The creatives we need: Disruptors and revolutionaries

Do you ever feel like the world is on autopilot?

As trends repeat themselves, ideas feel recycled, and everything is optimised by some invisible system deciding what you should like, buy, watch, or believe. People call it algorithms. Some call it the Matrix. Either way, it rewards sameness and punishes difference.

And that’s exactly why creativity—real creativity—has never been more dangerous… or more necessary.

Let’s be honest: the world doesn’t just need “content creators.”
It needs disruptors and revolutionaries.

Disruptors shake the table.
Revolutionaries change who owns the table.

And no, these people didn’t have it easy. That’s the part history books clean up too nicely.

The Disruptors: The Ones Who Were Told “This Won’t Work”

Take Steve Jobs.

Before the iPhone became an extension of the human hand, people said, “Who wants a phone without buttons?” He was fired from his own company. Mocked. Doubted. Yet he kept pushing one idea: technology should serve humans beautifully.

Or Elon Musk—controversial, flawed, human. But disruption has never required perfection. It requires obsession. When electric cars were considered toys and space travel was reserved for governments, he was told it was impossible, unrealistic, even stupid.

Disruptors are not liked at first.
They are tolerated later.
Then copied endlessly.

The Revolutionaries: The Ones Who Challenged Entire Systems

Kwame Nkrumah wasn’t just fighting for independence. He was fighting mental slavery.

Colonialism didn’t only take land—it trained Africans to doubt themselves. To believe leadership, intelligence, and innovation had to come from elsewhere. Nkrumah was imprisoned before Ghana’s independence. Called dangerous. Called radical. Yet he warned us clearly:

“Freedom is not something that one people can bestow on another as a gift.”

That wasn’t poetry. That was a strategy.

Martin Luther King Jr. wasn’t just giving speeches. He was arrested. Beaten. Threatened. He wrote letters from jail while being labelled a criminal by the state. His enemy wasn’t just hatred—it was lawful injustice.

Einstein?
Ignored. Laughed at. Working as a patent clerk while the academic world dismissed his ideas. He wasn’t challenging physics—he was challenging authority disguised as knowledge.

Ada Lovelace imagined computers doing more than calculations in a world that barely believed women should think publicly at all.

Revolutionaries don’t fight trends.
They fight systems.

Let’s Bring This Home: The African Creative Today

If you’re a young creative in Ghana—or anywhere in Africa—this story should sound familiar.

You have ideas, but you’re told: “This won’t work here.”

You’re talented, but you’re asked, “Who do you know?”

You think differently, and suddenly you’re labelled “too ambitious,” “disrespectful,” or “ahead of your time.”

You’re encouraged to leave .Or to conform. Or to wait your turn in a system that wasn’t built with you in mind.

That’s not failure .That’s friction.

And friction is where change begins.

A Necessary Truth (So No One Misunderstands)

Not all disruption is good.
Not all revolution is righteous.

True disruption serves people, not ego.
True revolution restores dignity, not dominance.

You don’t burn systems just to watch fire.
You challenge them to make space for human potential.

And no, everyone doesn’t need to lead a movement.
But everyone can refuse to live asleep.

So What’s the Real Takeaway?

Creativity isn’t about fitting in.
It’s about asking better questions when everyone else is memorising answers.

It’s about being misunderstood long enough for truth to catch up.

The people we celebrate today were once considered problems.

So you have a choice.

You can fit neatly into the system…
Or you can become the reason it has to change.

And history?
History always sides with the brave—eventually.

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DISCLAIMER: The Views, Comments, Opinions, Contributions and Statements made by Readers and Contributors on this platform do not necessarily represent the views or policy of Multimedia Group Limited.