Competitiveness versus creativity

Singapore like the rest of the world has turned its focus to the most anticipated and keenly followed election race, the United States Presidential election due on November 6th.

As political rhetoric and a negative barrage of televised ads galvanize the campaigns, one can’t help feel that the candidate’s message get’s obviously distorted in the quest of one-upmanship.

Among the several insinuations levelled at President Obama by his Republican challenger Mitt Romney, the former Gov. of Massachusetts has lamented on how the number of entrepreneurs and the creativity they present to the world was now waning under the economic policies of the President.

The ‘creative’ element in his rhetoric took me on a different tangent.

Not long ago, I perused through an op-ed piece that spoke about ‘creative monopoly’ and how this cut throat rat race seeks to not only hinder creativity, but more often than not eradicate it completely.

My father always laid emphasis on a simple philosophy, which he tried to instill in me; “compare yourself on an absolute scale”. And as lucid as it sounds, the statement had profound implications.

Being top of the pack, means being better or marginally better than the rest; it doesn’t mean than the one at the top has done something exceptional, but simply managed to finish ahead of the rest.

After all to paraphrase a popular metaphor in this context, ‘even a one eyed man is a king among the blinds’.

Now it would be farfetched to attribute free market capitalism as the enemy of creativity; after all capitalism is what gives entrepreneurs and their creative ideas a platform.

But the rancid competitiveness it offers has often taken the sheen off the creative process.

The rat race begins early in school, where students have ingrained them the need to excel, not for the purpose of gaining enlightenment but for the purpose of getting ahead in life.

They’re never given the incentive of using that knowledge as tools to be ‘game changers’ but instead as barometers to assess their level of progress and false proficiencies.

People who possess innate abilities of creativity don’t simply succumb to a simple straightforward chart of progress. They are naturally bohemian souls. They find ways and means to incorporate their creative talents into the mainstream.

They choose to run a marathon over a 100 meter dash, whereby discovery and innovation at every stage of the race, makes their finish that much more valuable.

Creativity faces challenges across all major facets of life.

Fighting a ‘war’ valiantly is an archaic thing of the past. It’s essentially transformed into being that much superior in strength in order to seek your enemy’s surrender.

One can even argue, that the creative element in ‘Sports’ is all about being ‘better’ than the other guy. As an avid Arsenal fan, I can concur with this. The creativity in the team’s approach on the pitch, accounts for little if they (as more often than not) struggle to put the ball in the back of the net, and hence fail to secure the points required to secure silverware.

And unfortunately records recognise the spoils, seldom the performances.

Even politics which genuinely presents a platform to seek innovation in incorporating new ideas, policies and reforms, gets distorted when candidates enter the bigger arena.

Their message of innovation gets distorted in a smear campaign dominated by political brownie points. They often forget the platform they campaigned on, and present themselves as complete opposites of their opponents (reminiscent of the 2012 race).

But the beauty of business is where creativity & innovation should constantly be challenged for the better. It shouldn’t solely be about eradicating competition, but to strive create a distinct image as the pioneers of something new.

Innovating to raise the bar, so that posterity can seek to go one level further.

In business, one doesn’t have to be locked in a tit for tat battle all the time. Innovators don’t just seek to outdo their competitor’s products by creating a better version, they create something new entirely.

After all, who would have then envisaged that Nokia (the world's largest vendor of mobile phones) would one day face competition from Apple (a computer hardware & software company) which in turn would face severe competition from Google (a search engine website).

It’s this kind of creative quotient that brings out the best in an innovator; this ‘CQ’ as I would like to call it should percolate down to all of us in our every day spheres.

This change in ideas, this change in business, this change in growth and the eventual positive change in the economy is what we could long for.