the creative power that fuels winning businesses

Earlier this month, I was fortunate to be speaking at a conference in Cape Town. One of the speakers before me was John Hunt, Worldwide Creative Director of TBWA.

He was talking about the learnings he’s picked up from the years he’s been in the ‘ideas business’. He’s distilled these learnings into 20 observations all beautifully and earnestly captured his book “The art of the idea“.

Because we were speaking to the same audience, I read John’s book with an ear to linking some of his messages into the ones I was planning share. And it was uncanny how many of his observations closely mirror the Creative Creatures language.

The Stimulators amongst you will no doubt agree with these two observations:

“The easiest way to increase the cranium’s capacity is to do things you don’t normally do.”
“Scouting literally to find ideas that already exist and then retooling them isn’t intellectual plagiarism, it’s how the world works. That’s the path newness often chooses to take.”

Or how about these Spotter ‘truths’:

“Great ideas often come from quiet people who take stimuli from their surroundings, but work in solitude with their minds.”“Insight appears when you look for meaning rather than facts. Insight demands that you use your brain actively. The passive accumulation of data won’t help you.”
“Silence is the perfect place for an idea to grow in.”

And Sculptors would recognise this learning:

“The real value of an idea is to see how far you can push it. If it gets a little overstretched, there is always time to afterwards pull it back.”

John is above all a huge fan of Supporters and he truly acknowledge their role in the creative journey:

“The smartest ideas come from those who’ve learnt to surf the unpredictable and the unexpected.”
“The big trick is to be relaxed about uncertainty and, if possible, to even enjoy it. An idea can wriggle through almost anything, but the shuttered grid of an uptight mind is a particular challenge. It’s difficult to have an epiphany if all you want revealed is what you already know.”

This is not least because he’s often seen what happens when there are not enough Supporter behaviour around to nurture bravery:

“A huge amount of breakthrough thinking doesn’t make it, not because the idea is wrong, but because, at the crucial moment, our courage leaves us. We notice how high we are and we look down. Suddenly we wonder whether the big leap is the right strategy and consider a game of triple jump. Shouldn’t three jumps be cut into more manageable portions of six?”

Lastly, he understands that Selectors also need a seat at the creative table, but equally urges the Selectors amongst us to understand when our unique value should be added:

“If logic is introduced too early into an idea, it often kills it. The only way to deal with logic, is to beat it at its own game. Declare that it’s illogical to have it around at the beginning of something new. Acknowledge, though, that it does have its place, in the right dosage, at the end of the process. Logic is rarely a catalyst, but it is the consummate filtering process.”

This is a great book. Personable, written from the heart, unpretentious and beautiful in every way. Definitely worth a read!