Issue 100: A Bulletin for Big Ideas and Better Business

The Centenary + Christmas Special! The Ghosts of Creativity: Past, Present, and Yet to Come.

Issue 100

December 23, 2025

Share this newsletter

One hundred editions.

One hundred weeks of ideas, debate, and belief in the power of creativity.

Thank you for reading, sharing, and supporting The Business of Creativity. We’re glad you’re here.

As we sign off for the holidays, we wish you a joyful, restful, and thoroughly creative Christmas.

See you in the New Year.

100 Editions Young!

A Creativity Carol

The Ghost of Creativity Yet to Come

💬 Sir John Hegarty

At this time of year, it’s natural to look ahead and wonder what the future might hold. I’ve always been wary of predictions – they tend to say more about the predictor than the future itself. But every so often, you can sense a shift in what people begin to value, and that’s worth paying attention to.

For a long time, business has been preoccupied with process, efficiency and systems. All of them matter, of course. But none of them create difference on their own. Optimisation has never been the source of innovation. Ideas have.

What feels encouraging, as we close out 2025, is a renewed seriousness about creativity as a genuine driver of growth. Recent McKinsey research suggests that European CMOs now see creativity and uniqueness as their top areas of investment for the years ahead. That’s significant. In markets crowded with near-identical products and services, innovation becomes essential.

Alongside this sits a growing recognition of the importance of storytelling. As a way of thinking and communicating. In complex organisations, ideas only matter if they can be understood, shared and believed. It’s the stories that persuade. They give ideas shape, help them travel, and connect strategy to people.

This is why storytelling is becoming so hard to replace. It requires judgement, empathy and point of view – qualities that can’t be automated or reduced to process. In other words, it requires creativity.

So as this final thought of 2025 comes to an end, there’s reason to be optimistic. There are no guarantees, but the direction feels right. And as we look ahead to 2026, organisations that value ideas – and the craft of communicating them – will always be better placed to make progress.

Read the McKinsey report here

The Ghost of Creativity Present

A gift for being here.

To mark our 100th edition, we wanted to give something back.

The first 100 readers to refer 2 readers will receive a Christmas gift from The Business of Creativity – a small creative thank-you to start 2026.

🥇 1 winner, chosen at random: a FREE Business of Creativity course (worth £1,895)
🥈 99 winners: £500 voucher towards a course of your choice

We’ll reveal the winners in the New Year!

How to enter:

To enter the draw, click the link below and either enter a friend’s email or send them that link for them to sign up themselves. Any email entered using your link will be credited to you, get 2 referrals and you’ve entered the draw!

Read the full story from Issue 49 here →