Cultural Hierarchy Part 1: The Best/Worst Conditions for Creativity Analyzed Through KPop

It's of no surprise to anyone at this point that America has consistently produced the vast majority of industry and creative leaders in the world – entrepreneurs, innovators, inventors, artists, and so forth. The country's implicit model seems to be “you can be whatever you want” and that has certainly produced innumerable professionals that have created great value for this country and the world.

• The Father and Symbol of American Ingenuity

I've always been curious what the special sauce is, what exactly prompts so many Americans to wade into the darkness in attempts to find the new. Something must be there as its clear in the numbers: Americans maintain the highest number of patents every year. We create more than TWICE the number of startups than India in 2nd place. 90% of the USA economy is made up of businesses with 20 or less employees (small businesses and start-ups).

As a designer, I'll look into one case study in an attempt to find what the ideal (and most horrible) conditions of creativity are.

Kpop Star

I know I know, it's a bit off-road to go from economic ingenuity to gemstone-studded pop culture but I promise this will make legitimate food for thought. This micro-niche of internationally acclaimed creativity serves as a rich case study for how new ideas are put into real form. Anyway, here goes...

Since 2002, American Idol blazed the way for singing and talent competitions around the world, motivating parallel programs based in dozens of other countries – Canadian Idol, Latin American Idol, Indonesian Idol, and dozens more. Currently, KPop Star (a more focused rendition of the Idol reality show) is in its 6th season.

• Each winner joins one of the country's most successful agencies, each represented by a head judge

What I'd like to focus on today is the completely shocking aspect of the results...

All of the winners were not raised or wholly educated in South Korea.

Akdong Musician was largely home-schooled in Mongolia. Park Ji-Min in Bangkok international schools. Lee Soo-Jung, Katie Kim, and Bernard Park in the USA. Through 5 entire seasons, no Korean-educated national has won the Korea-based competition.

• The True Faces of Korean Talent?

How can this be? The vast majority of contestants are Korean-raised and local Korean applicants far outnumber those from abroad. The Korean version of American Idol is particularly unique since they actively scout and engage Koreans who were born and/or live around the world. Before I start the analysis, here is a video of a Texas-raised Korean-American.

If you compare it to the presence and talent of the Korean-raised contestants, the aura is quite different. You can see the surprise on the faces of the judges when someone comes out with such a different talent than the highly tailored ability of people who spent years in formal training.

So this was a bit of an intro into the case-study. Tomorrow, we'll look at the societal and environmental factors that lead to this and what specifics of our situations affect our ability to nurture creative talent!

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