People Don’t Actually Like Creativity
Except that, most creative ideas are bad.<p>Like the famous observation about Churchill: "His chief of staff Alan Brooke complained that every day Churchill had 10 ideas, only one of which was good -- and he did not know which one."<p>And when I think of product meeting's I've sat in on... generally 90% of the "creative" ideas would be complete disasters. And a lot of the remaining 10% <i>might</i> be good, but the work involved in figuring that out for sure would often be prohibitive, for an unclear payoff. But occasionally you get a gem that everyone gets excited about.<p>I would say that people <i>do</i> like creativity, but only when it's clear that the particular creative solution will likely work. Which is generally not the case.<p>And if people went chasing every plausible creative idea, we wouldn't have time for anything else, like normal productivity. That's why it's a very difficult balance to get right.