No one knows, exactly, when a baby will be born.
We can estimate a due date. We can peer in and predict, we can measure this and monitor that. Yet for all our technological devices and medical advances, birth is still very much the domain of art, not science. We don't decide when babies will be born. Babies do.
Ideas, like babies, decide when to be born. They defy prediction.
Just as we can't predict which jokes will make us laugh, or which person will spin us madly in love, the creative process isn't really a “process” at all. Yes, we can dissect every step someone goes through to develop a creative idea, but at some point there's a quantum leap from A to B to C to K. How does it work? Where does it start? When will it happen?
The reality is, creativity simply isn't rational. It's sweaty and red-blooded. Tempestuous. It wakes up at 2 A.M. struggling whether to tweak a headline one hundredth of an inch, or start over entirely.
When I began in advertising, the creative process seemed almost supernatural. How could anyone possibly distill the intricacies of a brand, then hone them into an idea sharp enough to cut through people's natural resistance, into their hearts and their brains, ultimately connecting with the magical decision-making hot button that decides which toothpaste or hotel room or politician to choose? I had no idea how a plain, dull fact could metamorphosize into an idea with the power to change behaviors and beliefs.
It seemed like alchemy, transforming a lump of raw information into the golden idea.
Since then, I've learned that the creative process really is alchemy. Very much so. Creative people defend the world from predictability, one idea at a time. They don't just write and design and art direct — they articulate our most personal unspoken insecurities and intentions. They don't just sell — they show us what matters.
And that's why, geeky though it may be, I love the whole sloppy mess of creativity in my work. I love when a brand needs to figure out who it is, what it stands for, why people should care. I love working with smart creative people, developing thoughts that leave the world an ever so slightly more interesting place than before those thoughts were thought.
The process of creativity is especially important today — in any industry, and any discipline, at any level. Because for all its maddening imprecision, creativity always triumphs. Information comes and goes. Transactions can be outsourced. Technology becomes obsolete. Opinions change, and tastes change even faster. But creativity will always be essential, and rare.
Creativity is the difference between information and genius. It's the difference between transcribing a dictionary and writing. When you see people in awe of Google's algorithm or Apple's devices, remember: The ultimate technology is you.
One day, at a low point in my own career, while riding in a taxi through San Francisco, I saw a graffiti sentence spray-painted in 10-foot tall letters. “I just feel like something wonderful is about to happen.” That sentence changed my life. Why? Something wonderful is always about happen, if you're ready. If you understand that creativity, like life, is a process. You can't know what comes next, because like babies and tears and falling in love, creativity is gloriously imperfect.
That's where this book comes in. We get to stroll around as guests in the brains of the smartest thinkers, learning exactly how their ideas are born. Read, savor, ponder, and then ask yourself a question: In your own life, what extraordinary thing will you create that's irrepressibly, inimitably, audaciously you?
— Sally Hogshead, speaker, brand innovation consultant, and author of Fascinate: Your 7 Triggers to Persuasion and Captivation , and Radical Careering: 100 Truths to Jumpstart Your Job, Your Career, and Your Life