{CHAPTER 18}
GLOBAL CHALLENGES
AND THE DANISH
CREATIVITY MODEL?
Afather in jeans and wearing a tattered cap says farewell to his son, who is on the way to the war in Afghanistan. The two leave each other after a long hug, and as the father turns to go back to his car, tears stream down his cheeks: he might never see his son again. A woman sees the man and offers him a handkerchief to wipe his eyes.
A young man with branded clothing, an iPhone, and other middle-class indicators says farewell to his family and returns to university after his summer holidays. He and his family speak about pricey student loans, unemployment, and poorly paid work.
Both stories could have originated from any international airport in the world. They are expressions of a world in crisis, one stalked by social and economic uncertainty and doubt.
We lack solutions to the challenges of growth and means of getting the Western world back on track when it comes to social, economic, cultural, and climate issues. In the book Qualitative Inquiry and Global Crisis, Cory Booker, mayor of Newark, New Jersey, puts it thus:
Democracy, like social justice, is not a spectator sport. We cannot allow ourselves to just sit on our sofas and provide passionate expert commentary on what is happening in the world and on how we need to change it. When we do so, we play an embarrassing role in the continuation of the very challenges we are bemoaning. We cannot repeat those actions we took last year and expect anything in the world around us to improve this year. We need to be part of every change we seek in the world.
INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILITY
How can we move forward? Cory Booker appeals to individual responsibility and action. Every action begins with ourselves. Finding answers to any new questions concerning pressing problems today depends on our ability to imagine being in a different place tomorrow.
The narratives in the present book underline this point. Creativity is about creating something new and having the courage to see oneself as someone who makes a difference. It is about drawing out our creative forces. It begins with ourselves but does not take place without the involvement of those around us. We have sought with this book to move creativity out from the minds of individuals and into daily life. By analyzing the stories we have heard, we have come to six general conclusions, which have been sketched out over the course of the book but will be summarized here. We shall term this the Danish creativity model, for even though these points are no doubt valid in a more general sense, they are derived from stories involving Danes who have succeeded in competing at a global level.
1. Creativity thrives on the edge. In other words, it flourishes on the edge of existing knowledge and concepts and on the boundaries of or in tension with different branches and different employees and areas of life. Many of our interview subjects tell us that they are broadly inspired across genres and disciplines – by music, literature, art, film, competitors, and colleagues. They sample that which already exists and thereby achieve a unique voice. They redesign, recreate, and reform the existing. Yet they do not venture too far from their original voice and special knowledge.
2. Creative breakthroughs or regular pauses in the day’s routines are necessary if you wish to remain creative. Whether in a symbolic or a concrete sense, it is the bath that provides the energy. Those apparently pointless breaks – from Jørgen Leth’s mountain hikes to Kenneth Bager’s thought-cleansing baths – become points of departure for innovation.
3. Creative courage is decisive. Our interview subjects describe daring to play for big stakes, having the courage to make mistakes and admit them, being strong enough to struggle on in the face of resistance. For some of our interview subjects, this is associated with experience. The more you believe in yourself and your own judgment, the braver you will be to “get stuck in”, as Bjarke Ingels puts it.
4. Maximized development alongside limitations represents a powerful combination in the creative process. Sometimes, quantity begets quality: the more ideas you have, the more you can make use of. Other times, limits, and obstructions are key to generating the desire to transcend that which exists. In companies and organizations, it is vital to frame creativity with clear goals so that people are not improvising “out of the blue”.
5. Creativity requires managerial drive. If there is no creative drive in an organization, it can nevertheless be encouraged through leadership, whether this takes the form of a greedy force, such as the one Ingolf Gabold describes, or of a framework for creative processes, such as that described by Michael Christiansen. Managers can promote organizational creativity and innovation by taking the lead.
6. No creativity without employee involvement. We could also word this as, “Danish businesses excel at involving employees and offering them opportunities to contribute ideas and criticism”.
The point of this book is that if we want things to happen around us, we first need to act. We should act creatively to be creative. This much we have learned from the cases at the law firm and the industrial enterprises. It also helps if we are lucky enough to be in a place that makes this possible. Creativity requires management that permits breaks and pauses and that commits the financial resources necessary to create something new through genuine collaboration. As a result, the stories in this book also conflict with a number of myths concerning creativity:
1. Creativity is not based on personal talent. The fairytale of becoming an overnight star or of being born with a unique gift ignores all the hard work, knowledge, and craft that often represent the reality behind creativity.
2. The solitary inventor does not exist. Most inventions are constructed upon cooperation as well as upon the accumulation of knowledge and institutionalization of methods and collaboration. Creative contributions are a long time coming and are not just fortuitous outpourings of the subconscious – even if the silent and invisible processes that we normally describe as unconscious do play a role, particularly in the initial phases of creativity. Our interview subjects tell us about their ability to learn from and register the trends in time and incorporate these into their own repertoires at the same time, as they trust that their intuition or subconscious keeps working away.
3. The “Eureka!” moment is overrated. Dramatic breakthroughs are rare. Such breakthroughs are often regarded as easy discoveries driven more by luck than by hard work. Our interview subjects, however, speak instead of the many small, gradual changes that lead up to the big breakthroughs. It is the accumulated work of many people and many years that forms the foundation for innovation.
4. Creativity is not a universal phenomenon. That which we regard as creative is dependent on time and space – and changes over time. Paradigm shifts alter our understanding of things. That which we regard as new at one time is not new at another. If Jørgen Leth’s interest in drafts, in the incomplete and the fragmented, is interesting, it is precisely in light of our usual interest in cohesive stories, narratives, patterns, lines, and conclusions. A creative method might work in one context but not in another. Creativity and the specific processes that make it possible depend on the specific situation and company.
5. Seeing and acting on these conditions is a managerial responsibility.
SO, WHAT CAN WE DO?
If we consider the challenges facing Denmark, Europe, and the rest of the world in this age of globalization, then Denmark actually possesses strong historical foundations for creativity and innovation. We could learn from Denmark’s example by investigating the following:
Historically speaking, Denmark has been strong and even taken a leading role in some areas, such as the food industry, the maritime sector, the pharmaceutical industry, renewable energy, and global niche businesses. Denmark has been at the vanguard of particularly creative industries such as gastronomy, film, music, media, architecture, design, and furniture. Danish film and architecture win international acclaim and contribute to value creation, growth, exports, and the retaining of jobs in the country. Already in 2008, the Danish Business Authority concluded that companies with a high degree of input from the creative industries are 12% more innovative in terms of products than are other businesses and that the companies that do best are those that have more employees with creative educations and more people employed in creative work functions.
More generally speaking, if we are serious about Europe needing to be a knowledge society that can live off creativity, it is necessary for us to embrace the opportunities for creative breakthroughs, resampling, recreation, and innovation. We need to work smarter, not necessarily harder, yet this requires that we have the chance to do so. And perhaps, we need to think more explicitly in terms of sustainable creativity. It is not enough just to produce more of the new if, in fact, this means producing lower-quality products with predictably negative consequences. We need to combine working creatively with thinking sustainably, both in terms of people and products.
In an article from 2011, the American creativity researcher Robert Sternberg asserts that it will be necessary in the future to combine creativity with wisdom. This is true, of course, precisely because more creativity is not inherently valuable. Just think of Hitler and Stalin, whose enormous creativity proved to be immensely damaging. According to Sternberg, wisdom is about realizing the common good and balancing our own needs with those of others. At the risk of slightly oversimplifying matters, modern companies that wish to live creatively should presumably not just be creative but specifically creative in a wise manner. This is the case both in terms of the products they produce and the working conditions they offer their employees. In a Danish and Western context, this point is central since we are unable to compete with, for instance, the Asian economies when it comes to wages.
Wisdom also involves doing what can actually be accomplished and, Sternberg says, is often combined with social or emotional intelligence. In this sense, wisdom is actually more in keeping with Asian thinking than with a classically Western understanding of creativity. Wisdom can mould the ways we live our lives, and Sternberg is not alone in feeling that schools should be preparing students to think creatively in a clever manner.
There can be no doubt that future growth depends on our ability to produce creatively. We must discover technologies for and methods by which we can confront the consequences of climate change and war, preventing the ruination of our planet. We can only do this by being creative and by being so in ways that are also wise. Christian calls this “Karma creativity”, inspired by the idea of Company Karma. The basic philosophy is that it should be possible to combine earning money with making a difference. One could say that the Company Karma philosophy has elements in common with standard Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), yet there are differences. CSR is often something that remains isolated in a particular department at a company – perhaps in marketing, HR, or even a dedicated CSR department at large companies. For Thornico, however, it has been important in anchoring activities across the company and providing internal co-ownership. This is what Christian has to say.
KARMA CREATIVITY
Company Karma is based on a four-fold model that we use to set goals for creating value for the company’s four most important stakeholders:
1. Company
2. Employees
3. Customers and partners
4. Specific cases and projects.
One can thus regard Company Karma as a sort of Corporate Social Responsibility 3.0. To live up to these criteria, it is necessary for us to think creatively and, as a result, to identify the projects that can make a difference for all stakeholders.
There are many examples of Company Karma at Christian’s businesses. hummel acts as a sponsor of Sierra Leone’s and Afghanistan’s national football teams. These are countries that have suffered much and for which football acts as a kind of light in the dark. Sierra Leone is among the three poorest countries in the world, and Afghanistan has just been labelled the worst country in the world in which to be a woman.
In association with these sponsorships, hummel is providing a range of activities, including a football match in Kabul between Afghanistan’s women’s team and NATO and ISAF soldiers from eight countries. This is an event that hummel conceived of, arranged, and financed – and that delivered a message of women’s rights the world over, in part through reporting by CNN, BBC, Al Jazeera, and other news organizations.
To come up with and carry out such an initiative, hummel’s marketing team in particular spent a great deal of time thinking on the edge and circling around the project. Marketing received assistance from most of the company’s other internal groups, with logistics assisting with shipment of materials; sales assisting with in-store (including online) project activation, allowing people to purchase the Afghanistan national team jersey; and design assisting in designing the team’s clothes. This design was created to raise awareness, to be commercially relevant, and to respect the fact that religious Muslim women cannot play in short-sleeved shirts and short trousers.
Co-ownership and involvement are central to such projects. People need to have a hand on the wheel. hummel recently set up football schools in Sierra Leone. All employees – including those who are not directly involved – are connected with the project in some way. For example, each department has its own football academy. External partners and customers are also involved in various ways.
In partnership with the Red Cross, Thorco Shipping has created Thorco Africa, one of the world’s first charitable ships, which donates 0.5% of its turnover or a minimum of DKK 150,000 a year to the Red Cross’ work in Africa and elsewhere.
Christian’s property company has implemented a Going Green project, including initiatives such as a green roof and LED lighting. For example, a green parking garage has been built in the Netherlands, representing Europe’s largest vertical green building and constructed in collaboration with the Rotterdam Climate Initiative. CO2 transformation in the green plants at the parking garage is equivalent to the capacity of 250 full-grown trees. This makes the parking garage the largest “park” in Rotterdam.
These examples and other stories in this book allow us to conclude that if we use creativity the right way, we can find solutions that can help us overcome the immense crises confronting our world – the economic crisis, the climate crisis, the population crisis, and so on.
In the future, being creative will not just be about selling a good product but will also be about appealing to customers’ emotions and desire for experiences. One could also say that we need to run businesses in new ways. One person who does this is social entrepreneur Fanny Posselt, who has taken a traditional Danish streetside hot dog vending business and turned it into the world’s best-travelled hot dog stand. Over the past nine years, Fanny has been living out her dream of helping to alleviate the world’s injustice – at the same time as she is operating a growing and sustainable business. This is despite her initial difficulties in convincing the bank of the value of her enterprise, especially on account of her student debts; her lack of experience constructing a business, working with hot dogs, and exporting across borders; and the absence of any kind of normal business plan. The world’s most famous hot dog stand has inspired and helped create positive social change for neglected and at-risk children, which represents the core activity of Fanny’s Kontutto company. And all because Fanny decided to make a difference.
THE LAST WORD
There are two absolutely decisive prerequisites for creativity:
1. Energy, drive, and passion
2. Humility in the face of the fact that all creativity is located at the edge of that which already exists. The new, in other words, does not in itself exist but is instead always a redeployment of that which exists – even in the case of a hot dog stand.
In this book, we have encountered musicians, authors, lawyers, CEOs, business developers, artists, advertisers, board members, designers, and entrepreneurs in bars, cafés, and meetings rooms and have learned how they quite concretely work with creativity and innovation. Besides drive, an ability to cope with resistance, and a special sense for moving along the edge of that which already exists, these narratives have illustrated for us the importance of deciding to be creative – and then of doing something about it.
Creativity is action-based and involves people actually creating something new, aimed at making a positive difference. And even if this book moves amid some sublimely creative individuals, it also shows that very few of them succeed at being creative alone. They receive help from people and organizations that can do things they cannot do themselves. They draw inspiration from others. They know how to bring others on board when it comes to their ideas. And they keep going even if they encounter resistance. These are all characteristics we need now more than ever.
One of our fundamental conclusions in this book is that creativity flourishes when we explore the edges of the box. This is what we do when we collaborate, both internally within organizations and externally with the outside world. We will permit ourselves to conclude this book with another little example from Denmark, one that may point to the essential conditions that must be in place for us to succeed at this.
For many years, international studies have hailed Denmark as the happiest country in the world, something that surprises many Danes in particular. We cannot always quite see why this might be the case. Many Danes feel that their neighbour is always complaining and that we have one of the world’s highest tax rates, which results in the majority of people paying more than 50% of their income in tax. Furthermore, the weather in Denmark is nothing to write home about, and we stand in the economic shadow of Norway, our oil-rich neighbour to the north. On average, we are less healthy and live shorter lives than do our neighbours in Sweden, and we have provided both cradle and grave to one of the unhappiest figures in world literature, namely Hamlet.
So what is it that makes us so happy?!
Upon the most recent publication of the global happiness index study, Forbes magazine ran an article about a woman who had been in Denmark. In the article, she explained how she was going to go horseback riding one day during her visit. The place where she was going to rent the horse, however, only accepted payment in cash, leading her to ask whether she should go to the nearest ATM and withdraw some money. To her great surprise, she was told that she could just wait to pay until after she had returned from her ride.
For us Danes, this would be an absolutely ordinary experience, but for her, it led to the conclusion that Danes are highly trusting, not only of one another but also of strangers from the outside. According to her, this was the reason for our happiness. In other words, security and trust in one another are key ingredients in the feeling of happiness. This conclusion might be something of a stretch, but it does contain a significant insight when it comes to creativity: no one creates anything in complete isolation, and the more we trust that others have something to contribute, the better. Creativity grows at the edge of the box!