Originality Isn’t the Problem. Courage Is.

Every few years, someone declares that originality is dead.

I don't think that's true.

Original ideas are everywhere—new perspectives, new approaches, new combinations, new interpretations, new ways of solving old problems.

The challenge isn't creating them.

The challenge is supporting them.

Original ideas arrive without guarantees.

Organizations routinely say they want something new.

But genuinely new ideas come with a problem: there is no precedent proving they will work.

It's much easier to approve an idea when someone else has already demonstrated its value. There are examples to point to, outcomes to reference, and evidence that makes the decision feel safer.

Originality doesn't offer that comfort.

Someone has to make the decision before the case study exists.

Someone has to invest before there's evidence.

Someone has to be willing to explain why an unfamiliar idea deserves resources, attention, and room to develop.

That's where courage enters the equation.

Familiarity can disguise itself as strategy.

There is nothing inherently wrong with precedent. Knowing what has worked before is useful.

The problem begins when precedent becomes permission.

An organization may ask for something distinctive and then evaluate every idea against what is already familiar. The more unfamiliar the idea feels, the more justification it requires. Eventually, the safest idea becomes the easiest one to approve.

And then everyone wonders why the result feels like something they've seen before.

The process didn't fail to produce originality.

The process filtered it out.

Someone still has to go first.

Supporting an original idea doesn't mean abandoning judgment.

It means recognizing that judgment and certainty are not the same thing.

There should be rigor. There should be questions. There should be a clear understanding of what the idea is trying to accomplish.

But at some point, genuinely original work requires someone to make a decision without knowing exactly how the story ends.

That's true in media. It's true in business. It's true in institutions. And it's true anywhere people are trying to create something that hasn't existed before.

Most breakthrough ideas look risky before they look inevitable.

Once they succeed, the risk becomes difficult to see. The idea gets copied, referenced, analyzed, and eventually treated as though its value had always been obvious.

It wasn't.

Someone backed it when it wasn't obvious.

Originality is abundant.

Someone still has to go first.

By Anissa Douglass
Founder, Creative Director & Executive Producer, Anissa Studio