Words by Mark Tungate
Illustration by Diobelle Cerna
I woke this morning to a pristine white Paris. The entire city was draped in a thick layer of snow. When I made it out onto the street, I realized that everyone was going to be late for work; not only because public transportation was paralyzed, but because they were all too busy taking pictures with their phones.
It’s fair to say that snowfall this heavy is rare in Paris. When something disruptive happens, individuals adjust far more easily than systems. People get out their ski boots and pull the toddler to pre-school on a toboggan. Meanwhile, trains are cancelled and buses are nowhere to be seen.
That’s why, I think, it’s difficult to instill a culture of innovation into a company that doesn’t have one. It might happen in the end, but it’s like turning around an ocean liner. Taxi companies were blindsided by the rise of Uber; the hospitality industry is still struggling to absorb the impact of Airbnb.
Innovation – and creativity – are all about breaking the rules. But most organizations are hidebound by rules. The Boston Consulting Group has noted that the key characteristics of innovative companies are risk-taking, willingness to experiment, personal initiative, fast decision-making and execution, and an ability to spot unique opportunities. In this particular scenario, slow and sure do not win the race.
If you’re looking for inspiration, there’s one group of people who excel at ignoring the rules and looking at things in unexpected ways: children.
A couple of weeks ago I had the pleasure of interviewing Ulrik Feldskov Juul, the creative director of Lego. Ulrik told me that he was constantly fascinated by the way children could take a pile of plastic bricks and turn them into a complex fantasy world. Lego once ran an ad in which it animated a story two little boys were telling as they built. “They pushed creativity and storytelling to places I never could in all my years as a copywriter,” Ulrik said.
Even children run across rules sooner or later. Ulrik told me that certain studies claim human creativity peaks at the age of three. After that, you hit the school system and “all the conventions that say things must be done in a certain way.”
That’s a bleak thought. But surely there are ways of maintaining – or regaining – our creativity as adults? Let’s turn to Claire Bridges, another of my recent interviewees, who runs a consultancy called Now Go Create in London. She is also the author of the book In Your Creative Element.
A notable quote in the book is provided by actor and Monty Python member John Cleese, who says: “We don’t know where we get our ideas from. What we do know is that we do not get them from our laptops.”
Claire confirms that stepping away from your desk and seeking new stimuli is a great way of getting the creative juices flowing. “Habit is a creativity killer. Let’s say you’ve been working for the same client for a long time: you may find yourself stuck in a rut and unable find a new angle. That’s because neural pathways have been formed, so you’re always going down the same groove.” What you need to do, she says, is “unlearn what you know.”
That’s why some of the most creative cultures are also the most diverse. Last year I was struck by a few lines in a book called We’ll Always Have Casablanca, by Noah Eisenberg. Trying to define what makes Casablanca such a magical movie, Eisensberg wrote: “Nearly all of the some seventy-five actors and actresses cast in Casablanca were immigrants. Among the fourteen who earned a screen credit, only three were born in the United States: Humphrey Bogart, Dooley Wilson, and Joy Page.”
The film’s director, Michael Curtiz, was Hungarian. The magic, Eisenberg suggests, was in the mix.
John Hunt, founder of TBWA Hunt Lascaris, wrote in his 2009 book The Art of the Idea that, “In searching for a fresh idea, the best teams I’ve worked with have been the most diverse. By channelling our differences at a problem, something richer seems to appear.”
Being exposed to different cultures is another way of unlearning what you know. Creativity, after all, begins with a blank slate. Rather like the white world my six-year-old son saw from our window this morning, before he ran out into it to begin playing in his own uninhibited way.
About the Author:
Mark Tungate is a British journalist based in Paris. He is editorial director of the Epica Awards, the only global creative awards judged by the specialist press. Mark is the author of six books about branding and marketing, including the recent Branded Beauty: How Marketing Changed the Way We Look.
This article was published in the adobo magazine Trends 2018 issue.
