<\/p>\n
“Originality consists of returning to the origin.” – Antoni Gaud\u00ed<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n I read this quote a few days back and the credit for this blog post must be attributed to the inspiration drawn from this one profound line. So, let that marinate. It\u2019s not a forward command. It\u2019s a homecoming.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Antoni Gaud\u00ed<\/em><\/span> was told his architecture was ‘impossible<\/em><\/span>.’ Today, 3 million people visit his ‘impossible’ cathedral every year. His secret? Going backward.”<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n We have all been been taught to look\u00a0out there<\/em>\u00a0<\/span>for inspiration\u2014to competitors, to trends, to what’s “hot” right now. But the great ones? They look\u00a0in here<\/em><\/span>. Not navel-gazing introspection, but something deeper: the fundamental truths of their craft, their culture, their core.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n It is not a chicken or egg situation. Let’s ask what came first. Before the complexity, before the layers of “best practices<\/em><\/span>,” before everyone started doing it this way\u2014what was the original impulse? In writing<\/em><\/span>, it’s storytelling around a fire. In business<\/em><\/span>, it’s solving a real human problem. In art<\/span><\/em>, it’s making someone\u00a0feel<\/em>\u00a0<\/span>something.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The lesson possibly here is to look at the masters before the masters. Not just look at competitors. Tracing the lineage back to go upstream<\/em><\/span>. Jazz musicians study Bach<\/em><\/span>. Chefs study grandmothers<\/em><\/span>. Tech visionaries study libraries<\/em><\/span>. Counter intuitive, yes. Effective. Bloody hell YES!<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Coco Chanel didn’t invent fashion.<\/em><\/span>\u00a0She returned to the origin of how women wanted to\u00a0move<\/em><\/span>\u00a0and\u00a0feel<\/em><\/span>, liberating them from corsets and excess, giving them back their bodies.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Ray Kroc didn’t invent the hamburger<\/em><\/span>.<\/strong> He returned to the origin of what Americans wanted\u2014fast, reliable, consistent\u2014and built an empire(McDonalds<\/em><\/span>) on the fundamentals.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n And I am sorry to disappoint the K-Pop<\/em> <\/span>fans. You think BTS\u2019s “Dynamite<\/em><\/span><\/a>” is original? On the surface, it’s a shiny, disposable pop confection. But scrape the gloss. Its origin isn’t in a Seoul recording studio; it’s in the funk and soul of 1970s America. They didn’t copy it; they absorbed its DNA\u2014the origin of feel-good, dance-floor joy\u2014and rebuilt it with Korean precision and a 21st-century heartbeat. They returned to the root of rhythm to create a new branch.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Your grandmother\u2019s recipe for that perfect, crispy-laced dosa. It\u2019s not in a cookbook. It\u2019s in the memory of her hands, which learned from her mother, who learned from the origin of fire and flour. The “food blogger” who adds truffle oil and quinoa to it isn’t being original. They’re just decorating a ghost. The true originality is in making it exactly as it was meant to be\u2014a perfect return to the origin of taste and tradition.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n See the pattern?\u00a0Originality isn’t addition. It’s subtraction back to essence.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n The best films are exceptional not because of what we see but because of what we don\u2019t see.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Tadao Ando<\/em><\/span><\/a> grew up poor in Osaka. Boxing was his first career. Architecture? That came later, self-taught, through books and buildings, with no formal degree cluttering up his vision.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n When he finally designed his first house, he couldn’t afford furniture. So he embraced the origin of Japanese spatial philosophy\u2014ma<\/em><\/span>, the concept of negative space<\/em><\/span><\/a>, the void that gives meaning to presence. His “empty” rooms weren’t lacking; they were\u00a0full<\/em><\/span>\u00a0of possibility.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Today, Ando is one of the world’s most celebrated architects. His concrete walls, his play of light and shadow, his ruthless elimination of the unnecessary\u2014all of it traces back to that original poverty that forced him to ask: “What do we\u00a0really<\/em><\/span>\u00a0need?”<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The Western world, drowning in excess, now pays millions to experience the “minimalism<\/em><\/span>” that Ando discovered by necessity. He didn’t invent it. He\u00a0remembered<\/em><\/span>\u00a0it.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n We have fallen hook, line and sinker to the origin myth<\/em><\/span> story we have been sold for aeons. We live in an age drunk on novelty. “Disrupt or die<\/em><\/span>,” they say. “Move fast and break things<\/span><\/em>.” Every startup pitchman promises to reinvent the wheel, reimagine the paradigm, revolutionize the mundane. We’ve confused\u00a0originality\u00a0with\u00a0newness, <\/em>and therein lies our spectacular error<\/span><\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Antoni Gaud\u00ed<\/em><\/span><\/a>\u2014is the mad genius who gave us Barcelona’s Sagrada Fam\u00edlia<\/em><\/span><\/a>\u2014he understood something profound that would make most Silicon Valley prophets weep into their kombucha: True originality isn’t about inventing something from nothing. It’s about rediscovering something we forgot we knew.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n When Gaud\u00ed designed his masterpieces, he didn’t conjure alien geometries. He looked at\u00a0nature<\/em><\/span>\u2014the original architect. The spirals of nautilus shells. The branching of trees. The hexagonal perfection of honeycombs. He returned to the origin, to the fundamental grammar of the universe itself, and from there, created buildings that had never been seen before.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The paradox is perfect: He was utterly original\u00a0because<\/em><\/span>\u00a0he wasn’t trying to be.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Jorge Luis Borges<\/em><\/span><\/a> lost his sight in 1955, right around the time he was appointed Director of Argentina’s National Library<\/em><\/span>. Cruel irony? Perhaps. Or perhaps the universe knew what it was doing. Out of sight, but then look what came out of his mind!<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Unable to read, Borges returned to the origin of storytelling\u2014oral tradition, memory, the ancient art of weaving tales from the threads of what we carry inside us. He began dictating his stories, drawing from the vast library of his mind, from myths and legends that predated the written word.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n And what happened? He created some of the most innovative, labyrinthine, mind-bending literature of the 20th century. “The Library of Babel<\/em><\/span>,” “The Aleph<\/em><\/span>,” stories that played with infinity, time, and parallel realities\u2014all because a blind man returned to the oldest way humans ever told stories: one voice, one listener, one shared dream in the dark.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The takeaway isn’t subtle: When you can’t move forward, sometimes the universe is telling you to dig deeper.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Ando had poverty. Borges had blindness. Gaud\u00ed had a client who wanted something “different” and the freedom to experiment. Constraints aren’t obstacles\u2014they’re the fingers of fate pointing you toward your origin. As Ryan Holiday<\/em> <\/span><\/a>calls it ” The Obstacle Is The Way<\/em> <\/span><\/a>“.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n In an age of artificial intelligence and infinite content, the most original thing you can do is be\u00a0fundamentally human<\/em>.<\/span> In a world of shortcuts and hacks, the most disruptive move is to master the fundamentals. In a culture addicted to trends, the most radical act is to be timeless<\/em><\/span>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Gaud\u00ed spent 40 years building the Sagrada Fam\u00edlia<\/em><\/span>. It’s still not finished. But it’s already immortal.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Why? Because he built it on principles as old as creation itself\u2014geometry, light, growth, aspiration. He didn’t chase the zeitgeist. He chased the eternal.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Your most original work won’t come from trying to be different. It will come from being so deeply yourself, so rooted in first principles, so committed to the essence of what you do, that imitation becomes impossible.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Not because you’re weird. But because you’re\u00a0true<\/em><\/span>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n In closing, sharing something as food for thought. A couple of them. So that we stop chasing originality and start embodying it.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n –Become a “Why” Archaeologist<\/em><\/span>:Before you create anything\u2014a presentation, a marketing campaign, a sourdough starter\u2014ask not “What’s new?” but “What’s the first principle<\/em><\/span>?” What is the fundamental problem? The primal need? The core emotion? Start there. The answer is your origin.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n –Embrace “Intelligent Naivet\u00e9”<\/em><\/span>:Pretend you\u2019re an alien seeing your field for the first time. Ask the dumb questions. “Why do chairs have four legs?” “Why do meetings have to be an hour?” “Why does a website need a homepage?” You\u2019ll be stunned how many “rules” are just barnacles on the hull of the original ship.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n –Steal from the Soil, Not the Surface<\/em><\/span>:Don\u2019t copy your competitor’s latest feature. That\u2019s theft from the surface. Instead, ask why<\/em> <\/span>it works. What human need does it tap into? Steal that primal need\u2014the origin\u2014and build your own, better solution from that foundation. That\u2019s originality.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n So, go on. Be a cosmic archaeologist. Dig. The most original version of your work, your art, your life\u2014it\u2019s not a distant star. It\u2019s a seed, buried deep, waiting for you to remember where you planted it.<\/p>\n And when you find it, water it with your own unique weirdness. Watch what grows.<\/p>\n I have a feeling Gaud\u00ed<\/em><\/span> would approve.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" “Originality consists of returning to the origin.” – Antoni Gaud\u00ed I read this quote a few days back and the credit for this blog post must be attributed to the inspiration drawn from this one profound line. So, let that marinate. It\u2019s not a forward command. It\u2019s a homecoming. Antoni Gaud\u00ed was … Continue reading “Innovation Is Actually Backward: Why Your Best Ideas Are Already Inside You”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2338","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sureshdinakaran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2338","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sureshdinakaran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sureshdinakaran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sureshdinakaran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sureshdinakaran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2338"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.sureshdinakaran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2338\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2340,"href":"https:\/\/www.sureshdinakaran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2338\/revisions\/2340"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sureshdinakaran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2338"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sureshdinakaran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2338"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sureshdinakaran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2338"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}