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There are many paths to "newness" in consumer culture. But most who are doing "new" want to be perceived as creative at some level or think that creativity is the primary engine of innovation. So...what is this creativity thing anyway?

What is Creative Consumption?

We've always thought that most innovative ideas in consumer culture (even in technology) have emerged from talented consumers who refused to follow the rules, because they preferred to have fun and/or solve real problems. So, we've spent some time thinking about the conditions under which creative consumption leads inadvertently, not deliberately, to innovation.

Forget the art world for a minute and think about more humble outposts of creativity in your own social worlds. Who are the people you know who do creative things on occasions where their peers merely drift on the autopilot otherwise known as convention? What do they have in common that explains how they are creative?

We have found that the one thing that creative consumption grounds itself in is a flagrant disregard for "the rules of authenticity" enforced by hard core consumers in specific cultural categories of experience (e.g., wine). Creative wine-making is not performed by people who stick to obscure, complicated rules of authenticity in design or production or who convince others that they have mastered the technique of wine-making. This approach leads to a fundamental narrowing of possibilities and serves to protect the interest of those who primarily wish to be seen as either "in the know" or "technically more competent" more than as "those who are inventive and creative." It rests on rarified forms of knowledge more than distinctive production.

Authenticity and creativity have an uneasy relationship in today's consumer culture. While acquisition of authentic knowledge drives upscale consumption in many categories, it does not require any knowledge of production techniques or skill in them. It is also a passive orientation to categories from a creative perspective. All that is left to do is wait for notions of authenticity to shift and then consume accordingly.

But the creative urge is not intellectual at all. It emerges from the maverick desire to break down notions of truth, legitimacy and authenticity many hard core consumers spread to the point of alienating others. In its stead, the creative impulse ignores all of this, allowing for a truly alchemical approach to consumption where the line between consumption and production vanishes entirely.

This is part of what is going in our mod-oriented DIY consumer culture. Products are not always viewed as finished, but become raw materials for the creation of new things or simply modified according to personal whim.

Creative Leaders

These are cultural mavericks who once were hard core but quickly found that the "fun" is not delivered to them in cranky rules of authenticity and legitimacy but in the alchemy of mash-up cultural production. Think of the quilt made from hundreds of unrelated fabric scraps or mash-up music overlaying unrelated songs to create a new sound experience. We call these mavericks "creative leaders" not because they are necessarily famous or have applied for business licenses, but rather because they point to behaviors and patterns of thought that have delivered enormous innovations in our everyday lives.

And they often generate the authenticity of tomorrow, which others will deconstruct for its rules and then consume accordingly. Another way of putting this is that category innovators in consumer culture, tend to abandon their hard core geeky friends, only to turn around and feed them "the next new thing."

These creative leaders may be amateurs or professionals. Creativity as a practice does not recognize such a distinction and never will. The primary advantage the pro has over the amateur in a given cultural category of experience is that the professional tends to be able to articulate better how they are doing what they are doing, since they have to explain it hundreds of times to partners, suppliers, clients, etc. But this explanatory ability threatens, at all times, to trap the "innovator" in an intellectual game of defining the "authenticity" of his creations, rather than simply creating.

Common Traits of Creative Leaders

• Constant awareness of how rules of authenticity limit creative possibilities
• Disregard for conventions in "legitimacy" and "authenticity," including recently established ones that were not long ago considered trends
• See production, not knowledge acquisition, as the pinnacle of success
• Engage in alchemy that breaks down walls of design
• Constantly seek out raw materials for their mash-up work
• Defiant sensualists, immersed in the total sensory experience of a particular category

Middle market businesses struggling for distinction in today's bipolar consumer culture (bargain-luxury) need to bring creative leaders inside their organizations as the engine of new experience development (call it brand or product, if you must). This means that innovation must be driven not only by hiring business talent or branding talent but also by hiring people everyone in the organization recognizes as passionate participants in the cultural categories of experience the brand plays in.

Tinderbox is a part of The Hartman Group, Inc. Copyright 2008. All rights reserved.