Fishburn Hedges

26.11.2010

We are all creatives now.  Crowd sourcing is industrialising.  Just look at Idea Bounty which, among other things, recently ran a search for new ideas for the FT.  Other brands and services are piling in and anyone can participate.

If your idea is “original and creative enough”, it will fly, and you might, just, be richer for the experience.

In other words, we are seeing the emergence of a new form of live auction, in which the currency is creative ideas, not cash.

Opening up the abstruse process of ‘creativity’ to the masses makes the act of creating something for a brand more accessible.  That’s a good thing.  Creativity is one of those attributes that people not only aspire to have and demonstrate but, particularly in a creative profession, measure themselves by. 

Don’t call me uncreative

‘Creativity’ has always been feted, insofar as artists and musicians and actors are given celebrity status.  But the whole ‘knowledge economy’ discourse of the last decade or so in this country has taken this further, codifying the importance of “innovation and creativity” within our entire economic system.  To be an uncreative business person today is to be something of an anachronism. 

The problem, though, is that, too often, the principle of creativity is misunderstood.  Or, rather, that it is confused for something it isn’t, which means people might be beating themselves up unnecessarily. 

Consider the traditional embodiment of the creative process in the workplace – the brainstorm. 

All the ingredients are gathered: you, a selected group of other brains, a flipchart, a nice, succinct brief and a slice of time from your busy day.  And then - come up with a creative idea.  Now.  It doesn’t matter if it’s silly.  Just shout it out. 

An exaggeration? Maybe, but it makes the point.  The problem with this kind of process, or, more accurately, the way in which that process is applied and communicated, is that it mistakes and confuses spontaneous inspiration for creativity.  In so doing, it dooms brainstorms to failure before they have begun, putting pressure on people to be ‘creative’ when, in fact, the whole session is set up not to encourage creativity but to provide the imaginative spark from which true creativity can later ignite or catch.

That’s not to say it has no value – far from it.  That initial rush of boundless free-thinking, the freedom to be as outrageous with your suggestions as you like, to unfetter the imagination and be as lateral as the dimensions of your mind allow is not only a good way to break down the barriers of pragmatism but, frequently, good fun. 

It is, importantly, also how the germ of many a good idea is conceived – but, most of the time, that germ will only mature into something more useful after an ensuing, necessary creative process.

Let’s hear it for process

Creation takes longer than an hour in an increasingly stuffy room.  It requires research, planning, ideas – many of which will undoubtedly come from some kind of brainstorm, development, interrogation, testing, refining…

In short, creativity isn’t the output.  It’s the journey.  In fact, in many ways (whisper it), it’s the process.

A lack of ideas does not signify a lack of creativity.  A lack of imagination, maybe, but that’s another matter.  Imagination can be exercised.  Leave your desk.  Make a cup of tea.  Read or watch something alien to you.  Go for a walk.  Doodle.  Brainstorm, even.   You might find inspiration comes easier quicker than you expect.  Creativity, on the other hand, is a disciplined journey that needs to be understood before it can be undertaken.

And the truth is that anyone can do it.  It’s like maths, or programming.  It’s a set of steps that you take, in a logical order, to turn an idea into a ‘thing’ – a product, a story, a picture, a film, a song, an app.  That’s why most genuinely creative people through history have been engineers or scientists.  Sure, many may have started with a flash of brainstorm-esque inspiration, but what will have followed in many cases is a clear process of development.  Of creativity.

I thought of that! (But you didn’t follow it through, did you?)

James Dyson’s inspired idea, for example, was realising that taking the bag out of a vacuum cleaner would be possible and make the product work better.  His creative process was turning that knowledge into a product that people would spend (quite a lot of) their cash on – something that got people excited about cleaning their carpet and that looked great.  Any number of people might have come up with his idea.  But what made Dyson creative was his ability to see the process through.

Videos like this, an ad created by a punter for Palm Pre, demonstrate irrevocably that the resources available to you are no barrier to good ideas and that people can and will come up with brilliant ideas that could form the basis of a wonderfully creative campaign.

That’s not what Doritos is after, of course – at least, not explicitly. Their competition is about brand awareness, creating a talking point and engaging with customers in a different way.  It will work, and what they do with the winning idea, how they extend it creatively across all media will be intriguing to watch.

Getting back to business

In the meantime, we’ll all continue to desire and strive for creativity, frequently conflating it with imagination, mistaking one for the other and ensnaring ourselves in doubt about how creative we are. 

It’s time to decouple the two and recognise that one follows the other. For everyone – be they an entrant to a creative competition, a PR or ad person tackling a brief or a CEO seeking to encourage more innovation in their business – this will be a good thing.  Less worrying about a lack of creativity and more focus on taking ideas from the fun, imagination end of the axis to the business end: meaningful delivery.

Posted by Stuart Lambert