You cannot do anything without thinking”.

But you CAN think something without doing anything. Hence the emphasis in my article.

What if you end up hammering away a prototype that is unnecessary (didn’t think over its market potential), or that is not useful (not everyone may be a fan of your ideas)? [This reminds me of the Simpsons episode where Homer designs the perfect automobile. ] Not only you may miss out on the opportunity of hammering away a better design, you may even not realize that it was a mistake to start in the first place.

That’s more of a black-and-white dichotomy than anything I wrote.

I’d happily concede to “creative doing beats JUST creative thinking” but that would be somewhat tautological after all.

And it wouldn’t be much of a headline.

Who can claim thinking isn’t doing in itself anyway?

Hear this for obvious:
“You cannot do anything without thinking”.
If you deem your work as “creative doing”, then you were thinking creatively WHILE doing it.

I understand the whole idea of the blog which stresses the value of acting upon ideas, not just sitting on them. But how you put it in this post is too problematic in my eyes.

It starts with the assumption about creative thinking and (creative) doing, that one comes after the other. In reality, thinking is there all the time. One can apply creative thinking to things he does (~or processes). It is just that.

Actually not only that; how you put it in the above also devalues another thinking activity: planning. What if you end up hammering away a prototype that is unnecessary (didn’t think over its market potential), or that is not useful (not everyone may be a fan of your ideas)? [This reminds me of the Simpsons episode where Homer designs the perfect automobile. ] Not only you may miss out on the opportunity of hammering away a better design, you may even not realize that it was a mistake to start in the first place.

How does that get us a result now?

I won’t even go into how important theories and models are in science, where scientists take up on their colleagues’ work from decades ago with the newly available technologies. They couldn’t have made models of the human cell, the atom, the DNA if they categorized it as “just creative thinking”. Similarly this type of thinking goes against many of the established ways the business world works (ie. specialization). It is rare to come by a product that didn’t go through a collaborative process (think research, marketing, engineering, sales etc.)

To repeat, I fully agree with the value of acting on ideas, and I also agree with other ideas on this blog where you try to demystify the creative process in a way and to get people to realize that it is a skill that can be learned.

It is just too unfortunate that you beat up on “creative thinking” when you go about underlining the importance of action. Thinking doesn’t equal pre-doing.

I’d happily concede to “creative doing beats JUST creative thinking” but that would be somewhat tautological after all.

I find this post to be so true. I am always energize by the creative things I do and it seems to give me strength to do more. It’s the excitement!
I love all your post Mark, please keep sharing.

The phrase was “Ready, Fire, Aim, Fire, Aim, Fire”.

To me, it says the same thing you are saying. But yours is clearer. I like it.

@ Brett – Great quotation and comments, reminds me I’ve been meaning to write about IDEO…

@ Sid “On the other hand, simply *doing* doesn’t necessarily mean what you’re doing is productive, or more to the point of this discussion, creative” – which is why I wrote “creative doing” instead of “simply doing”.

Actually, as your example shows, the doing isn’t necessarily particularly creative to begin with. But even if I completely screw up a first attempt at making something, I get to learn from my mistakes and improve it at the next attempt. the important thing is to get started on the process of iterative development.

@ Bill – Well at least you’ve written the ideas down, which is further than some of us get. Which means you’ve already started…

@ Topi – Maybe I should invite your Mum to be a guest writer for Lateral Action!

@ Amy – ‘Creativity – even better than alcohol!’. Maybe Hugh could do a cartoon about that.

Roll up your sleeves and tap into those creative resources with action. It’s why we’re here

All the thinking in the world gets you nowhere if you don’t act, but once you start taking action the thinking just happens alongside.

Thanks, Topi