TightWind is written by Kyle Baxter. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

From an excellent profile of the band Grizzly Bear:

You can press him on this point, outlining the ways that deliberation and audience awareness can be a totally noble part of art, driving innovation in all sorts of genres and bands that see themselves as addressing a particular audience, not just doing their own thing and hoping an audience gathers nearby—but you will probably wind up feeling like what you’re suggesting is craven and artificial, a way musicians attempt to do what other people want, rather than what they themselves want, and then you will grow embarrassed for even mentioning it. “It can taint the songwriting process if you’re thinking about what other people are going to think,” he says. Even aiming at a format—say, sitting down to write a great pop song—seems unnatural: “If you go into it with that goal, I feel like what’s going to come out is some sort of turd. Some people come out with a turd that does really well, but …”

I find this fascinating, but particularly so in a business context. This works the same way for creating a product; while designing a product based on what the customer says they want can result in successful products, it also rarely results in transformative products. The reason for this is that if something was created to fill some perceived hole in the market (whether it’s a song, book, painting or product), rather than because the creator feels viscerally that it must be built because it’s good, it doesn’t have its own reason for existing, its own integrity—it’s just a bundle of characteristics meant to satisfy some perceived desire in others.

It’s a subtle point, but I think it points to this difference in the creative process. When a creator makes something because they believe in it, they are doing so because they believe there is some greater truth they are creating for, and what they end up building is infused with the integrity of that truth. But when you start the creative process with a set of someone else’s desires and a market research report, you’re simply trying to satisfy those desires and fit the thing into an underserved market segment. The thing itself isn’t important—the attributes you’re trying to fulfill are.