Q&A – PART I: Individual vs. systemic creativity
Your Ideas, Examined
Previously, I shared that the most important skill to learn by 2035 is creative thinking. Naturally, this raised many questions: What does creative thinking look like? How does creativity behave in individuals versus in systems? And why is creativity now the most important skill, especially with the rise of AI? Every company and brand, no doubt, will attest that they strive for more innovation, but we know you cannot just drop a few high performers in a room and hope for the best. So, let’s examine what might be done.
Below is a collection of answers to your questions on creativity: how it manifests at a systems level, and how it might be cultivated from within.
Got a question about creativity, business, value creation, or culture? Submit it anonymously.
ON CREATIVITY ITSELF
Q – What do you actually mean when you talk about creativity?
A – Think of the late Sir Ken Robinson’s definition of creativity: the ability to generate original ideas that have value.
The implication is that there are two components of creativity: originality + value. Both are required for an idea to be the fruit of creativity.
So, how are ideas generated? Through your imagination, yes, but imagination alone does not create value. Converting ideas into meaningful outcomes is the crux of what we explore throughout Ideas Economy.
Q – What does creative thinking look like in highly regulated industries (e.g. banking, law, government)?
A – Constraints can be very useful to stimulate ideas but they must not suffocate. Too much rigidity will inevitably kill creativity totally within a system. In sectors, however, that require more rigidity, we see creative thinking unfold amidst social tasks — things that require navigating the complexity of people.
Creativity is what enables you to prompt others to learn, think differently, or feel intrinsically tied to their outputs. All imperative to a high business acumen, such as in negotiation, stakeholder management, and the like.
Q – If AI can generate ideas, what makes human creativity meaningfully different?
A – There is an old trope that beauty is evidence that something was touched by humanity. Humans can naturally imbue a deep level of soul into their work which is, thus far, incapable of being replicated by AI.
As they say, taste is becoming more important than ever.
Q – If execution is becoming cheap (thanks to AI), won’t systems that execute better still outperform creative but messy ones?
A – Execution is critical — but only if the underlying idea is strong. The brilliant execution of a poor idea is still a poor idea.
Q – How do you measure creativity without reducing it to something shallow?
A – Measuring outcomes has its place, but much of creativity’s value can only be appreciated when viewed holistically. Take brand, for example. It conveys cultural meaning and connection, and its impact often cannot be measured immediately in dollars. But it can be tracked in other ways.
Q – If creativity is a “difficult intelligence to cheapen,” what does that look like in practice?
A – Practice looking at visual art and you will see. Many works contain immense creative intelligence and a ‘soul’ that is difficult, even impossible, for a machine to replicate precisely. The difference is perceptible.
ON SYSTEMIC CREATIVITY
Q – You talk about the difference between individual creativity and systemic creativity. How is it possible to have a room full of creative people not be a creative company?
A – Companies must master two capabilities:
Attract highly creative individuals (individual creativity).
Build systems that lift that talent collectively (systemic creativity).
If a company’s outputs are not routinely imaginative or original, at least one of these is missing. A room full of creative people without systemic support will fail to produce consistently innovative work. Addressing this requires intentionally building environments that enable creativity to thrive.
Q – How can you tell if stagnancy is a leadership problem, a structural issue, or an identity trap?
A – It’s often a combination of all three. Further investigation might identify the core cause, but sometimes, as the saying goes, the fish rots from the head. Other times, leadership merely inherits structural issues that are endemic across an industry.
Q – What prevents creative individuals from influencing systems?
A – Compliance and social smoothing.
Q – You write how artistic environments sometimes become creatively stagnant. How?
A – It does not matter how artistic the product, service, or talent are. Creativity needs certain conditions to breathe sustainably. Upkeep your creativity hygiene factors to mitigate stagnancy.
Q – How is it that creativity needs constraints, and at the same time cannot operate under too much rigidity?
A – Healthy constraints define a space for ideas to move freely.
Constraint requires:
Knowing what you don’t want.
Being willing to reject misaligned work.
In short, cultivating good taste.
Too much rigidity comes from hyper-procedural environments. Processes are valuable, but the more volatile, uncertain, chaotic or ambiguous (“VUCA”) a situation is, the less process will help you. In these circumstances, it is more valuable to adopt an exploratory approach, rather than high-conscientious procedure.
The dance is: be organised enough to build some predictability (through frameworks, structures), but leave yourself unconcerned with finessing details — at least to start.
Q – Can one highly creative individual meaningfully shift a rigid system?
A – No. People need people for a sustained ripple of change.
Q – When should you leave a system that constantly kills creativity?
A – KPI-only cultures struggle to capture or value meaning, which is increasingly important for brands. Signs of a suboptimal workplace include:
Everything must map cleanly to a metric.
Long-term cultural impact is dismissed as unquantifiable.
Discomfort with ambiguity.
Creativity is inherently intangible. By giving it structure, its value becomes visible and harnessable. Ideas are not inherently valuable until they are activated, contextualised, and embedded in systems. This is how imagination converts into real-world outcomes.
To continue in Part II: Systemic Creativity.
Got a question or idea worth examining? Share it and see that it might be chosen for an upcoming edition of YOUR IDEAS, EXAMINED.