Great ideas come from a place of unrelenting discomfort
It’s not creativity. It’s not waiting for inspiration. It’s not the intricate morning routine. Great ideas come from doing what most won’t do.
Naturally, individuals under pressure, refusing to accept their current reality produce great ideas.
Great ideas come from pressure
Remember Netflix’s famous origin story? The one about the late fees? According to Marc Randolph, it was just a marketing gag. The actual story goes like this.
In early 1997, Reed Hastings was the CEO of the company Pure Atria, and Marc was its VP of Corporate Marketing. A merger was on the horizon, which meant they were likely to lose their job. So Reed told Marc, “Let’s come up with an idea and you can run it and I’ll fund it.”
Marc pitched all sorts of e-commerce ideas: surfboards, custom-built baseball bats, personalized dog food, and home-delivery shampoo. Reed’s reply was, “That’ll never work.”
Soon enough, Marc heard of a hot new product invented in Japan called the DVD. He realized DVDs would soon replace VHS Cassettes, and after a bit of brainstorming, Reed was sold on the idea.
And Netflix was born.
Great ideas come from refusing the status quo
Before Michael Jackson, music videos were low-budget, weird, and awful.
Michael Jackson believed videos could play an important role in making his music come to life. So, he replaced low-budget montage promos with elaborate short films consisting of in-depth narratives and sophisticated visuals.
The “Thriller” music video was 15 minutes long. Essentially, a short film. It featured Jackson dancing with zombies. It had cost more than $1 million to produce.
Thanks to “Thriller” MTV managed to seal its position as a cultural force, helped disassemble racial barriers for black artists, revolutionized music video production, popularised the ‘making-of’ documentaries, and drove rentals and sales of VHS tapes.
“Thriller” is described as the most influential music video in history. Music video director Brian Grant credited “Thriller” as the turning point when music videos became a “proper industry”.
Great ideas come from disciplined work to build a future reality
Breaking the live-adaptation anime curse is impossible. Unless it’s One Piece.
The crazier and more in-depth the anime world, the harder it is to adapt. Many studios have tried and spectacularly failed. (I’m counting Rurouni Kenshin too. I don’t know why anyone can think of them as good)
But ONE PIECE broke the curse. And it was far from easy.
When ONE PIECE showrunners and executive producers Matt Owens and Steven Maeda decided to adapt the anime into a live-action television series, they knew that scrupulous attention to detail of the world Oda created was the only way forward.
Still, it was a stressful journey. They had to bridge what fans are used to in anime, and what audiences respond well to in live-action. These two mediums are very different from each other. Poor translation of anime into real life is why all anime adaptations fail.
Oda spent months between updating the ONE PIECE manga to prepare for the anime production, answering Q&A from fans, figuring out the casting of Netflix’s ONE PIECE, answering Q&A from the production team, approving plotlines, and whatever else the studio needed from him.
On August 31st, ONE PIECE made history as the first live adaptation to have broken the anime curse. It satisfied existing fans beyond belief and brought in new fans around the globe.
It all starts with dreaming of the impossible.
In these stories, you’ll find a common thread. Great ideas come from frustration. The need to be more. Great ideas come from hard work. To be relentless in your pursuit of the outcome you envision. And great ideas come from refusing the average.
Even if it is widely accepted.
