To initiate the hero’s journey, a disruption happens, which puts the system into disequilibrium.
In mythology, the hero’s routine gets interrupted as the hero receives a call to action. He is invited on some form of journey.
We similarly can apply this to corporations and to marketplaces.
In today’s marketplace we see a multitude of similar products, promoted through similar messages with similar marketing methods. This is the equilibrium.
To succeed we need to stand out one way or another. And standing out in these crowded marketplaces means being original. We need to have an original product, we need to have an original manufacturing process, we need to have an original marketing method, or we need to have an original way for selling.
Everything else is commodity. And consumers don’t need more commodities. We don’t need more boring Youtube videos, we don’t need more motivational books, we don’t really need the hundredth version of the same old combustion engine car.
We need originality. Originality comes from leaning the habit zone, it’s the opposite of habit.
Such an external disruption can be changes along value chains, changes in customer needs, new competitors, new technologies, climate change, the credit crisis or the corona crisis.
Artificial constraints can do the job. Graphic designers promote setting themselves constraints to stimulate creativity. Design all in black and white for example.
Then you have new stimuli. When companies mix people with different skills, when they initiate new strategies, new technologies, or simply set constraints for the organisation, this happens. Difference can be in skills and competence, in resources they have access to, and in information they have.
On a further level, this can be exposing ourselves to new situations, getting new influences.
Or, in other words, we find ways to create more dots that we can connect:
What we could see here is that across creative fields the message is the same.