I was a part of a (semi-)heated discussion today on facebook, one of my friends on my list posted the question:
“#Who deserves the most credit?
The man contracted to design a building on a computer that sits in his office and designs it from scratch.
Or the man contracted to build the design, and did it brick by brick?”
The discussion went on and on (30+comments) but I just wanted to use the opportunity to document my thoughts. This post will include my opinion on the matter and thoughts that I shared in the discussion.
There were various ideas on who should get the most credit, with some claiming the one who funded/paid for the contracting should get the most credit, while others said that the one who did the actual work should get the credit.
Now while we can all agree, which we did, that everyone deserves credit, and no one person can do the task all on their own, I strongly believe that the an Idea is the strongest thing in the world!!! (dont mean to sound too Inception-ish – Love that movie btw!!!) J
But without an idea nobody does nothing! The one who deserves the credit is the one who formulated the idea and moved people to bring it into action. They are the Creators – those that carry out the work are instruments, tools and craftsmen/women. And within One idea you can have many sub-ideas, many ways to implement the main idea.
Someone dropped this Gem on me last week… ‘Everybody is sitting around at the bus-stop waiting to go somewhere… So All You have to do is show up with a Bus’.
OK… I agree 100% [that we] all need each other to make things work. And I agree that there are many, TONS of people with Ideas sitting around on shelves… But in just the same way there are people sitting around with money and don’t know what to do with it.
Lets remember here that the Main question is “Who Deserves the Most credit [for a Creation/Work]?”. And to me the short answer is; the Person with an Idea. And with that I would want to add that the person would have had to mobilize (the right) people in helping him make the idea into reality. Now again, I Do agree 100% that they cant always do it on their own.
A simple reason how we can help to settle this is by looking at the creation of Life. A man gets the idea to sleep with a woman, (or a woman gets the idea to sleep with a man) with no form of contraceptives,… he begins to pursue the woman. When he succeeds, assuming everything goes good and right, a fetus is created, its starts to grow and pretty soon it grows its limbs, organs, its born and a beautiful child is created.
Again, of course the man can’t have a child on his own, but if the man (or the woman) didn’t come up with the idea to sleep together, and have a child, then the baby (nor neither of us) would be born.
Take the case study of An Artist… an even better example is the Distant Relatives project with Damian and Nas. From what I understand both artist came with the idea to make a few songs together – which then grew into an album. And we can assume that the two were able to mobilize Do-ers; musicians, financers – the label, etc etc to make sure that this idea didn’t just stay on a shelf, but that it grew legs and feet and hands and start to move itself.
Again, they cant do it on their own, But I believe that the MOST Credit goes to the person with the Idea and the person with the Skills to Mobilize people and get the idea growing. (Which Could be the same person). I believe that everybody else is taking a seat on the bus, the financier, the craftsmen, the planners, do-ers, etc.
Pic courtesy of OccupyDesign.org