Creativity 2.E

The Evolution of Creativity is Underway.  Which Side Are You On?
Are you a Planner who thinks about design?  Maybe you are a designer who obsesses about the business impact of your designs.  Or you might be an Information Architect who thinks about motion, transitions, multimedia, and uses tools like storyboarding and visual scenarios.  Or how about a Developer who comes up with the “big idea”? 

If you haven’t noticed, creativity is evolving. 

The perception of creativity itself is slowly but surely transitioning into a mutated and adapted life form.  In the traditional world, a “creative” person usually meant someone with savant-like talents excelling in a specific creative discipline defined by fairly concrete parameters.  Copywriters wrote copy.  Art Directors directed art.  There are still talented visual designers who can make anything look good.  Brilliant copywriters who can come up with that magnificent tagline which stops you in your tracks.  And don’t forget about smart, methodical Information Architects who devote their existence to usability and being an advocate for the end user.

These skills, talents and abilities are needed—no doubt about it.  But what’s also needed is the evolution of them—the next iteration.  But what does this look like?  An Information Architect who completely grasps Human Computer Interaction but can also think fluidly—can do things like rapidly create prototypes, facilitate user testing, understand visual design and occasionaly write copy.  This kind of individual possesses a multi-dimensional creative brain that has evolved over time.   

This type of mind is capable of creating customer experiences which provide competitive advantage in a fast moving world where customers are increasingly calling the shots.   

In this world marketing/advertising/technology/and customer experience all blur together.  So what does this mind look like?  I have a perspective:

With consumer behavior evolving toward a more empowered status—the definition of creativity has shifted from one-dimensional skills to a four-dimensional type of creativity that blends logical thinking with creative problem solving.  Individuals possessing this “New Creative Mindset” blend Analytical, Expressive, Curious and Sensual qualities into their thinking process.  The result is a holistic approach to creativity that is effective across multiple touch points and experiences.

Can an Information Architect embody this kind of mindset?  What about an Account Director?  I think as human beings we are all capable of thinking like this.  But as designers, communicators, marketers and creators of experiences—for us, it’s even more critical to become multi-dimensional creative thinkers and problem solvers.  I’m not the only one talking about this.  Tim Brown from IDEO evangelizes “Design Thinking” and “T-shaped People”.  Both principals are related.  Design Thinking encourages Designers to think past aesthetics and design simple solutions for complex problems.  T-shaped people have a core competency but branch out into other areas and can do them well (thus forming a T).  And of course there is the new kind of collaboration that comes with this—where we combine people with diverse skill sets who often times speak very different languages but need to come together to make their collective and diverse skills work together.  This kind of collaboration sounds easier than it actually is, because when you get a few T-shaped people together, they tend to “play in each other's sandbox”.  Translation?  Ego’s need to be unlearned.  In short, it’s not just about T-shaped people. 

It’s about how we work together to create something that people will want to use, experience and ultimately—compel them to take action. 

You could call this kind of collaboration—T-Shaped Creativity:

  I don’t think that any of this is very new.  It’s been happening for a while.  In my time spent at agency.com, we developed pageless prototypes, pushed technology like Flash + Ajax and created human-centered “web applications”.  But with the rapid and pervasive nature of Web 2.0 going mainstream—it’s becoming mandatory to be able to think and execute like this.  Need proof?  Take a look at this collection of thoughts + work from a recent grad of the IIT Institute of Design.  Notice anything about how he approaches his work?  He’s a “designer”, but aesthetics are only one small part of how he exercises his creativity.  In fact, this brand of creativity is more like creative problem solving vs. the way many people still traditionally view creativity.  And what about the teams?  Aside from this evolved creative individual, what kind of team is needed to drive the next generation of communication, interaction and marketing engines?  There’s not a clear answer to this question, but signs are heading toward smaller interdisciplinary teams composed of individuals possessing complimentary skill sets and overlapping talents.


So where does this all go from here?  If you feel like you fit the bill, you’re probably thinking about how marketable you are right now.  And remember, we’re not talking about a “jack of all trades” here.  “Creativity 2.E” is not about doing everything and learning every application under the sun.  It’s about being curious, empathetic, analytical, insightful and expressive all at the same time.  It’s about being willing to do anything to get into the heads of your customer/user.  It’s about adopting new tools, techniques and artifacts to help make your case for creating the right kinds of communications, interactions and experiences.  So what to do if you’re feeling left out? 

Resist the urge to become defensive and territorial—put that energy into developing an acute sense of curiosity and optimism.  Become like a child. 

Participate in the emerging media.  Start a blog, update your site or if you don’t have one—set it up.  Dive into the digital social communities and be willing to do what your customers do.  Try methodology that you might not ordinarily consider.  PowerPoint isn’t just for presentations.  Flash isn’t just for motion.  Move past boxes, arrows, colors, layouts, charts, funnels, and metrics.

Creativity 2.E is both old and new—and like evolution, will continue to change and modify over time.  The question is will we?

Comments

[Webmetricsguru]

Cool! I posted your "brain" on SmartMobs.com. I hope I fall into one of the categories in the new creative mind!

[nonsequitur]

Hello there, I just surfed in from SmartMobs and I have to say that I enjoyed this article very much. A very illuminating perspective on creativity and it's evolving nature... good advice to boot. Thank-you :)

[Christopher Fahey]

You may want to be careful about using the word "evolved", especially when you use a diagram of a human brain to suggest a biological basis for the way certain people supposedly think. It's not like people who posess the skills you've described here are genetically superior to those who don't. At least I hope that's not what you're trying to imply.

[Nicholas Paredes]

Great post! Note that the school is IIT Institute of Design...

[DA]

Christopher,

I responded to your comment on Futurelab, but for some reason it never posted. Here goes again...

"especially when you use a diagram of a human brain to suggest a biological basis for the way certain people supposedly think."

That diagram is by no means scientific, literal or biological. As you can see by my background—I am not a scientist or biologist. Those regions of the brain don't actually exist. I'm using an "anatomy" metaphor to help make the point.

"It's not like people who posess the skills you've described here are genetically superior to those who don't."

No. I am in no way suggesting this. I'll use myself as an example. I've broadened my skillset in many ways since when I first started my career 13+years ago. I do approach creativity differently now in comparison to how did at my first job (designing catalog layouts for a direct mail business). Am I a superior being now compared to then?

No.

Clearly I am not. I'm the same person with the same "brain". But what I have done is evolved my creative process to better suit the mediums I currently work in.

In no way do I mean for this article to come across as arrogant or dismissive to anyone who considers themselves creative or otherwise. It's simply my perspective/translation on some of the happenings in my industry.

I appreciate the feedback and I'm glad it made you think. Hope these comments help to clarify intent.

[Christopher Fahey]

Thanks, David. Honestly, I had a similar concern when I first heard about the "T-Shaped People" concept: it has a certain sound to it like it's trying to separate people into groups based on inherent structures to their personalities, the way personality testing and psychological profiling purports to do. And like those kinds of tests, the language of science is used to help lend credibility to an idea that is ultimately fairly slippery.

I realize that the point is to encourage people to open their minds and expand their skill sets. Can this be done without leaning on the vocabulary and imagery of science? I, too, love the tools of science and often use them illustratively or metaphorically. I suppose mixing the language and tools of wildly different fields is a weakness of T-shaped people! :-)

I was actually going to look up some brain diagrams to see if yours was accurate, but then I trustingly figured that you had probably done some research already, and that the concepts you were discussing might have had some sort of rough biological basis. Your frankness about your illustration is incredibly refreshing, but you should note that even I, a knee-jerk skeptic, believed that the diagram was "real". It's amazing what a little perfectly innocent pseudo-science can do to change the flavor of an idea being presented.

I should add that I really like your blog. You are obviously passionate about your ideas, and have thought deeply about almost everything you post. Good work.

[DA]

"Thanks, David. Honestly, I had a similar concern when I first heard about the "T-Shaped People" concept: it has a certain sound to it like it's trying to separate people into groups based on inherent structures to their personalities, the way personality testing and psychological profiling purports to do."

That's fair commentary. I actually feel that the "T-shaped creativity model" which I've illustrated is more critical than the "T-shaped individual". It's the whole collaboration thing.

[Joseph Mann]

David,
I think this post was spot-on. I've noticed a similar shift in my own background as my formerly "pure" Art & Creative Director roles have become infused with marketing responsibility and the need to bring a business focus to creativity. And that's a good thing. A fun read and great blog overall--and, no, I didn't take the brain diagram literally!

Joe

[Clay Parker Jones]

David -

I love it. I'm an AE at a small ad agency. I don't have the chops at Illustrator/Photoshop/Indesign that others might have, so I had to become an account guy. But I've always strived to be creative in the planning aspect of things, and I've always been a little more than concerned about the work that we do.

In essence, I want to be--and cultivate myself as--a T-Shaped person. For me, it means keeping accounts buttoned-up while staying 'in touch' with what's going on in the outside world...all the while working to improve my understanding of good creative & how it works in the public arena.

I read an article a few weeks back in the May 29 Advertising Age. It's called "Wanted: Account executives who know how to foster great creative," authored by Ed Keller. Check it out if you haven't already. It's a great read and I think right on target.

Keller raises an interesting point... he calls these AEs "Creative Executives." I think it's a little clunky. Do titles (as they are now) work in the T-Shaped workplace, or do they disappear?

[DA]

"Keller raises an interesting point... he calls these AEs "Creative Executives." I think it's a little clunky. Do titles (as they are now) work in the T-Shaped workplace, or do they disappear?"

Good question Clay. I'm mostly a believer that the way you work defines your title. I don't know if we need to re-invent titles, or just re-invent how we work. But I LOVE that you are an account guy who finds value in all of this. That's the point of this. The lines become blurred and creativity becomes more than just pretty media.

"Art & Creative Director roles have become infused with marketing responsibility and the need to bring a business focus to creativity. And that's a good thing."

Joe, Amen. It is a good thing. But does everyone see it as good? No. People will cling on to territories as the shift continues. But it doesn't have to be this way. I work with a traditional Planner who often gripes about things being too complex with technology. But when I show him visuals like the "brain"—he gets all excited.

And truth be told, he has years of expertise that I can learn from. If both of us posess curiosity, we are bound to "evolve".

[David Wen]

Would you mind if I posted about this to The Ranch?

[DA]

David,

Go ahead and post on the Ranch. A link back to here would be appreciated.

Enjoy.

[Anonymous whiner in London]

I have a masters in graphic design (undertaken when I was 40 - my first degree was a modern languages BA), I've managed a publishing department, set up award-winning websites, written well-reviewed books, run magazines, done sufficiently innovative online marketing that I was asked to lecture on it, enjoy programming, thrive on live radio, adore collaborating, work with some of the trickiest and most creative tearaways you could hope to meet... and I'm unemployable. The responses are "Yes, but what do you DO?" or "Yes, but it's a young person's game." The toddler's toy where you have to push the T-shaped person into the T-shaped hole depends on the hoe being there in the first place...

[Simon de Haast]

David, thanks for taking the time to develop this perspective, it really resonates with me. Anonymous Whiner, I completely empathise with you - "..and I'm unemployable.."

Furthering the riff of having multiple experiences, readers may find this interview with John Kao very interesting:
The Seventh Career: Building an Innovation Keiretsu.
- http://www.dialogonleadership.org/interviewKao.html

More and more global consciousness is moving towards a systemic worldview (as opposed to a Cartesian/reductionist approach) of how things are, the essence of what is design thinking, or as Bruce Nussbaum puts it (on BusinessWeek), "The Empathy Economy".

[John Dodds]

Creativity surely has always been about problem-solving, but somewhere along the line the term was hijacked by creative industries and imbued with an artistic element.

Or perhaps it was imposed on those industries because the word creative when applied to other areas has tended to be perjorative - think creative accountancy. This is perhaps because the implication has been that arty behaviour is not as rigid as might be necessary for accuracy in more "scientific" areas.

So as well as a separation between disciplines within the "creative" world, there has been a separation between that world and the non-creative world. As with so much labelling, it's been semantic differentiation. All this serves to cloud what creativity actually is.

For me, creativity resides in the original brilliant thought and subsequent thoughts and can occur in any walk of life. Indeed, in the traditional creative world, I would go as far as to argue that the artistic skills are functional adjuncts to the actual creative thought and not per se creative. This is sounding a bit Hirstian but I think it's true.

That's not to diminish their importance or the skill involved, but if you focus on creativity as original thinking which is then brought to fruition via various functional skills dependent on which arena one is in, then I think you get closer to its essence.

[Mark McGuinness]

Great post, I really like the translation of the T-shaped person into creativity. I think we're definitely approaching the stage where creativity is becoming a core discipline required of everyone, and where 'creatives' need to have greater appreciation of other disciplines.

The T-shaped concept nicely makes the point that it's not about merging into sameness - the 'spike' of the T maintains a unique in-depth knowledge or talent, while the head of the T maintains enough breadth to link up with complementary people and disciplines.