Maybe I didn't believe it at first either - but what I said about my friends was true. Between their professional magic career, maintaining a family, and completing all of life's other essential tasks, there really is no time to work on creating new effects and methods. If that works for them, so what?
First off, creativity (as I understand VisualArtist) isn't just new effects and methods. It is much more than that. It is choosing what to present, deciding how to present it, deciding how to fit those choices together in routines or a show, deciding how to improve your presentations so that you have a stronger effect on the audience.
As for not having time to be creative, that is another way of saying you don't think it is important enough to your magic. That is saying that you are happy with "visual" effects that can be presented with a "say-do-see" patter.
If your friend recognized that creativity was important, he would make time. Stephen Covey, the author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, tells the story of the lumberjack who works from dawn to dusk cutting down trees but still couldn't meet his quota. A passer by noticed how hard he was working and noticed it was taking him almost because his saw wasn't sharp. "Why don't you sharpen your saw?" the passer by asked. "Don't have time," said the lumberjack, "I'm too busy cutting down trees."
I called him up and asked if he thought creativity was essential in his magic career. He said no. No matter, he's a master at what he does, is naturally entertaining, and he performs at multiple gigs per day.
I don't know your friend and have never seen him perform. But I can say I've seen a number of performers that consider themselves "naturally entertaining" and are frequently booked who are truly boring and not nearly as engaging as they think they are. Anyone who considers themselves a "master" at anything is deluding themselves. No matter what our level of learning or amount of experience we all can continue to learn how to improve. Thinking you know everything shows how little you actually know.
Do you need to be creative to be good at magic? Nope. There are lots of examples of that. Do you need to be creative to be great at magic? I think so.
If you aren't creative, don't worry. It is a skill that can be developed. It actually is a skill that can be best developed in collaboration with others. Unfortunately, if you are asking "who cares?" you have doomed yourself to a lifetime of performing other people's magic using other people's presentation. To me, that is a great loss because the most magical part of any effect is you and by not being creative you have removed yourself from the performance.
I often tell people not to try to create new effects. First, I think the most of the people who try to create new effects don't have the foundations to do it efficiently. Second, I think that the would be creator's time is better spent learning those foundations. Third, I think that most people want to create to sell an effect rather than to perform it -- and that is the wrong motivation (focusing on what people would buy rather than what you and your spectators would enjoy seeing performed). All that being said, creativity is not about developing new effects. Rather, creativity is related to
DEVELOPING YOUR PERFORMANCE.