industrial era, businesses have been focused on process automation and driving business value via the rapid and never ending adoption of technology.
Technology has helped bring about massive positive change, there’s no doubt about it, but it’s also increased the complexity of the average profession.
Along with this adoption of technology, a digital world has created an opportunity for more thoughtful businesses to boom.
Businesses don’t just need people who are skilled at completing tasks or competent in technology, they need people who can use their technical knowledge and imagination to solve complex problems in a unique way.
These people are creative. And their significance in the world is becoming more and more prominent.
What Creative People Have That Machines Don’t
Creative people have something that can’t be replicated by machines, not even in a thousand years. It’s the power of ideas!
Creative individuals love to think outside of the box, on a meta-level, formulating new ideas and innovative solutions to problems. And to create value in today’s competitive climate, businesses need to do exactly that. That’s why there’s a growing demand for creatives, and as we continue refining our processes and solving more and more problems with technology, this trend will continue.
The truth is, the nature of work is changing. Even two decades ago, businesses mostly needed employees for routine jobs. The emphasis was on production rather than innovation. But today, businesses have the technology or should we say ‘machines’ to perform those routine tasks. So, the emphasis on innovation has grown massively.
Today’s jobs require individuals that can solve critical problems, that’s the work of the heads, and find solutions to emerging business challenges through innovative design thinking, that’s the work of the hearts.
The Rise of Creative People
As the infographic suggests, there have been exponential rises in the demand for creative people and creative skill sets. From the slow (.09% annually) but steady rise of ‘creatives’ making up more of the workforce, to the recognition of creativity as an essential enterprise skill (65% increase in demand over 5 years) to explosive growth rates of 489,000% rises in content creator job roles. These bitcoin-like gains can sound both impressive and outlandish, though rest assured this trend has been a long time in the making. Thus the rise of the Creative Class, Creator Economy and Creative Careers have also been gradually emerging over time.
Just like compounding gains, over a short period of time things can appear pretty linear and nothing out of the usual, but observe the trend over a matter of 5, 10 or even 15 years and you’re looking at a hockey stick graph!
It’s really impressive to see creative people rising up, taking independence and leadership in so many areas of business. The fulfilment and excitement of leading a creative life encourages many people to look outside what they know and view the world around them through a different lens – a more creative lens you could say…
Creativity Is Serious Business
It’s said that creativity accounts for 2.3 Trillion dollars of activity in the Global Economy ($85 Trillion) – that’s 2.7% of the global economy.
The industries that creativity feeds into in today’s day and age are growing at rapid rates now too!
The creative market size of digital content is $300 Billion and growing rapidly at 11% p.a with the market for design services growing even faster at 13% p.a and is expected to reach $250 Billion by 2022.
The industries that creative people can develop their careers in are ever expanding too – now more than 16 industries in total; from Marketing to Design to more traditional fields like Arts, Craft and Advertising.
So, with the ever expanding definition and application of creativity, you might be wondering what actually makes people creative?
What Makes People Creative?
Creativity is the ability to solve problems, often in an unconventional, and original way.
Creative people are characterised by their ability to see the world in new ways, to find hidden patterns, and generate solutions.
In other words, creative people are just natural problem solvers. That’s not to say that you must enjoy solving every problem that creeps into your life. Not at all. It’s often about creating fewer problems in our daily lives so that we can focus on the bigger problems at hand. Whether that’s our work or hobbies.
The truth is, we’re all creative. It’s not something you need to have a degree in. But not everybody has the willingness to engage in problem-solving. Some don’t get the scope. Others just simply lack the willpower. They don’t acknowledge or even try to explore the idea that they might be creative. “Oh I couldn’t do that, I’m not creative…”
There have been many studies into stereotypical creative people and those that have made it their profession and achieved a lot from doing so. The jury is still out on the science to creative people, however we delve into some of the theories in our other article here.
Are Creative People Smart?
Do you define intelligence as having a high IQ? It’s said that both Albert Einstein and Steve Jobs had an IQ level of 160, and they are two of the most creative individuals of their generation. Interestingly enough, lots of other famous creative people throughout the years have been known to have a high IQ also.
But that’s not to say an IQ test should determine a person’s ability to be creative. And in actual fact, placing this constraint on somebody will already limit their confidence to attempt to be creative. We believe everyone is capable of being creative. Some just might need more practice at it than others.
Creative People Are Thirsty For Knowledge
Creative education is of interest to a lot of people, with over 12 million students choosing to enrol in a creative degree in India alone! Whilst there is strong demand for creative education from aspiring creatives, most creative people will admit to being autodidacts, teaching themselves many skills. In fact, 72% of creatives admit to upskilling or learning by doing after undergoing their initial studies.
Examples of Famous Creative People
To wrap things up we thought we’d live you with a little inspiration from famous creative people who have left their mark on history.
Starting With a Less Famous Creative Person, But Equally Impressive
Let’s take the story of Khoi Vinh for example. He’s a creative designer working on Adobe XD, a software for creating prototypes of websites and mobile apps. Khoi was annoyed that users still have to use a mouse and keyboard to operate this software. He thought “why can’t we just tell the software what to do?” It’s a crazy idea that most of us might have never imagined. We think that it’s normal to use computer software with a mouse and keyboard. But for Khoi, it was a problem that needed an innovative solution. That’s why he created the voice command feature on the Adobe XD, which turned into one of the biggest innovations in Adobe’s history. This is how creative minds think. They find problems that aren’t always obvious, and better yet they come up with the solutions that just make things better.
Some of the most famous creative people outlined below are those that’ll inspire creative minds for generations to come.
Steve Jobs
If you’re a business person, then Steve Jobs might be the first name on your mind when you hear the word “creative”. Rightly so, he’s a godfather of many tech products that inspire us and facilitate creativity in our daily lives – The Mac, iPhone, iTunes, App Store, Pixar animation studios and the many other creative innovations that would eventually come out of these companies and products.
Steve Jobs was always obsessed with technology and creative arts. Before he even came out with the iPhone, he spent many years figuring out what doesn’t work. He wanted to help people become more productive and efficient with digital tools. He never considered a product as a perfect solution, if there was even a tiny room for improvement.
There’s a famous story of Steve Jobs and the iPod which shows his obsession with building the perfect solutions. When Apple’s engineers came to him with the first prototype of the iPod and said “it can’t be any smaller”, Jobs threw it into the water tank. The device went to the bottom and small bubbles floated up. “Those are air bubbles. That means there is space inside. Make it smaller ” – said Steve Jobs.
His obsession with finding the perfect solution for a product really made him one of the most creative persons in history.
Leonardo Da Vinci
Imagine how creative a person has to be, to be remembered and referenced for 600 years. Da Vinci’s legacy will surely last for a thousand years and more. He was one of the greatest polymaths to have ever existed.
When we say that creative minds always strive to know and learn about everything, Leonardo da Vinci is the greatest example of that. It’s hard to think of an area of knowledge that da Vinci didn’t have expertise in. From science to arts, literature, medical, he was the classic ‘know-it-all’.
People often say that the greatest fear of Da Vinci was ‘curiosity’. When he saw a bird, he had to design an aircraft; when he saw people with different body shapes, he had to know the measurement for the ideal human body. These are just some of the craziest creative ideas he had.
This is an example of how we should strive to know as much as we can. Creative minds don’t sit idle, their only enemy is the lack of knowledge.
Larry Page & Sergey Brin
It wouldn’t be right to talk about creative minds without mentioning the founders of Google. We’ve said it a million times now “Creative people are natural problem solvers”. Page and Brin did just that. They solved the most basic problem every grad student had in the 90s, “How can we easily get any information from a single place”.
From that question, Larry Page and Sergey Brin created Google. Most of the people at that time were happy with libraries. You want information, you go through books and papers, that’s it. But creative minds will appear to find ideas out of thin air. They simply didn’t like the effort of flicking through countless pages.
The example of the Google founders shows that no idea is too small, and no solution unnecessary where it solves a real problem.
Takeaway
So, for the creative minds, keep working on those crazy ideas, you might just end up changing the world.
Infographic References:
- https://www.fya.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/The-New-Basics_Update_Web.pdf
- https://images.content.deloitte.com.au/Web/DELOITTEAUSTRALIA/%7B90572c4f-4bb5-4b54-bf27-cc100d86890d%7D_20190612-btlc-inbound-future-work-human-report.pdf?utm_source=eloqua&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20190612-btlc-inbound-future-work-human&utm_content=body
- https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/10/top-10-work-skills-of-tomorrow-how-long-it-takes-to-learn-them/
- https://en.unesco.org/news/new-report-shows-cultural-and-creative-industries-account-295-million-jobs-worldwide
- https://unctad.org/topic/trade-analysis/creative-economy-programme
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_class
- https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/au/Documents/Economics/deloitte-au-economics-future-of-work-occupational-education-trends-marketing-110118.pdf
- https://venngage.com/blog/marketing-skills-2016/
- https://research.qut.edu.au/dmrc/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2018/03/Factsheet-1-Creative-Employment-overview-V5.pdf
- https://www.businessofbusiness.com/articles/hiring-for-creators-has-increased-489000-percent-creator-economy
- https://www.arts.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0025/45367/Creative_Graduates_Creative_Futures_PDF_1.5MB.pdf
- https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/search/?geoId=92000000&keywords=creative&location=Worldwide
- https://www.adobe.com/content/dam/acom/en/max/pdfs/AdobeStateofCreate_2016_Report_Final.pdf
- https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/07/secrets-of-the-creative-brain/372299/
- https://www.canva.com/learn/most-creative-countries-in-the-world/
- https://www.education.gov.in/sites/upload_files/mhrd/files/statistics-new/aishe_eng.pdf
- https://en.unesco.org/news/international-year-creative-economy-sustainable-development
