Steve Jobs and the Impartiality of Creativity

The incredible life of Steve Jobs, which ended on October 5, taught us—and will continue to teach us—many profound lessons. Among them:

• Follow your gut.
• Great ideas, no matter how crazy they sound to everyone else, are worth fighting for.
• Design matters every bit as much as functionality—in fact, the two are inseparable.
• It takes more work to be simple than it does to be complicated.
• The Beatles were as much a paradigm for business as they were a model for musicians.
• If you have to choose between art school and LSD . . . (well, never mind).

If I may add another, Jobs’ life taught us that when it comes to occupations, creativity is impartial.

Have you ever caught yourself saying (or heard others say), “I’m just not the creative type?” That statement might be true, if you’re only comparing your creative skills to those of accomplished artists, writers, and sculptors. But creativity, being an interdisciplinary skill, doesn’t limit itself that way. It doesn’t discriminate based on how you earn a paycheck. It’s possible to exercise creativity as a nurse, an attorney, a teacher, a salesperson, a clerk, and, yes, even a technophile.

Linda Naiman, founder of Creativity at Work (www.creativityatwork.com) defines creativity as “the act of turning new and imaginative ideas into reality.” Nothing in that definition limits creativity to artists. Creativity can show itself in a new business process, an innovative product, a better teaching method, a new way to tackle problems, etc.

Creativity is a universal language. Any profession understands phrases like “I have a great idea,” “I see things differently,” and “We can do better.” Is the soil of some professions, and of some environments, more fertile for creativity than others? Of course. But that doesn’t mean we can’t cultivate creativity at some level, wherever we are.

Few people will ever have the impact Steve Jobs had on the world. But we can all make a personal pledge to “think different,” wherever we are, whatever we do.