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Ecommerce_A_New_Artform
| Ecommerce: A New Artform
What creative project do you have in the back of your mind?
Writing that novel? Putting together a bluegrass band? Painting
the sunsets over the Rio Grande? How about starting a business?
When you think of the term creative endeavor, does launching or
running a business come to mind? To most creative people,
business is the antithesis of creativity. Yet slowly, ever so
slowly, the nature of business is changing. The need for
innovation in business is gradually overtaking the need for
control as the resource that makes the difference between
success and failure.
Really? But isn't business essentially about control?
Controlling resources and controlling people? Yes, but business
is also about innovation and communication, both of which live
at the heart of creativity.
There are two reasons why I believe creativity will become
increasingly valued in business. Control is certainly critical
in business, both resources and people need to be managed
carefully. But control is easier to teach than innovation. Given
an equal need for both innovation and control, control is the
easier skill or talent to find and implement. Thus innovation
rises in value because it's more difficult to find and utilize
effectively.
Are innovation and control equal needs? They certainly haven't
been in the past. Control has been the leading force in business
since the beginning of the industrial age. That age has ended
however, and we now live in an service-based information world
of commerce. This means the resource that needs to be controlled
is more likely to be information rather than, say, coal.
Information can be managed easily across electronic wiring and
storage media. That means important work of business will be
creating and disseminating information, and that requires a
creative mind.
The other reason I believe creativity will rise in importance in
business is that in our information-based economy, the resources
required for business are fewer and less costly. If you can run
a storefront on the Internet that can reach millions across the
globe, you don't need capital to build a store that sits in a
city and reaches thousands. The juice it takes to make the
Internet company successful is not capital so much as the
creative ability to reach and build a customer base over an
infrastructure that's effectively free.
Napster was a wonderful example of this. A teenager was able to
create a service that was quickly utilized by millions upon
millions of users. Of course Napster had a glaring flaw: the
company was trading in products created by others, and trading
without the consent of those who produced the products. But the
heart of the matter is that someone without substantial
resources could build a highly-used, well-recognized brand out
of little more than a creative idea. Using the same
infrastructure, surely someone will come up with another
intriguing idea that will capture our imagination and a big
audience, and it will probably happen soon. And the next wave of
creative Internet entrepreneurs will have learned from the
Internet crash and its aftermath.
The Internet isn't dead. It's just stumbling a bit while taking
its toddler steps. Internet start-up ideas will continue to
attract creative people, simply because the free infrastructure
invites innovation and resists control. Control is the deathword
to creativity. Creative people have shunned business for that
reason alone. Yet in a world where creativity and innovation
become the critical elements for success, you bet creative
people will begin to see commerce as an avenue of expression.
During the high days of Internet exuberance, I used this column
to make the claim that business will be the creative medium of
the early 21st century. I still believe it's true, simply
because the basic elements still exist a encourage a creative
approach to business. The resources to support a new company do
not require control so much as creative manipulation. Given this
free and open canvas, creative people will rush in, despite the
lingering notion that business is somehow anti-creative.
About the author:
Rob Spiegel is the author of Net Strategy (Dearborn) and the
upcoming Shoestring Entrepreneur's Guide to Internet Start-ups
(St. Martin's Press). You can reach Rob at spiegelrob@aol.com
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