Everyone wants to do something creative, but no one really knows what it means

There was a time when creativity was a precise word. Not necessarily rare, but recognizable. It pointed to a process, an effort, often a risk. Calling yourself creative wasn't enough to be creative: you had to prove it, over time, through work, through results. That's no longer the case. "Creative" has become one of the most used and, at the same time, most hollowed-out adjectives in the contemporary workplace. Scroll through LinkedIn job listings or Instagram professional bios and it becomes obvious: creative thinker, content creator, digital creative. The word is everywhere, but it's rarely defined. Making videos is creative. Writing captions is creative. Managing a profile is creative. Even replicating existing formats is often described as such.

But what's really left of creativity when everything is called creative?

The answer is less reassuring than we'd like: what remains is a word we've made indispensable at the very moment we stopped knowing what it means.

In recent years, creativity has been elevated to a core competency. The World Economic Forum includes it among the fundamental skills for the future of work, alongside critical thinking and adaptability. As far back as 2010, an IBM study showed that over 60% of CEOs considered it the single most important quality for navigating the growing complexity of global markets.

And here the first paradox emerges: creativity is everywhere because it's demanded everywhere, but for exactly that reason, it no longer sets anyone apart.

It's no longer an exceptional trait, but a baseline requirement. Not what makes you different, but what's expected of everyone. It has gone from being an act to being an obligation.

And when a quality becomes an obligation, it loses its power.

This shift is not merely theoretical. It's structural. According to the OECD, the labor market is evolving toward a model increasingly based on measurable skills: what matters is not how you define yourself, but what you can concretely do. The language expands, but the selection narrows.

The result is a constant tension between perception and reality. On one side, the idea of creative work as a space for expression, freedom, identity. On the other, a daily practice made of metrics, algorithms, performance, adaptation.

You enter these jobs thinking you'll create, and you find yourself optimizing: a piece of content for the algorithm, an idea for watch time, a language so it fits inside formats that already exist.

You no longer imagine in order to break something. You imagine in order to conform to something that already exists.

And yet, there's another element that makes this phenomenon even more complex, one that's rarely stated explicitly.

The very idea of "doing something creative" arises in a specific context. It is not a universal aspiration. According to data from the OECD and Eurostat, in high-income countries, the share of young people seeking work tied to personal expression, identity, and individual fulfillment is growing. In economically unstable contexts, by contrast, the priority remains access to a stable income and predictable living conditions.

Creativity as aspiration is, therefore, also the product of a material condition: it emerges more forcefully when work stops being mere survival and becomes identity.

This is where consumerism enters: the system doesn't simply welcome this aspiration, it transforms it.

According to UNESCO, cultural and creative industries are among the most dynamic sectors of the global economy, generating billions and employing millions. Creativity today is not just a cultural value: it is an economic engine.

It becomes content. It becomes format. It becomes product.

It's no longer about creating, but about continuously producing something that can be consumed. The result is a second paradox: the more creativity matters to the system, the less space remains for real creativity.

Because creativity, in its fullest sense, does not coincide with production. It does not coincide with speed. It does not coincide with visibility. It requires time, depth, room for error. It requires a space that the current system grants less and less.

If you don't emerge, if you don't perform, if you don't deliver, the blame is not placed on a saturated, structurally competitive system built to select the few and discourage the many.

The problem is you: you're not creative enough.

This is where the word stops being neutral and becomes pressure.

Working hard is no longer enough. You must stand out. Producing is no longer enough. You must innovate. Simply existing professionally is no longer enough. You must be original, constantly.

In a context like this, creativity is no longer a space of freedom. It is a continuous demand.

Maybe the problem isn't that we've inflated a word. It's that we've turned it into an instrument of control. And until we recognize that, we'll keep chasing an originality the system itself makes impossible, and feeling inadequate for failing to reach it.