How To Find Inspiration For Creative Work

‘This is Blog 2 of My 7 Blog posts in 7 day challenge “

Over two decades ago a young Japanese man named Satoshi Tajiri, was inspired to make what would become a hugely successful cultural phenomenon.

Keep reading to find out what we can learn to from this example.

The Craze That Swept The World

Growing up in the 90s It was hard to miss an international cultural phenomenon that would still be around 25 years later. The franchise has spawned multiple video games, TV series, films, books and a very famous trading card game. Today it is the highest-grossing media of all time, earning a whopping estimated 98 billion dollars, trumping even that of Star Wars, another successful franchise that has been out nearly 20 years longer.

I am of course, talking of Pokémon.

For those people who have been living under a rock, Pokemon (a portmanteau of Pocket Monster) started its life as a Japanese Nintendo video game in 1996. In the game, the player collects small creatures called Pokemon, trains them to become stronger and battles them against other character’s Pokemon as a kind of sport. In the fictional universe in which they exist, there are special gyms to train Pokemon and even leagues and competitions. The franchise’s famous slogan ‘Gotta Catch Them All’ relates to players journey throughout the world trying to collect all the original 151 Pokemon to become the ultimate Pokemon champion.

What some people may not know is that the inspiration for Pokemon came from the creator’s, Satoshi Tajiri’s, childhood hobby of insect collecting.

As the story goes, Tajiri used to collect insects as a child in what was then, a more rural area of Tokyo. He even earned himself the nickname of Dr Bug. However, as Tokyo became increasingly urbanised, habitats for insects were lost and insect collecting became less accessible. When Tajiri came up with the idea for the video game Pokémon, he saw it as a way for others to experience the enjoyment of exploring and collecting, in the same way, he did with insects.

Combining Tajiri’s two passions: video games and insect collecting, may not have seemed like it would be an obvious success. Even at the time, executives at Nintendo did not really grasp the concept. But they were impressed by Tajiri’s programming skill, so they went along with it.

Finding inspiration in Non-obvious places

Oftentimes when we find ourselves at a creative dead end, we often look for inspiration in the same area of our work. If we write about productivity, we read productivity books and articles, we make videos about tech, we read tech reviews and watch tech videos. If we make video games, then we might copy the formats of other video games out there. However, we also have seemingly unrelated interests, that if we considered them, could offer a new angle or take on our work. In fact, that was the very nature of the article – I linked my knowledge of entomology, video games to offer a post about combining other interests to find inspiration. I am not actually offering anything new or groundbreaking here. Most people already know this. But I am using my uniques experiences to produce a blog post that combines the things I am interested in.

So next time you need some creative inspiration for your work, try looking at what your other interests could offer you.