While having a conversation with a fellow blogger on Twitter, I asked her how she came up with the name for her company. In her response, I remarked upon how creative I thought she was and said,

“Creativity is who gets there first ”

Huh?

I’m not quite sure where those words came from. When did such a thing become a mission of timeliness instead of genius? Or, is it both? Is creativity more about being lucky or opportunistic?

Side note: Yikes. There goes another one of those long winded rhetorical questions. Debate at will once you finish reading this post.

Being the cleverest person at the table helps very little when the idiot next to you manages to shout what he/she heard you reciting in the company restroom. And, this is only because they said it first.  No one cares if they thought of it first. Being first is particularly appealing nowadays because being last only makes you late.

And, being late doesn’t get you anywhere besides a soggy cry-fest in the restroom.

The tactile business of usurping ideas is fraught with many unfortunate casualties. One can understand the obvious difference between someone who can think of something new to do versus someone unabashedly taking over an idea as their own. At the end of the day, what does it matter as long as the execution takes place?

How important is it to be creative if you can’t (or won’t) produce?

Secondly, while I believe myself to be a creative person, I am not sure if I’m “productive” enough for execution. I have lots of ideas. I’m probably pursing .02% of them. Does that make me unambitious (or lazy)? Perhaps.

And while that is happening, somebody with balls-of-titanium-steel gumption develops sticky finger syndrome and snatches up everything I worked so hard to “think” about.

Perhaps, I’m fooling myself because the clever person is not necessarily me: it’s the producer. So what if  s/he has have to work harder because they’re dealing with a “creative” handicap?

It doesn’t matter. Because from the get go, they’re working a lot smarter than I am.

They have the common sense to recognize a good idea and run away with it.

Literally.