Great innovators can be arrogant, impatient, moody, unpredictable, surly, sarcastic, supercilious... even a little crazy. And not just because they’re smarter than you and me. No, some of them behave oddly in order to get ideas. Take Ludwig van Beethoven.

His alcoholic father wanted him to be like Mozart. A prodigy. Pop would come home late, wake his son in the middle of the night, and make him practice the piano. Maybe that’s what did it. Oh sure, the kid turned out to be a pretty good musician. But not till much later. And he had a real nasty attitude. As hard as he tried and as desperately as he wanted a wife, he never could hold down a romantic relationship. (This is where the partners of creative geniuses roll their eyes.)

A famous poet visited him once and came away calling him “an utterly untamed personality.” He was also a slob. His apartments were littered with music, money, clothes, and heaps of laundry all over the place. He never combed or cut his hair.

For inspiration, he paced like creative people sometimes do. But he also liked to pour water over his hands and howl the musical scale. It drove his landlords nuts. Which helps explain why he couldn’t keep an apartment. In the last 20 or so years of his life, he moved more than 60 times.

Once while he was playing for group of royalty, one of them had the audacity to speak during his performance. With absolutely no regard for social rank, the man who would change the course of musical history, stopped playing and stood up. Before storming out of the room, he lashed out at his audience. His final words were something like, “Princes like you are born every day. But there’s only one Beethoven.”

See also:

• Critics
• Big Kid Innovation

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