Before & After : Creative thinking in business

Business is changing. I don’t need to tell you that. But how dramatic is this change?

I’m going to say business is not merely changing, it’s already changed. Like never before in the modern era.

The way we conduct business is different; from distribution channels, to digital store fronts, to alliances, to globalized markets, etc., etc.

How do I know this is beyond the tipping point? Because advertising has finally come to the party. And, in spite of claiming the creative high ground for decades, advertising has been one of the slower industries to embrace this new order. No more.

There are people who understand this and people who say they understand this, yet still go about advertising like it’s 1985. Since you’re at this blog you’re likely in the former group, and those in the latter group are probably holding you back.

I saw a presentation recently that would convince even the thickest of doubters. If these holdouts see this presentation they won’t be holding out much longer. If you see this presentation you’ll be better equipped to deal with these holdouts. (more…)

I find the above statement both absurd and undeniable at the same time.

I mean, how can creative genius actually rub off on an individual? So, any idiot hangs around with da Vinci and he gets brilliant? Yeah, right. And if I spend enough time with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar I’ll get taller, too.

But wait a minute. I’m a working-class kid growing up in a small industrial city. I can hang around with the wrong guys on the corner and probably wind up in jail before my 20th birthday. Or, I can hang around with these other guys with leather jackets, only they have guitars, too, and, if my name is George Harrison, I can grow up to be a creative genius.

Yes, this is hypothetical. But, hey, it’s fun to speculate sometimes. (more…)

Have you ever gotten an idea that could improve lives, drive a company, shift a market, even make billions, and then forgotten it entirely?

How do you know?

Ever get just a fragment of an idea that could have led to any of the above? Again, if you don’t recall, how do you know?

As much as I believe in the “blink!” theory, and try to practice it whenever I can, I also know that often that moment of creative truth comes after much mulling and ruminating and prodding and cultivating of a previously processed observation or insight.

Sometimes the creative process is just that, a process. And, as with any process, if you leave something out, like a pivotal idea in the thought chain, well, the entire process could be derailed.

There is a simple way to insure against some of this creative waste. (more…)

No, sorry. Common minds think alike. Great minds have different ideas. Very different ideas.

We hear it a lot. “Great minds think alike.” We even say it ourselves. Particularly when someone else has the same idea we have. No delusion there.

Yeah, it’s only an expression. And, yeah, often times it’s probably said with a wink. But the truth is great minds are much less likely to fall into the same old thought patterns that lead to predictable ideas. And we mere mortals, when we’re at our creative best, we’re not entertaining common ideas either.

I could talk about finding original ideas as an individual. But, of course, that’s what we discuss in 90% of the posts in this blog. So how about putting this in the context of group brainstorming, where a bunch of people are thinking about the same issue? So, in group think isn’t similar thinking validation that an idea is good? No, it’s validation that an idea is common and probably not particularly differentiating from a marketing standpoint. (more…)

The incident in Boston this week, with those cute little Cartoon Network characters threatening national security, causes me to ask a question: when does creativity go too far?

I’m not sure this instance is a clear case of poor creative judgment around the core idea. 20/20 hindsight certainly tells us the marketing firm hired the wrong morons in Boston to execute their concept (can you hire the right morons?). In a number of other large US cities the same cartoon figures didn’t appear to cause much of a stir. In most cases it seemed more thoughtfulness was used in “product placement.”

As is the focus of this blog, I want to make a distinction between the idea and its execution. I personally think this promotion concept at its core was pretty neat, particularly for this marketer’s target. Executed differently, I believe it could have been quite effective. I suppose, in the spirit of true guerilla marketing, you can’t buy this kind of publicity. But when the execution went overboard that decent creative idea seemed to take the heat.

This whole topic of “going too far” did remind me of an exercise we used to do at my creative camps which we called “toast.” The drill was designed to illustrate exactly what happened here, the consequences of creativity gone bad. (more…)

People often think there’s a lot of mystery around creativity. Great ideas only happen when the stars are in alignment. There are only so many truly great ideas. Only the chosen few are creative. Bunk. Bunk. And bunk.

There are a chosen few, all right. And I think they are the ones perpetuating these myths.

There is a great deal of method to the madness in the world of creativity. Oh, it will never be entirely exact. I mean, we are talking about the human imagination here, right? But there are some parts of the creative process that are actually very exact - quantifiable even.

One of those things is the law of large numbers, or simply put; more is more.

“You mean if I come up with more ideas I’ll have more ideas?”

Exactly.

“Will they all be great ideas?”

Let’s keep talking. (more…)