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RESEARCH, ANALYSIS & TRENDS

hug at a time. Waking the creative dragon

There’s one slight problem with the theory though. So, what’s the takeaway for companies who need to
hold the line between ideation and profitability? Indus-
It’s not true! tries are heavy laden with hard issues and solid figures,
and it’s all too easy to churn the wheel and speak the
In the past decade, studies have proven that the human language of turnover and market share. But ironically,
brain is not nearly as dichotomous as the theory of later- it’s the degree to which we can break out and see be-
alisation suggests. Instead, the two lobes need to col- yond the box that determines how long we’ll speak the
laborate to pull off most tasks, using the corpus callo- language.
sum as the common bridge for communication. Alt-
hough some degree of hemispheric differentiation ex- If organisations want to out-innovate the innovators,
ists, the lines between left and right should not be cast they have to free their people of corporate dogma and
in stone. ask the questions, what about this idea? where’s the
opportunity here? All the hackathons and design jams
Quite simply, the brain is a bit more complex than that. in the world will only do so much. The elixir to ongoing
Our own genetic composition is bent towards creativity new ideas in a world where everyone is trying to find
and originality, and even the so-called ‘left brained’ of them is to get your people to discover their inner awe-
the bunch must fluidly interweave ingenuity into cogni- someness. Getting them to unleash the potential they
tive processes that appear void of imagination. To label never thought that they had will mark the difference
yourself as ‘analytical but not innovative’ or ‘intuitive but between the future hard-hitters and the one-hit won-
not rational’ just cements ceilings in time. You’ll inno- ders.
vate to the degree that you believe you are and you
can. Ideas don’t happen in a vacuum. They need some in-
ception. They need organisations that foster spaces
Getting creatively fit where questions are imperative, risks are welcomed
and mistakes are empowering.
Therefore, if our own anatomy is built to create, we have
to step off our mental hamster wheels and see what Organisations need to serve up the ‘grit’ if they want to
we’re actually made of. Creativity is like a muscle; the make the pearl. That takes more than a few codathons
more we exercise it, the stronger it gets. The more or hacking competitions; it takes an ‘all-in’ commitment
weights we add to our creativity barbell, the more brag to activating their people. Just imagine if it was you ‒
we can add to our locker room bench press talk. not the lawyer ‒ who came up with that killer idea that
day. It could be, the more we start allowing our creative
The hardest part of a morning jog on a blustery wintery dragons to have a voice at the table. ◊
morning is getting out the door. But the reward of return- By Owen Fair, Technical Director,
ing home with fresh blood pumping through your veins Aurecon
is worth it. Similarly, it is when you dip your toe into the
creative pool of your brain ‒ the effort to start is daunt- This post originally appeared on Aurecon’s Just
ing but the payback is invigorating. Imagine blog that provides a glimpse into the
future for curious readers, exploring ideas that
are probable, possible and for the imagination.

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