Ideation

There is an enormous difference between creation and ideation. Being able to create something and being able to decide what to create may be related in a sense, but they’re far from the same skill.

I’ll give you an example. I happen to know an incredibly talented illustrator who works in the comics industry. His art is superb; he can bring the wildest ideas of the imagination to vivid life. In every sense of the word, he’s creative – but he’s also never come up with an original drawing. He honed his craft re-drawing other people’s creations, and now he makes his living drawing art requests from writers. If you can imagine it, he can draw it – but when he just free-form sketches, he inevitably just draws Spider-man over and over.

Every pose different, every line perfect – but always Spider-man.

There’s the difference. We often look at creative people who nonetheless work best with solid direction and say “You’re so creative, why don’t you come up with something yourself?“

That’s a mistake that we’re making. We slip two different concepts under the umbrella term “creative” and then lament when someone isn’t both of them. Many brilliant painters through the ages painted only what they saw – that doesn’t mean they’re not creative. And many people have come up with incredible ideas that changed the world but needed other people to help execute and create the reality of what they’d imagined.

There is no requirement that any given person be both things – or even one, for that matter. Be careful what you assume about a person’s talents.