Good point. Still the critical point of the article is that obsessing on getting rich is more likely to lead to failure. Staying loose and having fun is more conducive to creatively solving customer needs. Solve customer needs and you'll probably make a lot of money. Focus on getting rich and you probably won't make any money.
I still don't see what "having fun" has to do with "solving customer needs": often customer needs are boring, esoteric, poorly-specified, and technically uninteresting -- exactly the opposite of the sort of thing you'd do to "have fun".
Creativity is just one way, and not necessarily the most
effective to achieve perspective shift. In fact I am increasingly
of the opinion that creativity is not a cause of innovation,
but a property of innovation processes, its something that
you can use as evidence of innovation, but not to create it.
This might be true, but coming up with solutions to customer needs is a very small part of making software. Most of the day is filled with programming, i.e. translating your vision into actual software.
Creativity is often the result of great adversity. But in a roundabout way, you're right (but probably not in the way you think). See, by having fun, you're wasting time you should be spending solving the problem. Then just before the deadline, you miraculously solve the problem. Your fun beget your laziness,which beget your desperation,which beget your creativity.
Nope, that doesn't stop lots of people. Ever heard of Duke Nukem Forever? Or any of the people here on HN who talk about their social network for dogs-type startups.
Actually, I'd really argue that if you're obsessed with EFFECTIVE action (which is necessary to make money), you are much more likely to realize that what you're doing may be fun but will never be a product people will pay for.
I've spent 8 of the last 9 months having great fun writing an app. A month ago, I realised if I kept having so much fun, I'd never release!