I am not talking about the 4 letter F word but the 7 letter one.

The short vulgarism has become so commonplace in American daily life that it doesn’t even raise an eyebrow in most social situations, radio shows, or Hollywood movies. But the other F word can still make the most sophisticated and streetwise person blush, squirm, and sob behind locked doors.

Still don’t know what it is?

Let me spell it out: F-a-i-l-u-r-e!

Virtually no one in American society wants to be a failure or associated with failure. The country is about SUCCESS!

That is why the creative people will always be a very small part of the mainstream American economy — although they will play an increasingly pivotal
part.

Real creativity is about repeated failure. It is built on endless experimentation, play, free association, and thinking truly uncomfortable thoughts. Jim Adams, who was a distinguished professor of engineering at Stanford University and a key player at the Jet Propulsion Lab in NASA’s heyday, expressed this sentiment during a lecture over 30 years ago — the truly creative person has an appetite for sustained ambiguity, contradiction, complexity,
frustration, and initial failure.

Basically, everything that would send a regular person racing to a psychiatrist for a big bottle of Zoloft.

Adams was both a proponent and skeptic of small-scale creative ventures. As one of Silicon Valley’s most esteemed academics and consultants, he educated and influenced some of our nation’s most creative and successful entrepreneurs. But he knew the statistics of success; and they have not budged much in three decades.

Only about 8% of working Americans are involved in a start-up business in a given year. Easily 50% of these ventures will fail within 5 years, and another 50% will fail in ten. Almost none of these creative enterprises will make it to 20 years with the original entrepreneurs at the helm.

There are roughly 240,000 professional artists in the U.S., out of a workforce of approximately 150,000,000 gainfully employed citizens. Even without a calculator, you can grasp that the number of creative people who are strong enough to defy parental hopes and dreams for a safe, high-status profession is statistically insignificant.

It is no wonder that being a teacher or administrator in the truly creative domains of painting, sculpture, music, dance, literature generally pays a lot better than actually doing the activity in the marketplace. Compare the salary of a typical professor or dean at a college of law, medicine, or business to a practitioner and it is surprising that academia can get anyone to teach at all.

In the realms of mainstream businesses and government agencies, creativity can be a career killer. Any executive or manager who is repeatedly associated with new and failed ideas is usually fired or quietly whisked off to organizational Siberia. That is why high-powered, outside consultants can earn a fortune championing innovative designs and iconoclastic policies. They are professional fall guys and gals. The person in charge has covered her or his tailbone by temporarily retaining prestigious hired guns.

The reason that the stigma of failure is so pervasive and debilitating is its social utility.

In both isolated aboriginal societies and technologically advanced countries like Japan, the "deviant" individual is shunned and shamed. This person usually sickens and often dies shortly after being cast out by the dominant group. In America, it is somewhat easier to be a creative nonconformist because of our frontier and multicultural history. But it still exacts a high price. I never met a truly rugged individualist who had an easy life — although they sure put a positive spin on it.

A well-functioning and orderly society can tolerate and employ only so much creativity and atypical behavior. The consensus reality is that most of us have to play by the rules most of the time…and it is probably a good thing.

The big innovative leaps and breakthroughs are done by a handful of fortunate geniuses. Think Thomas Edison, Steve Jobs, Marie Currie, Tim Berners-Lee, Duke Ellington, Picasso, George Lucas, etc.

At this point, you might ask — What does a "regular" creative individual do to both survive and prosper? There are no easy or entirely satisfactory answers; but there are always creative possibilities. 

An ambitious and creative grad should probably try to land job with a high-profile innovative company like Apple, Disney, Google, Hallmark, Electronic Arts, Chiat/Day, Ogilvy & Mather, National Geographic, Wieden+Kennedy, HarperCollins, Fox, MSNBC, etc. These established creative operations have the resources to groom talent; and make creative failure just a routine business expense.

Those fortunate Boomers who are at the top of their creative game must figure out how to gracefully pass the torch and then move on to their heart’s true desire.

Mid-career creative professionals between the ages of 30 to 45 will typically have the hardest row to hoe. This age bracket coincides with the formation of a family. Life is high on responsibilities to others and low on personal
flexibility. All I can say, if you choose to have a child and open a business at roughly the same time, you will get gray hair and a furrowed brow like the author of this Creative Share column.

For the childless mid-career creative professional, these are your salad days. Don’t waste your valuable energy bickering with a spouse or significant other; do take exotic vacations, and please contribute the maximum dollar amount to your IRA and/or 401K. I know that these little bon mots sound like something you would find inside of a Chinese fortune cookie, but seriously consider them.

Finally, do yourself a favor and read the Harvard Business Review OnPoint/Executive Edition/Spring magazine, which is devoted to "The Creative Company." I bought a copy at Borders.

If you want to enhance your chances for creative and financial success at any point in your career, and not be the dreaded F word, you must know and understand what the real decision makers in American business might be thinking.

Here are links to five relevant books via Amazon — 

Conceptual Blockbusting: A Guide to Better Ideas by James L. Adams
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw/002-1198431-0068026?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=conceptual+blockbusting+by+Jim+Adams&Go.x=11&Go.y=11&Go=Go

Free Agent Nation: The Future of Working for Yourself by Daniel Pink
http://www.amazon.com/Free-Agent-Nation-Working-Yourself/dp/0446678791/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/002-1198431-0068026?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1176126768&sr =8-1

The Elephant and the Flea: Reflections of a Reluctant Capitalist by Charles Handy
http://www.amazon.com/Elephant-Flea-Charles-Handy/dp/1591391288/ref=sr_1_1/002-1198431-0068026?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1176126827&sr =1-1

The Tao of Abundance: Eight Ancient Principles for Living Abundantly in the 21st
Century by Laurence Boldt

http://www.amazon.com/Tao-Abundance-Ancient-Principles-Abundantly/dp/0140196064/ref=sr_1_1/002-1198431-0068026?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1176127045&sr =1-1

The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius / translated by Martin Hammond
http://www.amazon.com/Meditations-Penguin-Classics-Marcus-Aurelius/dp/0140449337/ref=sr_1_1/002-1198431-0068026?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1176127251&sr =1-1