These articles are only vaguely-related, but I they’re all worth reading:
- Paul Graham has written a very articulate and well-observed essay called Great Hackers. It discusses who they are, how to keep them happy and why they’re crucially important to your company. You could replace “hackers” with “creative people” throughout this article, and most of it would still apply. Here’s the inevitable Slashdot discussion on the article. With their usual autistic tunnel-vision, the Slashdotters’ conversation largely revolves around the comparative merits of perl and Java.
- Via Boing Boing, cartoonist Hugh Macleod writes about how to be creative. I haven’t read the whole thing yet, but I like step #1: “Ignore everybody”.
- Microsoft recruiter Heather Leigh points out the important but oft-ignored differences between “sales” and “marketing”.
DarrenBarefoot.com 
A critique of the “Great Hackers” essay that goes beyond the language wars (“How they do it is irrelevant”):
http://www.waxy.org/archive/2004/07/29/knauss_o.shtml
Heather Leigh’s post is really interesting. I wish small business people understood the difference between “sales” and “marketing”… too many people think that “marketing” means selling, and don’t want to invest in true “marketing” activities because it has no direct payback… “oh NO, it’s harder to MEASURE. Well, forget about that. Let’s write some proposals.”