Issue 108: A Bulletin for Big Ideas and Better Business

Outsiders - The people on the edge often see what everyone else has stopped noticing - and that’s where the real creative advantage lies.

Outsiders.

Sir John Hegarty

I was reminded, once again, that creativity rewards the outsider.

I was listening to a talk about David Hockney and his time in Los Angeles, particularly his painting A Bigger Splash. The subject? Swimming pools. To a Californian, they are ordinary – background detail, part of the architectural landscape, hardly worth a second glance. So familiar they become invisible. But Hockney grew up in Bradford, Yorkshire, where the only pool you were likely to encounter was a covered municipal one – tiled, echoing, functional rather than glamorous.

I was reminded, once again, that creativity rewards the outsider.

I can smell the chlorine from here.

So when he arrived in LA and saw pools everywhere – shimmering turquoise rectangles beneath endless blue skies – he didn’t see the mundane. He saw the miraculous. He saw light playing on water, geometry. And from that outsider’s eye came some of his greatest work.

A Bigger Splash, David Hockney

The outsider marvels at what everyone else has stopped seeing. That is the advantage. Familiarity dulls perception; the more something surrounds us, the less we question it. The insider knows the rules, the conventions, the way things are done – and over time begins to accept them as inevitable. The outsider hasn’t absorbed those assumptions. They look at the same thing and ask, quite innocently, “Why?” And sometimes, more dangerously, “Why not?”

The outsider marvels at what everyone else has stopped seeing. That is the advantage.

Of course, being an outsider isn’t a prerequisite for great thinking. Talent, discipline and craft still matter. But distance helps. It sharpens perspective. It prevents complacency. Many of the most original artists and thinkers have stood slightly apart – culturally, socially, intellectually. Inclusion is vital, of course it is. But let’s not forget the value of those who sit on the edge. Those who sit there often see more clearly than those at the centre.

And their view might actually be more valuable.