Justin Gignac is a New York City-based artist and entrepreneur. He says at 4:50 in the video of his conference:
“I was in advertising…and I wanted to make more ideas… In advertising you spend a lot of time talking about ideas, focus grouping them, over analizing them and then killing them.”
So he quit his job.
But I have experienced the same thing in different fields. It is true not only in advertising. I have seen great ideas going down the drain and if you read the history of innovation we must also conclude that it’s a miracle that the big companies succeed to innovate at all. Don’t forget that one goal of big companies is to prevent competition to emerge and they spend a lot of money to keep bright people in gilded cages.
Therefore, if you want to make more ideas, as Justin Gignac puts it, or if you just have an idea you really care about, then you must quit your job immediately. The risk to fail is very high, of course, but it’s still lower than if you remain employed by the big company.
And the satisfaction is much bigger when you succeed.
More interesting quotes:
Justin Gignac talks about the creative process behind his projects like NYC Garbage, Wants for Sale, Nudes of Chatroulette and QRapping Paper,
and about other interesting things like his four criteria “worth doing an idea” at 6:00 (smart, simple, surprising and will anyone give a shit?)
and the “people’s perception of value” at 11:00 (NYC Garbage for 10$ is a crappy gift, for 25$ is a nice NY souvenir and for 50$ it is art).
PSFK CONFERENCE NYC 2011: Justin Gignac from Piers Fawkes on Vimeo. Or on the PSFK homepage Justin Gignac conference at PSFK
www.justingignac.com
www.nycgarbage.com
@justingignac
I found the video on the fantastic site Brainpickings:
