Strategy Needs Creativity to Drive Breakthrough Thinking
We love reading for inspiration from as wide a range of sources as possible, to find new ideas, which can really make a difference. But every so often you stumble across something which really seems to hit the mark. So big thanks to #AdamBrandenburger for his March/ April 2019 article from Harvard Business Review – Strategy Needs Creativity – which has been central to our thinking in setting up CoEX.
His argument is simple but compelling. He rightly points out that most of the ‘rigorous analytical tools and models’ used by strategists to shape future direction, are really designed to throw light on an existing business context, rather than ‘dreaming up ways to reshape it’. As we grapple with how best to cope with compelling forces such as climate change, global pandemics and technology disruption, these tools may not be the best way to survive and thrive in the future.
What Brandenburger recommends is to bring creativity and creative mindsets further upstream into the strategic process. He goes on to describe four ways in which strategists can make the ‘creative leap’ from what already exists to what business might look like in the future. Here they are:
Contrast – challenge and disprove existing wisdom about how an industry works (eg, Paypal and Netflix)
Combination – connect products and services that have previously been kept separate (eg, WeChat and e-commerce; Apple and Nike blending tech and running)
Constraint - turn limitations into opportunities (eg, Tesla selling cars online when it had no distribution channels)
Context – borrow smart thinking from other sectors (eg, Intel copied techniques for branded ingredients developed by Teflon and Nutrasweet for its microchips)
This list of techniques happens to fit neatly with the creative toolkit which Paul has been using for many years as inspiration for a wide range of ground-breaking and award-winning advertising campaigns, from AVIVA to BT to Guinness to Walkers Crisps. Plus a few more secret ones he keeps up his sleeve for special occasions!
Brandenburger concludes that strategists and business executives need to learn how to be ‘creative and rigorous at the same time’. We could not agree more. The way forward is not to pursue linear thinking, where strategy uses numbers and logic to shape a narrow brief for creatives based on detailed analysis of the status quo.
With so many new and unpredictable forces at work, surely it makes sense to bring creative thinking into the core of the strategy process to find new ways of solving problems or opening up opportunities. And by the same token, once that breakthrough thinking has been defined, use strategic logic to help sell it in, and align the business with the message.
For the full HBR article, please see this link: https://hbr.org/2019/03/strategy-needs-creativity
