Business as a Creative Endeavor
I always figured business majors would make a lot of money but live rather dull lives. Forgive the stereotype, but I thought that all business people were like the cliché of the accountant: monotone voice, downcast eyes, hunched shoulders, working day after day to save the company one tenth of one cent per unit.
Now me, I’m more creative than that. I like photography, music, and writing. I want to create things–not necessarily build them, but create them. So I went into computer software. Hey, inventing new solutions is a way of life, right? Not so much. I spend my days hunched over a keyboard, looking for bugs in someone else’s code. Recently I got to write about 4500 lines of new code and it felt like heaven. Until I had to debug it.
Meanwhile, in my business classes, we’re learning about this amazing age of creative business — an era where innovation, flexibility, and a quick mind can give a decided advantage. It’s a time where the winners break the rules of traditional business (but not the law, at least not on my watch).
Wow.
Maybe it’s always been this way. But I sure as heck haven’t always seen business this way. Companies are creative, just to survive.
The difference between business and art, though, is that business is real. I don’t mean to diminish the importance, value, or impact of art. But it’s hard to deny that a failed business can impact hundreds or thousands of people. A failed painting, while potentially tragic, would have a tough time having the same effect.
Bottom line? Business is more exciting, and scarier, than I ever considered. On the bright side, the interests I already have and the skills I’ve developed can be leveraged by business school techniques to give me a fighting shot. That’s exciting.
It will take commitment, hard work, and guts, but I can do it. Look for a new, world-changing business to start by, oh, late summer 2008 
