Why Creativity Is More Than Originality

Last year, I read an article that made me really upset. It was from one of my favorite blogs, “Wait, but why” and it essentially proposed that there were two kinds of workers: chefs and cooks.

A chef innovates and creates new ideas for menu items and writes the recipes. Then the cook merely executes the dish without any originality.

It messed with me for a long time because I felt like I needed to be the chef in everything I did. That’s what society has taught us, that we need to create new things and innovate– and that was the point of the article, right?

But the more I thought about it and compared the worker with the innovator, I wasn’t so sure. There’s hard work that goes into being a musician in the symphony. And still, no one expects originality there. The best ballet dancers aren’t inventing new steps. Being a great interior designer doesn’t require you to weave original patterns or illustrate wallpaper.

The skill lies in making the work memorable, not in making it up from scratch.

A master seamstress is just as important in the world as the couture designer. A talented developer doesn’t need to invent a new coding language. No one is asking a baker to reinvent rye bread.

In every field, there is an innovator and an executor. But being an innovator is not always the goal. There’s a lot of prestige that can still be found in doing the work. Not only that, but it is still creative work! Creativity is about bringing something to life that wasn’t there before. Not merely innovation.

You don’t have to be a songwriter to love playing the piano. You can love writing and not want to be an author.
You don’t have to be original to be creative.
And you don’t need to invent something to be great at what you do.

Reference:
Wait But Why

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Jake Kahana is a cofounder of Caveday. Sign up for his personal emails, called “The Email Refrigerator” here.