Value is creative and not technical

Value is usually the underlying substance behind most things good. Pretty much any good business has some type of value they offer to the consumer. For instance, Amazon's value is their easy to user online store that offers pretty much anything. Google's value is their quick, relevant search engine. YouTube's value is their huge library of videos. Each of these companies offer some type of value that is helpful and useful to the user.

By creative, I mean that value is not something that you can force, it's not something that you learn in school and it's certainly not something that follows the same pattern. Most schools teach you how to be technical and basically be a human machine. This is fine and all, but until you break out of the habit of being told what to do and think and embrace the habit of telling yourself what to do and think you will most likely never create something truly valuable.

Take YouTube for instance. YouTube didn't get where they are today by being technical. Does this screenshot from April 2005 really look like they were the most technical? Does it look like they were the most talented or most professional people coming out of school? Does it even look like the people who built this came out of school? Would something like school even teach people to try to build something like this?

How about Google? Did they get where they were by jumping out of college and being technical? Nope, while in college they creatively came up with a new approach on how to organize information. This creative value struck a chord with the Internet and has been the driving force ever since. These things don't happen by accident and they most certainly don't happen by rote thinking.

When people start out building businesses I think they overlook this very important piece. I think a large reason behind this is that they come from our education system which teaches it is better to be technical than creative. Most people who go to college follow a curriculum that teaches them the same skills as their other classmates. Each person goes and becomes the same thing without ever truly tapping into their personal strengths and passions.

The reason why most businesses fail is because most businesses don't offer value. And most businesses don't offer value because most businesses are technical, not creative. Knowing how to solve math problems, or write English papers isn't going to solve problems like getting more customers or getting more sales. You can't number crunch or write your way out of that one. It comes down to being creative and always looking for new ways to try and improve things.