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Why Woz knows nothing about India or creativity ?



Steve Woz recently recently made a comment on Indians and their lack of creativity

"The culture here is one of success based upon academic excellence, studying, learning, practicing and having a good job and a great life. For upper India, not the lower. I see two Indias. That’s a lot like Singapore study, study, work hard and you get an MBA, you will have a Mercedes but where is the creativity? The creativity gets left out when your behavior is too predictable and structured, everyone is similar. Look at a small country like New Zealand, the writers, singers, athletes, it’s a whole different world."

 According to Woz, if you chase excellence by studying, learning, practicing in a predictable and structured manner, you are unlikely to be creative. More than anything, the statement reveals that Woz knows little about creativity or India.

Let's take music ..

1) Structure - Music is very well structured. There are notes and the patterns in which you use the notes will give you raga.
2) Predictable - Any musical instrument is fairly predictable. Any key on a paino or a fret on guitar always plays the same note.
3) Studying - Take any musical maestro, their jouney begins by studying music from a guru or a teacher
4) Learning - A musician is a life long learner. No matter how many songs you have composed, there is always more to learn.
5) Practice - Riaaz or daily practice is habit in the life of any musician. Those who do not practice, lose touch.

Lastly excellence is only possible by thousands of hours of practice as explained by Malcolm Gladwell in his book - Outliers.

The same logic can be applied to a writer, painter etc. Its easy to see that Woz knows very little about creativity.

Now lets come to India. If anyone claims that India is predictable or structured is just stupid and un-educated. No two cities in India are alike, the diversity and chaos in India is sinply hard to hide.

Sorry Woz , you words just reveal your true talent. You are nothing more than a blue collar worker used by Jobs to assemble his creations. Its better to stay away from commenting on creativity and your comments on Indian culture reflect your complete lack of education or general knowledge.

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