What's a "Creative?"

It occurs to me I've done a bad thing: I've started using a term without defining it. So let me fix that.

First, full disclosure time: when talking about people I prefer to use adjectives rather than nouns. She’s not “an Indonesian,” she “is Indonesian.” He’s not “a gay,” he “is gay.” I’d rather not go around putting labels on people because labels carry so much baggage with them. One aspect of a person shouldn’t become the entirety of what they are.

So ironically, in this blog, I’m talking about people as if they’re nouns: not “creative” but “Creatives.”I’m doing that because…well, because it’s the easy way out. While I try to make it clear that nothing here can be applied explicitly to everyone in a group, for ease of writing I do need to define some sort of group and offer some focus. Otherwise, my writing will be all over the map and totally unintelligible (which it might be anyway…deal with it).

By Creatives, I’m talking about people who create something new. Sure, it might be art. It might be advertising copy or a video game. It might be a new hairstyle or new fashion. It could be new knowledge. It might be a new long-range business plan. Somebody who creates something that didn’t exist before is a Creative in my book…and also in other peoples’. Richard Florida has published three books so far on what he terms “the Creative Class” and I’ve basically adopted his definition (not very creative of me, I admit, but why reinvent something that already works?). Professor Florida estimates that 40% of the American workforce falls into this category, and when you see the broad definition, that makes sense. Other developed and developing nations have Creative Classes of various sizes themselves…some may be larger than in the US, some are smaller but growing.

Creatives are found in creative firms. Hair salons, graphic design firms, public relations agencies, web development companies…these are the obvious ones. But even non-creative places need Creatives in order to accomplish their mission, whether it’s profit-maximization or managing the nation’s air traffic control system. Manufacturing firms need to know what their market will look like in a few years. Government agencies need to understand how best to use emerging technologies so they can reduce costs when budget cuts roll around. Aid agencies need to create a lasting peace under the spectre of wars and fight disease in places without clean water. Sure, these organizations tend to be pretty bureaucratic in nature, but the bureaucracy can only carry out what the Creatives come up with.

Within the Creatives are subgroups of career fields: artists and software developers and planners and actors and designers and more, all of whom have their own technical skills they need to develop. You're going to have some specific requirements depending on your business, and while there are general strategies for leading creative people there will be unique requirements based on what you what them to do and, frankly, on the personalities of the individuals themselves.

So now that we know what Creatives are, let's figure out what to do with them.