Creatively devolved

According to some creative semi-genius there are two types of creative individuals; the conceptuals and the experimental innovators.

Conceptuals usually have an early ‘big bang’ period of creativity. Think Albert Einstein. After this initial bang they either reconcile to eating a lot of dinners off their early efforts or spend the rest of their lives futilely trying to recapture the incapturable.

Experimental innovators continue to create throughout their lives, often improving with experience. Think Henri Matisse. Missing an early hit, my guess is that they often feel unappreciated early on which provides continuing motivation.

I have written before that start-ups require both incredible skill and serious luck. In other words, start-ups are actually an art form as well as a business activity.

In this context the successful CEOs need to be creative geniuses. And in this you have your conceptuals such as Mark Zuckerberg, and your experimental innovators such as Steve Jobs.

My assertion would be that the experimental innovators are far more successful at transitioning across from start-up success to listed corporate success. Apart from continuing to be creative, they also continue to learn and adapt.

In the context of business leadership, creativity is that special extra thing, the achievable vision that is above and beyond a solid workmanship style of general management skills. This has to come from the CEO’s head – it can’t be grafted onto that person because it won’t be owned in the same way nor will it come with a proper appreciation of the environment requiring such a vision.

In the case of Steve Jobs, after a successful period at the early version of Apple and then in his own company, he came back into Apple with a clear vision. Based on product leadership in consumable personal computing and content, he would use the design, hardware and software development skills of Apple to build a recurring revenue business built on proprietary device sales and incredible marketing.

Because Apple only had a handful of products, Jobs could be the head of product development as well as the CEO. Which means there was one man with a single creative vision that defined all the product specs and approved their release. This is unique for a company of this nature. Most companies have so many products that the product development responsibilities are devolved to the business units; as a result there is no unifying ground-breaking vision and often products appear me-too-ish.

Knowing all this, I would say that the ideal start-up founding team is partnership of a conceptual and an experimental innovator. If you can find two of these that get on well and are well-grounded in the same area of technology and business, and have a burning desire to succeed, then you really have something worth investing in.