There be monsters: what Odysseus can teach us about innovation when maps fail

Fortune’s latest commentary takes a long sail through The Odyssey and lands on a modern business lesson: when the future is blurry, leaders need fewer tidy plans and more adaptive judgment. The writer, who once spoke at an Aspen Institute summit on “Tomorrow’s Corporation,” argues that innovation doesn’t happen inside the comfort of the planning cycle. It happens where the map stops helping.

The piece’s key word is “creativizing,” a term the author says was coined to describe active, adaptive creative thinking. The idea is simple enough. Creativity is not just a trait someone has; it’s something people do. And when conditions change, the better move is not to cling to the old script but to work with what’s at hand and make the next intelligent move.

Odysseus is the guide here, not because he knows everything, but because he keeps moving when he doesn’t. The article uses the Cyclops to describe expertise that can suddenly be commoditized, especially now that AI can replicate a proprietary process faster than many companies expected. It uses the Sirens to describe synthetic intelligence that flatters leaders by telling them what they already want to believe. And it uses Calypso to describe the seductive trap of comfort, prestige, and the success that made a company successful in the first place.

The biggest force in the essay is Poseidon: change itself. That means geopolitics, competitors, regulations, and technologies like AI. The author’s point is blunt. You don’t defeat disruption by becoming a bigger version of what already exists. You survive by diagnosing the monster, using what you have, and learning from the voyage as it unfolds.

The finish is almost a checklist. Know your Ithaca, but don’t confuse the destination with the route. Figure out which monster you’re facing. Recombine your existing assets. Then let the trip teach you something. The argument is less “plan harder” than “think better while the ground is moving.”