Innovation is Supposed to Be Eccentric

Image from a 1964 production of Alfred Jarry’s Ubu Roi

In terms of the frequency of the words “creativity” and “innovation” used historically, there has been a remarkable increase in the past century. Searching for resources with those two words in the title on WorldCat ranges from 5 in 1900 to 108 in 2017. Certainly, social media has fueled it; and social media in itself can be seen as innovative in this context--but has had negative consequences where it has overheated. Many articles on either the topic of creativity or innovation would include both words, as they are both fuzzy concepts. As a person who has been in the creativity trenches most of his adult life, I realize that it does not apply to every endeavor. It is useful when you want to indulge in divergent thinking, as you might discover something that you missed.


Innovation is a euphemism for creativity, but not the other way around. What I see in the business world are attempts to do what artists or musicians do in studios. They want to be Charles Eames--or the Charles Eames that is seemingly having fun all day. In my experience, creativity is mostly work, and stressful like anything else because of all the “negative capability” that has to come along with it. In business, the word “creative” is a “scaffold”, a temporary (perhaps even phony) concept to hold up other ideas. When you use “creative”, other concepts are open to you: children, play, and notions of safety.

In many ways, “innovative” also means weird and experimental. “Creative” means this to some degree, but there is a natural distancing or diffidence when it comes to things that are off-kilter in the business world, but they are the essential elements of innovation. Innovation has to be both daring and accessible--which means it needs a cool personality to sell it, and avoid the very thing that defines it: rebellious eccentricity. Many artists and designers are freer to be innovative. Lawyers or accountants can’t be in the same way. And can the word even be used in a conservative professional setting? A part of the reason there is little innovation is that people are constrained within the fine lines of social constructs and behaviors, driven partly by nomenclature.

As we know, language is always evolving, which means that words change their meaning in alignment with how we define the present and future. Everyone wants to innovate, and I think that is a continuation of our childhood proclivities--whereby curiosity led us to a more natural creativity, and in that sense, it’s something we carry with us throughout life. Those who have reached adulthood with that intact will be the ones who will innovate--however the word is defined. Creativity will always be defined by the artists. It can be (and has been) redefined in the business world but at the expense of its truer meaning.

Most people are eccentric; Few are brave enough to admit it.