Notes from the November 2009 meeting - Thanks Renuka!

Topic: Competition restricts creativity

The real thinkers of yore never wrote for consideration. It was as spontaneous as the warbling of a bird. Material rewards never mattered to them so competition was irrelevant. Today the same thoughts are packaged in piecemeal and sold at astronomical prices by the new age gurus. Today trivial innovations are copyrighted and jealously guarded as “intellectual property”, but we feel free to borrow from the past without qualms!

Were not Telgi and Ramalinga Raju “creative” in their crime?

“A sock by day and a cap by night” sounded very innovative till we heard of the same motor pumping water by night and powering a vehicle by day. The vehicle was lovingly named “Marutta”!

Sony rendered their own products obsolete once in a few months to stay ahead in business.

Ingenuity, innovation and creativity - The line dividing these are very thin.

Creativity encompasses a gamut of elements and there are several levels to them. One level would be being creative in competition. There is creativity in the most competitive of competitive industries – the ad industry. Is this real creativity? It is often gross and in your face. The artist here has to cater to a target audience and even run down his competitors at times.

After all timeless master pieces are the epitome of creativity, not a twenty second jingle or a hoarding with a short recall value. The masters worked to satisfy their creative urge. The result was a sublime work of art. Unless we are creative we cannot progress in any field. The freedom of spirit is a prerequisite to creativity and progress.

Topic: Experience is the comb that nature gives you get after you have gone bald

This one left us all running our hands through our hair! This apparently light hearted
quip is pregnant with meaning. The forum brought to fore this thought. Does the younger generation reject any advice given by the older generation? How should it be presented to the next generation for it to be accepted?

We do gain from the experience of the older generation willy-nilly,
as we observe them and have been observing them right from our childhood . We cannot help inheriting racial memory. It is part of our DNA. On the other hand, the path-breakers have never relied on experience of the earlier generation alone. They ventured into uncharted waters and that resulted in many a discovery.
Those were roughly the thoughts we shared.

I call that breadth of perspective.