The Practice of Discovery
Week 5 of 10 – Creative Surplus: A Chapter a Week
In abundance, all we have is philosophy.
Discovery is the first movement of creative surplus: paying attention to what is already present but unacknowledged. It sounds simple. It is not.
We are trained to look outward – at the market, at competitors, at trends, at data. The entire apparatus of professional life is oriented toward external signals. What does the customer want? What is the industry doing? Where is the opportunity? These are important questions. But they are not the questions that lead to creative surplus. They are the questions that lead to optimization.