Issue 14: A bulletin for big ideas and better business.

OPINION/ CREATIVITY 

Creativity: it just doesn’t add up

💬 Sir John Hegarty

In business there is an eagerness to develop formulas for everything. The act of creating a product, discovering a market, or connecting with an audience has become boiled down to component parts. Commerce is about things like playbooks, flow charts and cheat codes.

In the quiet competition between art and science, the latter is dominating the field. The risk is that in the march of empiricism, leaders are deprioritising creativity (note, they’re never able to do this for long – when creativity disappears, companies tank – see image).

I’ve come to think that the problem is that creativity can’t be codified. There’s no replicable process when it comes to dreaming up something helpful. There might be metrics for innovation, but imagination is trickier to pin down. However, there is one formula of my own invention, and it conveys the makeup of great creativity (it’s even a percentage, for you mathematicaphiles).

Great work is comprised of two things in the following proportions.

1. 80% idea
2. 80% execution

There was a moment in history when businesses assumed that a profusion of ideas was enough. Creatives became preoccupied with crowd-sourcing and collaboration. Those with the most ideas were at the biggest advantage. But ideas are just the first 80%. Ideas don’t arrive fully formed. The first concept is just a platform from which to invent further. In short: your idea must grow through execution. And that’s the second 80%.

Don’t just think about the idea. Think about the opportunity the idea gives you to execute something that astonishes, beguiles, and attracts your audience. Go the extra 60% on execution.

THE AGENDA

1.
Music has power. But can jazz be labelled “a force for peace, unity, dialogue and enhanced cooperation among people”? Unesco reckons so. Today is International Jazz Day, and while a searing sax solo won’t silence guns, it’s a good reminder of the importance of improv in creativity.
30th April  

2.
Many people think of creativity as a vocation or a special talent that comes from above – and fail to comprehend it requires practice (and adequate compensation). As this newsletter’s title suggests, creativity requires hard graft: International Workers Day is a good moment to remember this fact.
1st May

3.
Reporters Without Borders releases its index on World Press Freedom this week. The NGO’s annual summary reminds us that creativity can’t flourish without freedom of expression. And that those who preserve in adverse conditions deserve recognition.
3rd May

4.
The most extravagant soireé on New York’s fashion calendar prances into town this week. The Met Gala is a battle of the boldest as celebs try to out punch each other in the style stakes. A demanding creative task must be coming up with a theme each year, this time it’s “Sleeping Beauty: Reawakening Fashion”. Sounds dreamy.
6th May

Who’s Olafing now?
Credit: Annegret Hilse/REUTERS-Pool/dpa/Alamy Live News

BERLIN / POLITICS

Salute the solution

Think tanks are often criticised for being all talk. The Global Solutions Summit, which is taking place in Berlin from 6 to 7 May intends to overturn this idea, and turn thinking into real change. Heavyweights including German chancellor Olaf Scholz, Bill Gates and Margrethe Vestager, the European Commissioner for Competition, are among those who will take the stage at the summit. The conference will gather experts in the middle of each G20 presidency so that concrete policies – on issues from climate to digital security and health – can be put forward for the world’s most powerful forums to implement. Whether the solutions discussed in Berlin will be picked up or remain in the realm of possibility is, as usual, up to political leaders. Lightbulb moments aren’t enough – change is about a painstaking search for practical applications.

Contributor: Clo’e Floirat

CREATIVE HACK

Reading widely (and well)

Studying your niche is vital. But reading more widely gets you a creative edge. Adapting skills from other disciplines will improve your work and thinking.

NEW YORK / ART

Raiding the fridge

Everywhere they have decamped, major art fairs like Frieze and Art Basel have spawned an ever-growing number of satellite events. Often these secondary fairs give room to smaller galleries that don’t quite make the cut or don’t have the cash to participate main show. But in New York, some events have sprung up around Frieze to make a deliberately ironic or disruptive statement. Both Clio Art Fair and Fridge Art Fair (pun very much intended) are running this week concurrently with Frieze New York, both are celebrating their 10th anniversary this year, and both are meant to challenge a mainstream model that often feels inaccessible for both public and potential participants. For Fridge, that means providing exhibitors with particularly cheap booths, while Clio bypasses galleries to only display up-and-coming artists who don’t have New York representation. The economic incentive helps, but in a creative world that can take itself very seriously, irreverence is always an enticing selling point.

Taekwon-dome
Credit: mauritius images GmbH / Alamy Stock Photo

PARIS/ CITIES

A grand statement 

Build new, or reuse? Any city that has hosted the Olympics has had to take tough calls on how to support droves of supporters. And crucially, what to do with the infrastructure once the crowds have departed. Paris is already demonstrating panache for the forthcoming games, opting to stage events on streets or in front of famous landmarks. But its most impressive idea by far is the wheeze to use the refitted Grand Palais as its location for the taekwondo competitions. After a €466 million, 3-year-long renovation, the venue (which was originally built for the Universal Exhibition of 1900) will finally be accessible once again in its spruced-up Art Nouveau glory. Pouring money into recuperating pre-existing structures rather than constructing brand-new ones is a great way of cutting on environmental costs – and it’s also a lesson on using the creative riches you already have that can be improved upon, rather than launching into expensive or unnecessary new ventures.

GLOBAL / DIGITAL

Feeling screen

At the risk of sounding hypocritical – given there is no way you could have read this newsletter on anything that isn’t a digital device – observing Screen-Free Week this week could do wonders for your creativity. With remote workers reported to spend an average of 13 hours of their day in front of a screen, according to a survey by All About Vision, the benefits extend well beyond avoiding sore eyes. If you are inextricably addicted to your devices, though, take solace in this: Peter Gray, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Boston College, believes that the lack of free, independent play may be worse for children’s mental health than time in front of the black mirror. Creativity and initiative, it seems, are the best solution – be they on or offline.

Space is the breath of art.

/Frank Lloyd Wright