Tuesday, March 24, 2009

In praise of madness.

"The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars."

-Jack Kerouac

The MBA-ization of the world has led to more than just the collapse of its economic system, it's led to the collapse of madness and the simultaneous adoration of order and process in a world that desperately needs epiphanies.

Creative industries need madness to be creative. Otherwise they are just industries. Ideas, when they happen, sometimes come late in the game. Re-writes. Re-shoots. Re-concepts. Re-thinking. You cannot project management your way to breakthrough work. You can not org-chart it. Or build a model that creates it.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Can you tell that to the AE from our sister agency who set up a brainstorm conference call--then emailed us a 20-minute breakdown of brainstorming techniques they were going to use to come up with ideas?

I managed to weasel my way out of the meeting, but they came up with some pretty mediocre drivel.

Anonymous said...

Seems like b-school should be brainless school. They dumb-down the people who should be contributing something substantial to this world.

Anonymous said...

Amen, Geo. Those AEs are getting their jollies trying to be creative, while us creatives watch the time tick by so we can go back to our desks to actually work. When did people think the creative process could be broken down into steps to be meticulously followed? It's asinine--with emphasis on the first syllable.