Why a Creative Can Be a Company’s Best Friend

These days there is a lot of talk about ‘disruptive innovation’. It is difficult to underline a precise and comprehensive definition of complex reasoning, but to us, disruptive innovation is a kind of innovation (in product, business model, etc.), which is so substantially ‘destructive’ that it is impossible to return to the previous market condition. It is like a point of no return, from where the rules of the game, consumer demands and buying habits change forever – forcing companies to make quantum leaps and breaking their backbones in the process.

Let’s take the example of a car. How many things have changed since man moved from horse-drawn carriages to the comforts of an automobile? How many products, services and companies were born over the ages and how many have changed radically to ‘move with the times’? More importantly, how many are now dead?

With the digital revolution underway, modern customers have become more and more demanding, but the impact on society as well as the economy on all levels has been, in fact, ‘disruptive’. You can ask a thousand questions and make a thousand considerations but one question still stands out – should all businesses aim to be ‘disruptive’ in order to survive and thrive?

We’ve probably raised too many questions. Perhaps you cannot simply churn out a standard reply applicable to all industries or market segments. However, it does seem clear that for a company that does not want to condemn itself to rapid obsolescence, it is imperative to target its initiatives more towards the day after tomorrow than today; for such a company, thinking more creative and less standard is not a matter of choice but a strategic asset.

Now, do all businesses have the requisite resources in terms of capital, skills and strategies to better develop this imperative?

Maybe not.

Here we might witness the revenge of the visionaries and creatives. Those who consider entrepreneurship as a ‘living creature’ must know that it is not enough to feed it or to show it a path but also necessary to make it to jump into flaming hoops on command.

Back in 1931, Adriano Olivetti had favored the entrance of ambitious artists and writers into factories. According to Olivetti, technicians and humanists had to work side by side for a business to grow in a healthy manner and conquer new challenges.

Like Olivetti, we also believe that a little bit of contamination between creatives and managers, between the crazy and the rational and between lovers of order and bearers of chaos is necessary to maintain a balance in the world of business. The good news is that many companies are beginning to realize this fact and adding creatives in their resource pool of white collared professionals.

Needless to say, finding someone who can manage and coordinate between the two seemingly irreconcilable groups and harness creative power in a world of business logic can be nothing short of the search for the Holy Grail for a futuristic company.