“Good artists copy, great artists steal.”

Feb '23 (edited) in Career & Getting Clients 💰

Recently I read a post by

in linkedin where she was asked if “Aren’t you worried they’ll copy your stuff?” when she readily shares her tips and tricks with other facilitators.

Her answer is similar to mine so I decided to share here with you a video I use as reference to address this topic where Steve Jobs is quoting Picasso and saying: “Good artists copy, great artists steal.”

What this means is that we are all stealing from each other! Aj&Smart steals from the Design Sprint and dozens of facilitation books, the Design Sprint steals from lean startup and agile methodologies, the business model canvas steals from visual thinking, and so on and so forth!

Now, notice that stealing in this quote is better than copying! While copying would be the mere act of doing the same as someone else without making it your own, stealing is here referred to as the act of copying with care, property and adaptation to your own context. This is what Picasso was referring to.

So steal away, avoid copying, and give credit where credit is due!

This is how we evolve ;)

Joao

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