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How to unlock a creative culture to drive innovation

By Gavin Lum

The primary responsibility of creation has traditionally fallen on the shoulders of the Creative Team, and they ultimately live and die by the work that they create. Other functions typically played a supporting role and usually focused on clearing the runway (account people), pointing out where the runway is (strategy) or helping them build the plane (production).

This is highly stressful for most creative teams; a creative director friend of mine once confessed that creative reviews made him feel like walking into a crowded room and exposing himself for criticism/approval.

It’s time we share the responsibility because A) talent is impossible to find now (consider the elusive unicorn of a Digital Creative Director) and B) I believe creativity can and should be taught - and we better start doing it now before it gets too late.

Rather than relegating all forms of creativity to just the creative team, how can we encourage the other departments to come together and work together to create and ideate together?

In a powerful session at SXSW, “The Creative Difference: Teaching Innovation”, four pioneers in education across diverse industries came together to discuss the compelling need to groom generations of problem solvers and innovators.

The biggest takeaway is that human behaviour are shaped by their environment and the key to unlocking a creative culture is to create the right conditions that encourage and breed creativity for anyone and everyone.

It is about changing the way we define success and failure and creating safe spaces for creativity because the road to creativity is peppered with failure.

By repositioning failure as an opportunity to learn, we make the process of ideation as fun as possible and acknowledge failure as a part of the process.

This requires implementing a new system of reward and recognition (through all forms) to provide the motivation.

Next we need to create the physical spaces that allow for creativity to flow, be it seating arrangements, the furniture, walls, meeting rooms. We need to create sand boxes for people to play in, essentially safe spaces that allow people to explore.

Some of the most creative companies out there are already actively pursuing these measures in order to elevate their creativity internally, and also attract more talent that enjoy being creative.

In another SXSW session, “Creating Space for Making in the Workplace”, Alexandra (Airbnb), Ryan (Nike BRS Academy) Tim (Pinterest) and Patrick (IBM Design) shared their successes behind creating maker spaces within their companies, successfully breeding and fostering a creative mindset.

Each of them shared insights behind the creation of their respective maker spaces.

Airbnb has Common Studio

Nike has Blue Ribbon Studio

IBM has it’s Make Lab

These are essentially just spaces that allow people to get away from their computers and just go and make something. These spaces give tools to everyone that allow them to see an immediate impact on their work.

And really engages all of us to start rethinking our own contributions to the creative process and encourage even those that do not have ‘creative’ in their title to think, design and make something.

Gavin Lum is the Director of Digital at J. Walter Thompson Shanghai

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