John,

Reflected and rejected! Not that I reject being creative, if you have read the post of the past you will find I have supported the creative side of this industry for over four decades. But I would also reject that we should be problem solvers and not creators.

In this industry we have to be both. I think what Steve was getting to was that we supply the creative solution to simple and complex problems and that skill is imperative to success, and is highly sought after as a job skill. And I agree with him completely.

You know this but I have to say it to make the point. You can create an excellent system that is highly creative and really slick on the backend with the best processing and database structure. And you can employ the latest bells and whistles in such a creative way that other skilled technicians marvel at the entire thing. But if the intended user looks at it and asks what does it do? And they cannot use it, you have been creative and have solved nothing. Your creation lays idle.

Many in the past have echoed the idea that we are scientists and as such we analyze, visualize, speculate, prove, and apply. In short we are applying the science of IT to processes and problems to make solutions possible or easier.

In this there is a huge demand for creativity, but there must be the ability to visualize, understand, and solve business problems or the work is only imperical, and theoretical.

Einstein use to be able to visualize the flows of data and processes as waves of light in a multi-dimential universe. And he would play those waves like music in his mind until he found harmony, thus a solution. This type of abstract reasoning and problem solving is crucial to our industry but we also have to be able to visualize what others have done before us and how they were thinking to be able to find the problems they missed and to build on their efforts.

So I reject the idea of one and not the other. We have to have the creative and the problem solving.