Joe Rohde argues that creativity works like fractals, with self-similar patterns that grow from an initial impulse, while businesses operate as rigid Euclidean structures. This mathematical mismatch explains why creative people struggle inside traditional organizations.
I believe that things that work, work for the same reason as anything else that works. Why does that light work? Why is this building being held up? It is essentially all physics, math, chemistry, structure. That's why things work. Creativity works because of structures. I think creativity functions like algorithms in a fractal equation. And I think businesses tend to function like, Euclidean structures, points, lines, connections, measurable, quantifiable units. And so the thing that happens where creative people struggle in organized systems is actually a mathematical struggle between algorithmic-based growth patterns that are based on some kind of initiating impulse, like a fractal would be, and structures that are based on Known knowns and known relationships between those knowns.
