Issue 101: A Bulletin for Big Ideas and Better Business

Welcome back – and a very happy New Year to all our readers.

Here’s to a 2026 fuelled by creativity.

OPINION / Creativity

Creativity is an input.

Charlotte Lock is Customer and Marketing Director at Boots UK. She enjoys art, ceramics, live music, dance and theatre.

💬 Charlotte Lock

Organisations might spend time thinking about how creativity impacts their business. But individually, do we think enough about how it enriches our lives, or how it makes us better at our jobs? While we place emphasis on the result of creativity – whether inventing new products, brand extensions, or marketing campaigns – it’s easy to overlook the inspiration that must take place beforehand. Creativity is an output, but it is also an input. I believe an appreciation of the aesthetic world – art, dance, music, literature, design, gardening, architecture – is a vastly underrated advantage in business.

Creativity is an output, but it is also an input.

Your range of cultural references dictates the breadth of creativity you’re able to bring to the table. And an aesthetic understanding, whether it’s your job to be creative or not, enhances your worldview and the neurological and physical connections you can make. When you show up to work, your mind is ready to forge new links, to generate original ideas, and to enrich the debates and challenges you engage with. Spend time with a range of creative inputs and I promise it will stimulate ideas that might be outside of the expected scope of your brand. You can do that at an individual and corporate level – consider Burberry’s partnership with Diet Paratha – a global luxury brand enlisting a cultural creative platform to inspire more authentic and imaginative storytelling.

I’ve tried to embrace this approach throughout my career and have been fortunate to do so for iconic brands such as the BBC, Coop, V&A, John Lewis Partnership. Creativity in all its forms enhances individual lives as well as building communities and the economy. Embrace arts and culture – whether through appreciation or practice – and I guarantee you will contribute different ideas. And these create differentiation and growth. As I embark on my new role as CMO at Boots I will be embracing creativity as a commercial differentiator as well as a source of pleasure.

We asked Charlotte a couple of questions on how she personally relates to creativity, here’s what she had to say…

TBOC: What is your creative North Star?

CL: Is our story differentiating? Is it motivating? Above all, is it true?

TBOC: What has inspired you lately?

CL: Marie Antoinette Style at the V&A – for its moving rehabilitation of a misguided teenager…and those fabulous frocks.

More stories. More ideas. More creativity. From top voices in the industry.