Authenticity is invaluable; Originality is non-existent
I wish I came up with that title, but I stole it. It’s a quote from the film director Jim Jarmusch discussing how creativity revolves around theft. Since encountering that mindset, I realized many creators convey it in their own way (there are only new messengers!) In his pithy book on creativity, Steal Like an Artist, Austin Kleon explores it by weaving it through ten core aspects of creation. Steve Jobs even captured it when he outlined how "Creativity is just connecting things". Most famously, Isaac Newton discovered it when he wrote “If I have seen further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants.”
All of this boils down to one core theme: creation starts with curation. Find great ideas, "steal" them, and add your own twist. Stealing gives you a foundation from which you can weave your own magic instead of struggling to reach a starting point. Stealing lets you focus on taking things to a new destination - people's good ideas unlock new possibilities by giving you a head start.
Now this mental model is great for someone (like me) who's looking for a way to create faster. But its reach is far more pervasive. In fact, it's the foundation of much of today’s technology.
A primary example of this is Cloud Computing. By providing computing infrastructure (Compute and Storage) over the internet, cloud providers (Amazon, Microsoft, and Google) allow other companies to "stand on their shoulders" so they can focus on their core businesses. New startups could choose to set up their own infrastructure (which takes ages), but they’re able to focus on innovating by simply using a cloud provider. They build on the cloud providers’ foundation, and differentiate by focusing on their expertise.
This pattern also expands beyond computing infrastructure and into other internet services such as payments (Stripe), communications (Twilio), and even video conferencing (Zoom). Commonly referred to as the "API Economy", it revolves around the fact that companies can cobble together a series of APIs (short lines of code that allow you to achieve complex tasks by accessing someone else’s work) to perform core functions. They then build from there to customize for their space. APIs mean companies can choose the shoulders they want to stand on, allowing them to look further and move faster.
What's perhaps more fascinating is how this pattern emerges beyond pure software. For instance, we're starting to see it unfold in Biotechnology too. Biotech companies have historically managed the end-to-end drug development process in-house. They own the entire process from drug discovery/development through manufacturing, regulatory approval, and launch, meaning it's not exactly easy to start a new Biotech company. But that’s starting to change.
There's been a proliferation of startups in the space that focus on one development step (Ex. Clinical Trials or Drug Discovery), and work to increase its speed, accuracy, and efficiency. As more of these individual steps get modulated away, the barriers to starting a Biotech company shrink. While still early days, the advent of programmable medicine (Ex. gene therapies and engineered cells) is also catalyzing this trend. It's revealing the need for shared, re-usable development processes such as novel drug delivery (improving stability, precision, and control), resulting in the emergence of companies who focus on just that. These companies will be the shoulders that future BioTech startups can stand on.
Whether it's writing, company building, or inventing, creativity begins with curation. Identifying the right shoulders to stand on vastly accelerates and unlocks creativity. Though we typically think of creativity as amassing from nothing, it often starts where a previous giant left off. So the next time we’re stuck, instead of asking “how do I start” maybe we should be asking “what can I steal”?