Issue 25: A bulletin for big ideas and better business.

🎉 Giveaway 🗳️
October Course Cohort

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Creative hot-spots

This week’s issue looks at imagination and maths, France’s big sigh of relief, and a major milestone for Giorgio Armani. We also consider what the world’s elite are planning for the Sun Valley Conference. But before any of that, Sir John has an idea.

OPINION/ CREATIVITY 

Ideas are energy: try to have more

💬 Sir John Hegarty

It’s the phrase you hear more than any other in an ad agency: “what’s the idea?”. Creative companies are built on ideas, and by the people who are able to spring forth with them consistently. We worship ideas. We seek them. Fight over them. Applaud and value them over everything else. Even bad ideas are helpful – they provide a platform on which to build something better.

A brilliant idea can reverse the fortunes of an ailing business. It can invent (or re-invent) a whole category. Or it can set the course for your entire career. We need ideas, but how do you get them? The best one-liner on how isn’t from the business press, but from a tennis manual. The Inner Game of Tennis was published in 1974, and offers techniques on how to excel at a game where one’s psychological resolve is more important than a strong arm.

We worship ideas. We seek them. Fight over them

The text’s most profound point comes at the end where the author writes: “relax and let your true self perform.”

Dialling into the thoughts that represent your true self is the best way to have an idea. Consider the stories, people and things that move you. The stuff that has ignited your curiosity in the past. Creativity is an expression of self, so your greatest ideas will always stem from experiences and views that uniquely resonate with you. Ideas are just energy. That’s what gives them such appeal and power. They are a fuel for enthusiasm.

If you don’t hear the question frequently enough in your organisation, you might want to ask yourself: “so, what’s the idea?”.

THE AGENDA

✏️ Pencil it in: your agenda for the coming week

1.
You’ve got to fish where the fish are. For musicians on the make, that means pitching up to play a gig at a stage in Heathrow Airport. The goal is to impress the droves of industry folk who will be passing through the terminal at this time of year.
12th July  

2.
Imagination and logic are sometimes positioned as opposites. But mastery of maths is pure creativity. The 65th annual International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO) comes to Bath. As scientific Olympiads go, it’s the oldest and most prestigious.
11th July

3.
France will celebrate Bastille Day. It commemorates the storming of the Bastille prison in 1789 by a gang of Parisians during the opening stages of the French Revolution. Having repelled a far-right political surge, the more left-leaning will be jubilant.
14th July

4.
The annual European Inventor Award will be presented in Malta. The most ingenious entry is a new way of healing wounds, by grafting fish skin onto humans. Still: scientists shouldn’t play cod.
9th July

5.
Happy Birthday to Italian fashion designer Giorgio Armani. The great man turns 90 this week.
11th July

IDAHO / BUSINESS

Idaho, Sun Valley Golf Course. Freshest boardroom going.
Contributor: Stephen Saks Photography / Alamy Stock Photo

Sun Valley Conference is a big deal

If you’ve been invited, you’ve made it. The world’s most influential folk will pitch up at the Sun Valley Conference in Idaho today. Billed as the ‘mogul summer camp’, attendees will spend a few days golfing, hiking and putting together the mightiest business deals on the planet. The list is formidable. Delegates are expected to include Disney CEO Bob Iger, Paramount’s global chair Shari Redstone, as well as Tim Cook, Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos (bosses of Apple, Meta and Amazon, respectively). The big item on the agenda for leaders this year is to do with how such colossal businesses might be upended by the sudden sprouting of AI. Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI will be on hand to offer some reassurance in the face of deep existential fears.

CREATIVE HACK

Contributor: Clo’e Floirat

Got brain blockage? Freewriting helps you de-clog and get those good ideas flowing again. Grab a notebook or a laptop, take a second to clear your mind, then write down everything that comes into your head (in whatever order it spills out). Just remember to stop.

JAPAN / ART

Wide canvas

Art fairs have a problem. There’s too much stuff in one place. Even the most hardened feel a sense of overwhelm traipsing through Frieze or Art Basel. An event in Japan has a more distributed approach. The Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennale (ETAT) starts in Niigata Prefecture in Japan this Saturday, and it’s the biggest art fair in the world. Literally: the event covers 760 square kilometres of picturesque rural land. There’s also plenty of time to make the trip, ETAT is on until November. The festival’s out of town setting doesn’t mean that it’s eschewing the tough topics. The theme this time takes the form of a question: “can art transcend the state?” ETAT reminds us that great art can be just as well viewed in a meadow, as within an inner-city gallery.

LONDON / LEADERSHIP

Bad hire: Or bad hiring?
Contributor: Everett Collection Inc / Alamy Stock Photo

Who to hire, how to hire 

Glassdoor has helped people get the real skinny on their prospective employers. But recently, more emphasis has been placed on the conduct of companies themselves. As organisations seek out the best creative talent, candidates are complaining of churlish behaviour. This includes an increase in ghosting, assigning laborious on-spec assignments, and ‘love bombing’. This last term involves lavishing praise on interviewees, then offering a dispiritingly low salary. A report in WorkLife lays out the argument that a bad reputation for hiring is likely to inhibit a company’s chance of attracting top talent. Bad hires cost money and time. Bad hiring is just as corrosive. Creative leaders, take note.