Innovation, Humility and Genius

In American culture we consider creative and innovation people to be geniuses.  This places a lot of pressure on creatives and innovators to continually produce amazing work.  We treat creatives as if they posses the internal power to create.  However, they don’t have the power to control the creative process.  They have simply learned to make themselves available to inspiration.
Elizabeth Gilbert in a TED Talk made an interesting point about genius.  She said that we have it all wrong.  She said that people aren’t geniuses they are simply influenced by the genius.  She stated that if we think about genius and inspiration in this way we will have a more accurate picture of the creative process.
I agree with her.  I have often stated that you can’t force creativity or inspiration and that people need to set aside time to be inspired.  You can’t force inspiration, and you can’t plan it.  You can just make yourself available to it.  That is one reason I think entrepreneurs should limit the amount of venture capital, debt and non-productive assets they accumulate.  Debt, Venture Capital and non-productive assets require time and energy to manage, and this time could be used searching for inspiration.  These things also place pressure on the entrepreneur, and limits the freedom they have to create and innovate.
P.S. We are proud to officially launch the New Contemporary Analysis (CAN).  We are launching a suite of predictive analytical systems that are designed to be simple, easy to implement, and applicable to almost any type of business.