The company of the future will be creative or won’t be
The creative process has always intrigued me. What is creativity? Why do certain people possess more creativity than others? Why has it nothing to do with academic excellence? Why is it not recognized by higher instances?
Creatives have a capacity to solve problems that present themselves in unique ways.
Creativity itself is nicely illustrated by the Jackson test. Give someone ten paperclips and an indefinite amount of time and ask him or her to create a maximum amount of different things.
In the case of the Jackson test, the limits and constraints are evident: 10 paperclips, an endless amount of time.
One dimension that is often neglected is the context. Will the person respond differently when the situation causes stress or comfort? When does the situation present itself, in the eighties or in 2018?
The answer is of course, no.
The tools, cultural references, education, all have an obvious impact on the creative response.
Ousamma Amar told me something that stuck with me over 2 years ago, when I was at ‘The Family’, it stated: “A start-up with potential doesn’t grow on a single idea, it always starts out from a problem”
I couldn’t agree more: An entrepreneur solves a problem with the tools at his disposal, his knowledge and understanding of his ecosystem and by commercializing his idea on a large scale.
The entrepreneur is in essence, creative.
The enormous wave of start-ups over the last couple of years, is also due to the rise of the digital age, which presents a context of a plethora of opportunities.
With this new context, come new tools and new boundaries that set a whole different array of new rules.
Those new perspectives and immeasurable unexplored areas open up a brand new creative community.
The lesson that I learned form Oussama Amar resonates even louder today, when I placed it in parallel with the words by Olivier Sebag(Ex CEO Marcel, Co-MD in charge of creative activities at Dentsu Aegis Network France) when he responded to a question during an interview from “La Reclame”. The question asked ‘How would you describe the agency of the future?’, he said:
“The agency of the future is an agency that is run by entrepreneurs.”
The equation becomes pretty straight forward:
Agency of the future => Entrepreneurs => Creatives
In a mutating ecosystem where agility and creativity are privileged tools, this does not only apply to agencies but to all types of companies.
The company of the future will be creative or won’t be.
