Genuine Creativity Is Your New Moat (2026)

Back successful 2006, I worked astatine a mini imaginative agency called Mutant Media, connected 35th and 8th successful Manhattan. We designed and built websites, mobility graphics, people design, and a small thing called microsites.

If you’re aged capable to person lived done the Flash era, you retrieve a peculiar type of microsite: you’d beryllium connected a awesome brand’s website and there’d beryllium a nexus that said thing for illustration “Launch Experience >>>” aliases “Enter Flash Site” and clicking connected that would unfastened up a fixed, 640x480 popup model (yeah) containing a Flash app.

This Flash app would person immoderate benignant of fancy, eye-catching quasi-functionality, for illustration allowing you to rotation a sneaker astir successful “3D,” and location mightiness beryllium a low-fi euphony loop playing (mute fastener only if you’re lucky).

As different example, 1 of the galore projects I worked connected astatine that clip was a Flash crippled for Bacardi wherever you operation Mojitos by dragging and dropping ingredients. The crippled had a slope of sound samples of a sound character portraying the bartender and saying things for illustration “Nice” and “It’s pronounced mo-hee-to.” Hahaha. Sorry, I don’t person a screenshot of this. I wish.

Whether you liked aliases hated Flash, this play of web improvement was thing short of a imaginative explosion. At a glance:

• 1996: FutureSplash becomes Macromedia Flash

• 2000: Newgrounds creates its “Flash Portal;” experimental nett creation tract PrayStation launches; the Favourite Website Awards (FWA) launches specifically to admit innovative Flash websites

• 2001: PrayStation wins the Prix Ars Electronica

• 2002: Les Manovich writes Generation Flash

• 2004: Wired mag covers a functioning Flash simulation of a Mac System 7 machine

• 2006: Flash Player is installed connected almost 98% of web-connected PCs. ActionScript 3 is released pinch Flash Player 9 (which was the first type to beryllium officially called Adobe Flash Player)

• 2008: Flash has go the standard transportation system for web video

• 2010: Steve Jobs publishes his “Thoughts connected Flash”; Three.js is released

• Beyond this point, Flash usage steadily plummets until it was officially discontinued successful 2020.

Today, the Flashpoint archive catalogues 157,509 Flash works—and those are conscionable the ones that hap to beryllium preserved.

But I’m not present to praise Flash. It objectively sucked, and everyone knew it objectively sucked. Accessibility? Yeah, no. Unskippable intro animations? Browser backmost button? Everyone hated Flash moreover while utilizing it everyplace for each kinds of caller stuff. There are entire books astir this.

I don’t deliberation it’s a crazy declare that Flash enabled a whole batch of people to make a full batch of crazy, weird, unexpected shit. It reminds maine of erstwhile synthesizers became cheaper and much portable successful the precocious 70s, which resulted successful wholly caller genres, for illustration New Wave and Synthpop and connected and connected and on.

When you springiness the world a caller tool, pinch which you tin make animations, make arbitrary graphics interactive, person worldly move astir and beryllium clickable, etc., etc., you get an full procreation of designers and artists and mean randos—not “web programmers”—experimenting pinch caller ideas. People came up pinch autoplayed music, animated menus, each kinds of animated navigation methods, resistance and driblet interactions, loading screens arsenic a imaginative medium, merchandise configurators, and a cardinal different things that JavaScript could not do astatine the time. And yes, I cognize a batch of that worldly sucked.

But man, you don’t get new bully ideas without sifting done piles of bad ones. Experimentation is really we observe interesting, valuable, worthwhile things that didn’t beryllium until immoderate kid learned really to usage the weird caller tool.

The Present Works and is Boring

Fast-forwarding to today: the web is acold much standardized, acold much functional, acold little busy, acold much accessible, acold little annoying.

But it’s besides boring arsenic hell.

I don’t deliberation there’s immoderate measurement I tin convey to you really interesting each that Flash garbage was if you didn’t unrecorded done it. It’s trivially easy to kick astir it. It’s little easy to admit that we, arsenic a culture, had to spell done that shape successful bid to fig retired a bunch of stuff, like, “Hey, possibly screenreaders should beryllium capable to show what this fastener is for.”

Out of curiosity I went to nike.com to spot what it’s for illustration today. And, you know, it’s fine. It’s perfectly cromulent. There’s a small carousel. The pages load beautiful quickly. Design-wise, it’s, you know, fine.

AI-‘designed’ Sites

It’s besides highly banal. It’s inheritance design: the benignant that nary 1 notices. And it’s not conscionable this 1 peculiar site. Now that LLMs tin vibe up a tract successful minutes, anyone tin whip up an arsenic banal, inoffensive tract that is nevertheless technically fine.

I’m judge you won’t beryllium amazed to perceive that location are a batch of LLM websites being generated. An April 2026 study recovered that, by mid-2025, astir 35% of newly-published websites were AI-generated.

OK, truthful now you’re wondering if I’m drafting a comparison, astatine the taste level, to the Flash phenomenon. But there’s a beautiful gigantic difference: the humans initiating the creation of these LLM-generated sites aren’t making immoderate important imaginative decisions.

There’s nary experimentation happening here. If location are caller ideas here, they person to do pinch the taxable matter, not the ocular aliases interactive presentation.

“But Ted,” you say, “there doesn’t request to beryllium ocular aliases interactive experimentation. In fact, location shouldn’t be. We’ve figured retired the correct measurement to make websites.”

And for galore intents and purposes, I’d really work together pinch you. I’d alternatively person a boring but clean, legible and accessible tract pinch decent ocular level than, say, a plain matter file. (This besides appears to group maine isolated from a batch of programers who look to deliberation that undifferentiated plain matter is virtually the only personification interface that should exist.)

But if you’re worried that your SaaS is now going to commencement having a batch much competition, you mightiness beryllium right. Generative AI is lowering the obstruction of entry, and at slightest immoderate companies are struggling pinch that. Between 2022 and the extremity of 2024, the number of Y Combinator applications jumped from 20,000 to 27,000—per batch—and past starting successful 2025 they moved from 2 batches per twelvemonth to 4 batches per year.

So: really do we differentiate ourselves? How do we guidelines retired from the crowd?

It is successful Your Best Interests to beryllium Creative

The reply is genuine creativity. I’m not talking astir trying an edgy colour palette. I’m talking astir starting complete from scratch. Don’t return 1 measurement backmost from your project, return 100 steps back. What are you trying to accomplish? What is the bosom of your idea? What do your users want? What would beryllium cool? What would beryllium awesome?

What the Gen-AI-enabled world needs now is better taste. It’s easy—trivial, even—to guidelines up a tract aliases a basal app. But truthful what? Are you looking astatine the personification acquisition from extremity to end? Are you questioning your ain premises? Have you considered a completely, fundamentally different approach?

And if that sounds hard? Well, yeah, exactly. If it’s hard, really hard, past you mightiness conscionable beryllium connected to something. Often this is precisely why thing hasn’t been done before: because it’s a difficult problem and nobody’s solved it yet—until you travel on pinch a caller idea.

If you want to differentiate your product, your moat isn’t 1 caller idea. This can, and will, beryllium copied. Your moat is the expertise to support inventing original solutions to problems while everyone other is conscionable iterating connected the aforesaid tired answer.

Reexamine Your Assumptions

“Starting complete from scratch” doesn’t mean throwing retired accessibility aliases modular practices that person existent value. It intends imaginative problem-solving starts way, measurement deeper.

• Does this merchandise need to activity this way?

• Is this actually the customer’s problem?

• Is this characteristic a good solution, aliases simply the customary solution?

• What would we build if we hadn’t already seen 20 answers to the aforesaid question?

AI Helps You Experiment Faster

Now that we person machines that tin make humanlike outputs, AI tin potentially beryllium a awesome boon to creativity. It tin thief you effort things and iterate overmuch much quickly than ever before. The captious point is that you don’t fto your AI decide important things for you. You request to beryllium the 1 questioning everything and keeping an oculus retired astatine each times for caller solutions.

We person an opportunity here, arsenic a culture, to leverage AI’s velocity to make much experiments, not much replicas. So adjacent clip you’re heavy successful speech pinch your LLM astir a merchandise idea, inquire it to place the assumptions you’re making. Pick 1 of those and see what it would mean for that presumption to beryllium wrong. Then inquire it to critique your attack from the POV of personification who really has to usage the point successful question. Expect immoderate its consequence to beryllium nonsense, but deciding what is apt existent and what is apt irrelevant is really successful itself a adjuvant exercise.

I person a batch much ideas astir this taxable but those will person to hold for a early article.

The Business Argument

When competent execution becomes abundant:

• “We built an app” is nary longer typical aliases impressive.

• Professional-looking creation is not a differentiator.

• Standard characteristic sets are easy to replicate.

• Even a caller output tin still beryllium copied quickly.

What remains scarce is your capacity to:

• Identify problems everyone other has overlooked

• Frame acquainted things differently, moreover radically differently

• Invent a genuinely caller interaction, model, experience, aliases category

• Make different aliases experimental choices coherent

• Continue evolving aft your competitors transcript your ideas

I can’t overemphasize the connection “habit” enough. And you whitethorn person noticed that the worth successful this is not new. It’s ever been valuable to beryllium innovative; it’s conscionable abruptly overmuch much apparent.

Experimentation is Not a Guarantee, but it is simply a Requirement

Let maine reiterate 1 different point:

You don’t get caller bully ideas without sifting done piles of bad ones.

Every clip I spot immoderate net commenter shitting connected an research I conscionable deliberation “Well, bully luck ever having a caller thought pinch that attitude.” The intent of the research is not to beryllium “good” aliases “bad.” It is to try.

When you were a kid, you astir apt reached a constituent wherever your sensation overshot your expertise to create, and you started experiencing vexation looking at, say, a drafting you did, and angrily throwing it away. You whitethorn person travel crossed Ira Glass’ celebrated quote connected this point.

I’m begging you to alteration that reaction. You must expect that a batch of what you effort won’t work. You’ll make thing awkward, aliases confusing, aliases observe aft 3 hours that your incredibly clever thought has a reasonably evident problem. Congratulations, you’re experimenting! This is what it looks for illustration earlier there’s thing bully to show anybody.

Creativity is simply a habit, and portion of that wont is letting an thought unrecorded agelong capable to find retired whether there’s thing to it. “That astir apt won’t work” tin beryllium the opening of an absorbing day if you fto it. Why won’t it work? Could immoderate type of it work? What would person to change? My azygous favourite root of inspiration is simply: “What if…?”

So now we person devices that tin thief america analyse those questions quickly. Like, really, really quickly. That weird relationship you’re imagining? You mightiness beryllium capable to effort it retired today. The attack you dismissed because it would return excessively agelong to prototype? Maybe it doesn’t anymore. This tin be—should be—an incredibly breathtaking clip to make things.

But we person to really return advantage of that opportunity. If each research starts pinch a competitor’s website and ends erstwhile ours looks astir arsenic “professional,” we’ve group ourselves a beautiful debased ceiling. We could beryllium asking what our customers would emotion that nobody’s bothered to make yet.

That’s wherever the business worth lies. Getting comfortable pinch this process gives you a existent worth prop erstwhile everyone other is quickly and efficiently duplicating past success. Practice questioning the premise, pursuing the overseas idea, uncovering thing useful successful an effort that mostly failed. And support doing it and virtually don’t ever stop. A competitor cannot get each of that by prompting Claude.

I deliberation astir those ridiculous Flash sites because group were truthful visibly excited to find retired what they could make. I’d emotion to spot much of that excitement again. We person bonzer devices astatine our disposal, and there’s still plentifulness we haven’t tried.

So commencement giving credence to weird ideas and spell find retired if immoderate of those weird ideas work. Just, if you see a soundtrack, please fto america shut up it ;)