The Creative Curve: How to Develop the Right Idea, at the Right Time

I first heard about The Creative Curve on the Art of Manliness Podcast (Episode #432: How to Achieve Creative Success). It’s a great episode that effectively hits on all the major points of the book. Definitely worth a listen.

I immediately bought the book and read it and loved it. I think every creative should read it.

But if you don’t have time to read it, here’s what you need to know:

This book was written to break down the mystique of the "creative genius." Gannett wants to answer the question: How is commercial success achieved?

The key words here are commercial success. It's easy to create something that has never been made before. But would anyone pay money for it? Think of people who consistently create art that resonates with a lot of people. People like J.K. Rowling. Mozart. John Lennon. How do they do it?

People like things that are familiar with a twist of novelty.

At first, that might sound contradictory. How can you like something that’s familiar, but also like something that’s new?

It’s how we (as humans) balance risk and reward. Imagine that you’re a caveman. Familiar is good because it’s safe. You’ve always eaten these red berries, and you know that they’re safe. They’re boring, but safe. On the other hand, novelty is good because it opens up a world of possibilities. If you see a new berry, you might try it out and think, “I have discovered a new treat.” But a berry that’s too radical-looking might give you some pause. It’s so weird. It’s so different. It might be poisonous!

Fusion food is popular.

Fusion music is popular.

Fusion shows are popular.

Take the super successful play Hamilton. It’s a familiar story of American history, but told in a novel way.

As you can see, popular ideas follow a relationship between familiarity and preference as an upside down U. That is the Creative Curve. When something is very new and unfamiliar, we don't like it that much. Therefore, according to the Creative Curve, the ideas that become popular have a blend of familiarity and novelty. All ideas reach a point of overexposure where they become cliché, and they start to lose popularity and downfall until they grow out of date.

Think of when you first hear a song. At first, you might not like it. But then it "grows" on you. Then you might love it. But eventually, the inevitable happens: you get sick and tired of it.

What goes up, must come down.

Ed Hardy reached peak popularity and then people started to lose interest. Now you wouldn’t be caught dead wearing it.

Marvel movies seem to be doing pretty well. People are familiar with the universe, but each movie that comes out is different enough to keep people interested.

You want to hit that sweet spot.

Once you internalize this simple but very important concept, it’s time to move onto:

The Four Laws that successful creatives follow

1. CONSUMPTION

They consume a lot. They soak everything up like a sponge. To remix what's popular, first one must actually KNOW what's popular. Be well-cultured! For example, Ted Sarandos worked in a video store, where he watched every movie. Eventually, he became a human recommendation machine. If you liked a certain type of movie, he could recommend a bunch of other movies that would suit your taste. He developed cultural awareness. He understood what people liked, and what other things they might like. Now he is the Chief Content Officer for Netflix. But it’s not enough to just consume. You also have to create.

2. IMITATION

They imitate the greats. And when they have mastered making things that the audience considers good, they start injecting their own newness into it. For example, Benjamin Franklin wasn’t always a good writer. He started off emulating a publication called The Spectator. He created outlines of successful articles and rewrote the article using the same outline. Then he would compare it to the original to see how he did. Then he took it one step further. He not only made outlines of the articles, but he jumbled it up. And then he had to figure out the best way to organize the information. This method worked so well that sometimes his imitation came out better than the original.

The Franklin method involves the careful observation and re-creation of the structures underlying successful creative work. Creators use the Franklin method to understand the formulas or patterns that have proven to be historically successful. Along the way they’re exposed to a baseline of familiarity that their audience would know. Then, on top of that structure, they can add novelty while maintaining the necessary familiarity.

3. CREATIVE COMMUNITIES

They don’t go it alone. They surround themselves with crucial people. Creativity is a team sport. Creatives need:

• A master teacher teaches you the patterns and formulas of your craft or industry, to ensure that you create things with the right level of familiarity, while also giving you the feedback you need to hone your craft through deliberate practice.

• A conflicting collaborator helps minimize your flaws. Everyone has flaws. In order to make them nonfatal, you need to find a person or group of individuals whose traits compensate for your flaws. This is the ideal person to work with. Basically, you don’t want to collaborate with someone who is so easy to get along with that they don’t push you. The goal is to find a person who will help you discover and overcome your flaws.

• A modern muse helps keep you going. A life of creativity often involves getting your soul slapped around. You need to surround yourself with people who will motivate and inspire you to persevere, who can be a source of fresh ideas and even friendly competition to push you toward achieving your very best work.

• A prominent promoter vouches for you. To be a creative success, you need to be recognized as one. A prominent promoter already has credibility and is willing to share it with you. Not only does this benefit you, it also benefits the prominent promoter, who now has access to fresh ideas to help keep them at the right point on the creative curve.

4. ITERATIONS

They listen to feedback and keep improving. Because let’s face it, you're probably not going to get it right the first time. For example, how do they come up with the ice cream flavors for Ben and Jerry’s? Maybe a food scientist comes up with an idea, takes a shot at it, and then decide as a team whether or not it's worthy of hitting the shelves. Throw in some cookies, throw in some caramel, and voila! New flavor! Right?

WRONG! It’s actually a lot more serious than that. Every year, they launch 6-12 new flavors. So they need to have their process down to a science. It must be repeatable. There are 4 main steps:

• Ideation: come up with as many potential flavor ideas as possible. They look ahead and try to get ahead of food trends. This consumption allows them to understand which ideas are on the early upswing of the creative curve.

• Editing: Take 200 ideas and choose around 15 that are actually worth testing. Before they ever start creating flavors, they survey thousands of people to gauge which flavors are garnering the most interest.

• Execution: This is when they start making ice cream. People give qualitative perspectives. Then it goes to market.

• Testing: Creators need to measure and assess constantly. Here’s an anecdote: The movie Fatal Attraction was a huge success. But the final version wasn't the version that test audiences saw. They had to reshoot the entire ending because audiences didn't find the ending satisfying enough. The audience wanted the mistress to get her due punishment. You might think that it's so extrinsic to the creative process to ask a bunch of consumers what they think, but we're making movies for audiences, so it's actually very helpful to know what they think.

Follow these tips to achieve that perfect mix of familiarity and novelty.

Bonus: Here’s the author talking about the book on CNBC: