On the misplaced fetishization of a “big idea.”
It happened in front a dead shark.
Actually, a dead shark embalmed in formaldehyde.
Damien Hirst’s dead shark.
As I stood there, at the museum, years ago — partly inspired, mostly confused — I overheard something that I often reflect on as someone working in the creative industry today.
Two teenagers, probably on a class trip, also staring at the dead shark…
“This is art? I could have done that.”
To which, his friend replied with mockery, “Yea, but you didn’t.”
I didn’t grasp the profoundness of that rebuttal then. I don’t think the friend did either. But it is something that continues to underpin my core belief about creativity.
That, simply, ideas are cheap.
In fact, ideas are most worthless part in creativity.
Sure, Hirst’s idea of putting a tiger shark in formaldehyde could have been conceived by anyone — even a teenager. Perhaps, it was. But what everything else he did before the shark was exhibited was made it valuable. Anyone can paint a Rothko or a Pollock, but very few can deal with daily struggle, rejection, hustle or disappointment of being a working artist.
They deserve the fame, because they did it.
They did what was necessary to get attention for it. They shook the right hands, said the right things, got a little lucky. Not because they thought of it.
In the creative industry, we are obsessed with ‘ideas.’ We are obsessed particularly obsessed with ‘big ideas.’ That one clever unifying, organizing, governing thought, purpose, strategy, “line” that magically answers a business problem. There is an idolization of it — the apparent simplicity of one intoxicates clients and agency people alike. Glimmering like unburied treasure.
As such, there is a constant search for it. In fact, if I had a nickel for every time some asked, “Yea, but what’s the big idea?” — I’d could buy my own dead shark.
But think of the last brainstorm you had, searching for a big idea. Good ideas were a dime a dozen. Unfortunately, 99% of them evaporated into the air as quickly as they left the lips. Never to be written down, captured or further examined. As such, they are worthless.
The most valuable part of creativity is not the idea but the realization of it. The process of make exploring it, codifying it, refining it, selling it, starting over, doing it all again.
Most clients think they are paying for a big idea. They’re actually paying for the “idea-ing” of many small ideas, of which, after a painful process, a few emerge to see the light of day…to fail anyway.
I would argue Just Do It, Smarter Planet, Keep Walking — the bastions of big ideas — were not big ideas the first time the world saw them. Not yet, they weren’t. It’s the repetition of them is what made them big. The discipline not to jump to the next thing (especially when that initial failure flashes) is what them big. The curiosity to unlock another expression of them is what them big. It was everything else around the idea itself is what makes it valuable.
Not ‘1% inspiration, 99% perspiration.’ But 1% inspiration, 29% perspiration and 70% preservation.
You don’t “come up” with a big idea. You “come down” with it. You land it. Write it. Put it to paper. Do something with it that can’t evaporate.
Everything else is worthless.
Everything else is “Yea, but you didn’t.”
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