The Big Picture

The solution to marketing’s current ills is not more creativity. It’s less.

Forget what the advertising gurus say about big ideas and differentiation. The solution to marketing's ills is not more creativity, it's less.

A study of 1,300 U.S. companies by Chuck Lucier, senior vice president emeritus at Booz Allen Hamilton, reveals that only four broad ideas, copied again and again across sectors, accounted for 80 percent of the breakout businesses created between 1985 and 1995: power retailing, megabranding, focus/simplify/standardize, and the value chain bypass. 

[ This is an excerpt, provided by strategy + business, from the forthcoming book, The Big Moo: Stop Trying to Be Perfect and Start Being Remarkable, by the Group of 33 and edited by Seth Godin (published by Portfolio). To learn more about the book visit http://www.sethgodin.com/bigmoo/. ]

CMO's Creativity Survey Results

CMO has released results of their creativity survey (as of Sept. 27). Readers said...

• The majority are most creative in the early morning
• The majority feel more creative at home
• The majority feel that brainstorming with colleagues puts them at their most creative (are they doing this at home, in the early morning?)
• Coffee stimulates the most creative thought
• People feel more creative when they are alone (but brainstorming with colleagues?)

Dream Weavers

cmo has an interesting round-up of what 12 of today's top marketers believe it takes to stay creative. (Hey, there's even an entry in praise of unreasonableness. There's hope for me yet.)

Idea Generation Methods

I'm about brain dead from all of this hurricane-related hoopla, so I can definitely use some idea generation methods. Fast Company Now pointed us this morning to Martin Leith's Web site. Leith offers a list of "every idea generation method I've encountered during the past 15 years." Drawing on a wide range of sources, he touches on various mapping techniques, approaches to brainstorming and innovative card decks, along with other practices, processes and tools.

Managing for Creativity

Managing and measuring the creative types seems to be high on the to-do list of executives these days. Harvard Business Review Online gives some tips in this article, written by Richard Florida and Jim Goodnight.

The creative class, according to the article, makes up 1/3 of the workforce but brings home 1/2 of the salaries and wages in the U.S. In addition to the questions of how to keep good creative people, they try to tread lightly on the territory of measuring a return for your investment.

So, how do you increase efficiency, improve quality and raise productivity among your creative types? Not stock options, it seems. Here are the tips the article gives:

1. Help them be great.
2. Stimulate their mind.
3. Minimize hassles.
4. Realize that the whole company needs to be creative.
5. Keep customers satisfied.

To their list, I would add...

1. Don't get bogged down in "measuring" the success of your creatives. You will know if it's working or not - and they will too.
2. Watch how you design workspaces for creatives. There's nothing more frustrating than trying to come up with a new plan or concept for someone when you can't even hear yourself think. If everyone is in cubicles, have a Quiet Room or Library where employees can retreat if they need to think.
3. Realize that sometimes a walk outside or a quick drive can spur creativity. If you talk to creative people often, none of them do their best thinking in the same place. For some, it's the office. For the vast majority, it's not - it's places like driving in a car, walking, etc. Don't make them feel that if they are not in the office, they are not working. (The article touches a bit on flexible hours, but I'm diving a little deeper here. It's more like flexible thinking. Too many think as long as you're sitting at a desk you are doing work. If you're not, you're goofing off. It's just not always true.)
4. Leave them alone. Give them a deadline. Tell them what you want. Give them as much information as possible. And then leave them alone.
5. Let creative types manage creative types, if possible.