Steve Jobs told Wired magazine in 1996 that ‘creativity is just connecting things‘. He went on this to observe that ‘ a lot of people in our industry haven’t had very diverse experiences. So, they do not have enough dots to connect, and they end up with very linear solutions’
History has proven him right.
When I look at the practise of marketing as it is currently there is, despite or perhaps partly because of, all the AI tools available a huge hole in the number of dots to connect becomes evident. Most would suggest that the emergence of AI offers an explosion of dots, which is partly true. The problem is all the dots that emerge from the algorithms of AI are linear, while the essence of creativity is connecting dots that have no logical connection.
AI is therefore a source of homogenisation of thought, not of diversity, delivering bland, forgettable pop-ups and boring ‘refreshes’ of previous ineffective campaigns.
So, how do you combat the resulting marketing homogenisation?
Seek out curiosity.
Curious people investigate corners, dark spots, they embrace those with different views and debate them. They are willing to adjust and often change their views when presented with new information, or different perspectives on the current information.
In a homogenising world, curiosity will become the hallmark of people who can add value.
Comfort with discomfort.
We humans seek psychological as well as physical comfort. Evolution has given us strong preference for the usual, predictable, and non-threatening signposts in our lives. In earlier times, the few who felt able to investigate the rustle in the grass to see if it was the wind, or a tiger looking for a feed were unusual. Most reverted automatically to flight, and the safety offered by the small community in the cave. As a result, they never knew if there was a tiger looking for a feed outside the cave or not, and mostly they did not care to find out.
The few that did check out the rustle, knew. Occasionally they were not able to pass on the information, but mostly it was the wind, but they knew. They were comfortable and usually energised by the discomfort of the unknown.
Breadth of interest.
To some this is the same as curiosity, but to my mind it is broader. A person who reads widely across current affairs, history, economics, psychology, feeds the building of the diverse ideas, creates contextual variety, and increases the chances of finding several credible ideas that are inconsistent with each other. This clash of ideas is where the potential for connections in unrelated fields emerges. It is the soul-food of creativity. It feeds the opportunity for two equally true but inconsistent ideas to be held at the same time.
Many workshops I have been involved with make the fundamental error of ensuring little of this diversity. Usually, it is an omission by accident rather than design. However, the value of a workshop that has the objective of surfacing ideas that would otherwise be hidden requires both a catalyst, and minds prepared to take a leap.
Automation and transparency.
Use AI to clear away the obvious, linear additions to the thinking process. It is very good at that, and by cleaning away the linear, uninteresting, and undifferentiated it delivers the cognitive capacity and energy to seek out and examine the non-obvious.
Transparency is the blood brother of automation. When processes are clear, and there is clarity of action and accountability that everyone understands, it acts as a foundation from which you can experiment. Toyota created their production system on the foundation of stable and transparent processes, so that improvement opportunities, even tiny incremental ones, could be seen and tested.
These three strategies can be combined into one word: Education.
Not education in the sense that we have stuff bashed into our heads as kids at school, or the learning of the ‘established rules of the game’ in a profession, but the accumulation of wisdom from experience, both personal and given to us by others.
As B.F. Skinner observed ‘Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten’.
That is when we can connect the apparently unconnected to deliver new value.
