We love famous people and we love to make people famous. When you tell stories for a living like I do, one of the first bits you pull from the air is this idea that human beings want very little more from the world than an endless supply of famous people to follow around.

Why do we do it and why is this important to building great stuff and telling good stories? Let’s look at both of these question.

The first one is pretty easy. It’s what psychologists call Identification. Specifically, it’s a type of identification known as “secondary identification.”

It works something like this: lots of us have things we wish we were better at. We want to be funnier, smarter, better looking or more charismatic. Since becoming these things is hard, one way to fill that psychological void is to build up a straw god in the form of someone else.

We look at a movie star and start putting yourself in their roles.

We look at musicians and start putting yourself in their lives.

We look at books of quotes and start putting yourself in the lives of Einstein and Churchill and Ghandi.

We identify with the idealized qualities of others, qualities that we want ourself but don’t necessarily know how to reach except through someone else.

We love making people famous because the breadth and scope of qualities that we want to identify with is constantly growing and evolving, and we cant build these vessels for our insecurities fast enough to keep up with the demand.

How does that help you, builder of great ideas? That question is a bit more subtle.

You see, fame is not as cut and dry as it might seem. It’s relative, it’s contextual. Being “famous” doesn’t necessarily mean driving around a Ferrari or winning the Nobel Peace Prize. Fame doesn’t have to be about being better than the “unwashed masses,” in fact, it shouldn’t be. The type of fame I’m talking about is about recognizing a quality within yourself worth emulating and making it easy for people to see that quality, Identify with it and be made better for it.

Look at a company like Apple. Their business is built on the philosophy of fame. They preach creativity, productivity, design clarity and they’ve become famous for doing just that. People buy their products as much for their obvious quality as for the fact that by making that purchase they can Identify with everything that Apple preaches.

The whole Batman mythos (yes, I am using Batman as an example) is built around the idea that people need symbols. They need standard bearers. They need examples and they want those examples embodied in something tangible — like you and your idea, for instance.

So I challenge you to decide what qualities you embody and what philosophy you believe your idea represents. You never know, it might just be you one day in lights.

While I have you here, take a look at some of the projects I’ve been working on. Pay special attention to my book on creativity and building ideas!

(Images)