{CHAPTER 1}

EVERYONE CAN BE
MORE CREATIVE!

Increasing creativity is a political priority, a driving force for the 21st century’s creative economy, and the objective of numerous recent school reforms. Gerard Puccio, Marie Mance, and Mary Murdock leave no room for ambiguity in their book Creative Leadership: creative leadership is necessary for managing change in the new century.

Creativity has, in other words, become unavoidable. We need new and significant methods of ensuring sustainable growth on both national and international levels. This requires that we possess the necessary skills and imagination to envision the new, and it requires that we develop meaningful alternative products and lifestyles. Our ability to imagine the future is the most human of all abilities. But individual imagination is not enough. If new ideas are to be successfully realized, we need to be able to act on them.

This book aims to discover how this can be achieved. You will find a series of inspiring stories from significant creative personalities who have achieved success in disseminating creative Danish products internationally. It would perhaps be an overstatement to say that Denmark is a more creative nation than any other, but Denmark has consistently been placed in the top five in various competitions and rankings over the years concerning approaches to fuelling creativity and innovation. If you take into account the fact that Denmark is only home to about six million people, the accolades are even more puzzling. What makes for these creative achievements? This book intends to unravel just how this is accomplished again and again based on the Danish or possibly Scandinavian lifestyle, the mindsets of creative individuals, and the organizational setups and strategies of creative companies based in Denmark and looking out to the world as a market. As such, you will hear about the creative force behind Danish television drama, including the well-known series The Killing, which is winning plaudits overseas. You will hear about the creative processes at Noma, which was voted the world’s best restaurant in 2010, 2011, and 2012. And you will hear solid advice from the new wunderkind of Danish architecture, Bjarke Ingels.

We also draw upon our own experiences. Working in the food, technology, sports, and fashion industries and increasingly in online companies such as Tattoodo.com, Christian’s business concerns creativity and innovation in different ways. Lene, for her part, is director of a creative research group and partner in a consultancy firm specializing in creativity and innovation. We thus ensure that this book’s conclusions are consistently grounded in references to creativity and innovation research while allowing the stories to speak for themselves. We do not, it must be noted, make a sharp distinction between creativity and innovation. A fundamental point in this book, however, is that the possibility for creativity is decisive for the development of innovative, saleable products. We emphasize the human and organizational prerequisites for creativity that result in innovation.

ON TOUR

It all began one baking hot day in August 2010. We were out on an interview expedition in Copenhagen, visiting LETT, voted Denmark’s most innovative legal services provider by the Association of Danish Law Firms. LETT’s office is located on Copenhagen’s City Hall Square, boasting a spectacular view over the flocks of pigeons and teeming humanity below. Not many people would suspect that lawyers could – or should – be creative. But we do.

We later found ourselves deep in conversation with Ingolf Gabold, then head of drama at DR (Danmarks Radio). Ingolf told us about DR Fiction’s successful work with Danish television drama, which draws millions of viewers on Sunday evenings, wins international awards, and is being exported on a massive scale. We ended up at 9pm at Galleri V1, an art gallery in Copenhagen’s Meat Packing District. This former butcher shop’s sharp neon lights illuminate the working lives of creative advertising director Peter Stenbæk and gallery owner Jesper Elg.

Our project, with contributions from significant creative interview subjects, aims to reveal how people work their way toward the meaningful and the new. We aim to discover the key to understanding what makes people more creative both in their working and private lives. The book draws on our experiences from these interviews, hopefully inspiring readers to continue where we are obliged to stop – to make themselves creative individuals and leaders who can help set the agenda in a globalized world.

CREATIVE CONVERSATIONS

On this August day, nothing is predictable. Our interviews turn out to be unmanageable. It seems that creative contributors decide for themselves which questions they will answer and which they will ignore. Ingolf quaffs wine and speaks about the French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist Jacques Lacan, who lived from 1901 to 1980 and who was heir to the theories of the founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud. Who could have imagined that the Danish drama on DR is inspired by French psychoanalysis? The lawyers, for their part, are not altogether certain they see themselves as creative. The owners of Galleri V1, which was voted Europe’s most innovative art gallery in 2010, come and go from the interviews as they please. They all have their own agendas, and we appear to be separated by a gulf of chaos. We take our vocabulary and experiences with us into the interviews. And it is precisely here that the gap opens up, here that we are challenged. This, after all, is common knowledge: it is when we reach the boundary of our abilities that we discover that which has not yet been tested. This feels like the antithesis of intellectual or professional laziness. We are working hard, it is hot, and it is quite late before the interviews are finished.

ANOTHER LOCATION

We are on the Copenhagen island of Christianshavn, walking against a cold headwind on our way to Noma. As we come through the restaurant doors, a cluster of at least five waiters welcome us smilingly into the warmth. They are the very epitome of professionalism. Peter Kreiner, the restaurant’s managing director, greets us and leads us through the kitchen, where about 15 cooks and students stand around tables. We are enthralled by the scent of leeks, mature cheese, and parsley.

On a bench beside a long table overlooking the wharf, with glasses of bubbling ice water before us, Peter describes the restaurant’s Saturday Sessions, when the cooks experiment with various dishes and raw materials. Every so often, an experiment will be so spectacular that its results will go straight onto the menu. The sparkling water in the glasses and the smell of butter-fried vegetables make us hungry for the rest of the story. How did Noma become the world’s best restaurant no less than three times? If you want to know the answer, you will have to read Chapters 13 and 14.

Once again out in the cold, we make our way toward BIG in the Copenhagen neighbourhood of Nørrebro, where we will interview the architect Bjarke Ingels. Bathed in the light streaming through the windows of the attic-space meeting room, Bjarke tells us how one can transition from the verdant courtyards of Copenhagen to the fundamentals of Manhattan skyscrapers. It is a fantastic story. The creativity lies in combining and assembling reality in new ways – in stepping out on to the brink of what already exists. This was to become the focus of our book. Creativity has more to do with treading the edge of the box than it does with leaping out into empty space. When Noma develops new dishes, it does so in line with a clear philosophy of exploring the edges and building upon established concepts. When hummel develops new clothes, it samples from old catalogues and lets itself be inspired by competitors. The company takes its point of creative departure in that which already exists, walking quite concretely along its edge.

YOU HAVE TO BELIEVE

Our conversations have shown us that creative and innovative companies and individuals are driven by a compulsion to industriousness. René Redzepi is so passionate that he devotes all of his energy to working with Nordic cuisine. Bjarke Ingels is on his way to Manhattan to realize his childhood dream of building a skyscraper. Peter Stenbæk, the man behind an advertising campaign for the band Aqua and a series of legendary commercials for a mobile phone company, has succeeded in his youthful goal of living the good life far from the peripheral village where he grew up. Peter’s hometown on the island of Fyn inspired the fictional village of Snave, site of his famous television advertisements: the periphery itself acted as a creative springboard, and the desire to move away from the countryside ended up being manifested in his advertisements.

Peter tells us about one of his techniques: he collects scraps of paper with good ideas. He just scribbles down ideas when they come to him, night and day, wherever he happens to be, even if there is no immediate aim to this activity. Then, all of a sudden, a bit of paper with a funny line becomes the inspiration for a new product. Peter does not know that this will happen when he is writing. He only knows that what he writes could prove interesting. As a result, he always has faith in creativity and the desire to be creative. The business development manager from the law firm tells an instructive story about his work guiding lawyers to focus more on sales and customers.

Bjarke tells us about the resistance he has encountered from established architecture firms. Taken as a whole, the interviews leave us in no doubt that professional ability, courage, passion, doubt, and a willingness to take risks are prerequisites for creativity. It can be difficult to take your place in the vanguard when working as a manager.

PERSONAL AND BUSINESS CREATIVITY

We have constructed this book in such a way that we first describe the personal and then the business aspects of creativity. We do this in the knowledge that these two aspects are closely related. Individuals who are creative move along the edge of their existing abilities. But the same is true of creative companies. Creative people combine things in new ways. This is also done by creative businesses. They sample ideas from old products, from competitors, from social media, and from their existing knowledge base and use these as the foundations for their own products and ideas. They break down the barriers between employees and managers and between work functions within the organization, thereby promoting creativity.

Creative individuals are good at precipitating creative breakthroughs. Perhaps they take a bath to get a good idea, as Picasso is said to have done. And creative businesses allow employees to make these breakthroughs. Maybe a slice of work time needs to be set aside for creative processes – as is the case at Noma’s Saturday Sessions, when cooks present the results of the week’s experiments, playing with potential new dishes for head chef René Redzepi. Creativity is thus integrated into the company’s choreography and daily reality.

CREATIVITY IS PART OF DAILY LIFE

The literature on creativity is often stuffed with tips for crazy activities and little exercises to promote creativity. Unfortunately, these techniques are rarely linked to the organization’s daily reality. In his 2011 book on Apple guru Steve Jobs’s innovative secrets, Carmine Gallo writes, “When an organization sends its managers down a river in a kayak to teach them about cooperation or asks them to make coloured paper airplanes to prompt creativity, then something is wrong.” Why? Because it is much better to integrate creative processes into the company’s daily work. There they make a difference as creative breakthroughs, whether they take place during work breaks or Saturday Sessions or perhaps make a point of involving employees.

DO YOU HAVE THE COURAGE
TO BE CREATIVE?

We argue that everyone has the potential to be more creative at work and in his or her own lives. The question is, do we dare? The American psychologist and creativity researcher Robert Sternberg asserts that the most important doctrine for promoting creativity is that one first needs to decide to be creative.

There are, of course, certain preconditions for being creative. You need to be able to discern new contexts. You need to be able to combine things differently and in new ways. And you need to be able to analyze what the new might be in an existing market or field. Even if you possess these “skills”, there is, of course, no guarantee that you will actually be creative. Perhaps you let others come up with the ideas. Perhaps you are not able to evaluate your ideas. Perhaps you expect that people will automatically listen to what you have to say. This is not good enough, Sternberg feels. You need to decide to use your talents and abilities. As Sternberg writes, “Ideas don’t sell themselves. SELL THEM!”

Creativity is, in this sense, action-based. Over the years, research has sought in vain to identify the personality traits characterizing those who succeed at being creative. There is, apparently, no such thing as creative DNA. It is quite simple: we can only speak of creativity when we speak of its expression in practice. It does no good to say, “I’m creative. I just haven’t managed to show anyone yet.”

The creative musician is the one who manages to create music in new and meaningful ways. The creative designer is the one who manages to create new types of clothes, shoes, cars, or what have you. How one is creative can vary within different industries.

A bricklayer can be creative by laying bricks in new ways or inventing new construction methods. A stage actor needs to be able to express herself creatively by taking on and expressing a role, thereby granting the stage a life that it did not previously possess. Traditionally, the bricklayer would not regard himself as creative whereas the actor would almost certainly see this as one of her core competencies. Both, however, share the attribute of often needing to be creative, albeit in different ways. And before they can truly be creative, they need to decide to be creative.

We can, says Sternberg, decide to be creative. This is the first step toward realizing the creative potential in ourselves and our surroundings. This is, in fact, a liberating message. If the reader of this book is inspired to attempt to be creative, either at home or at work, then we have achieved our ambition: to spread the desire for renewing the lives we live – both together and separately – in private and at work.

WHY DANISH EXAMPLES?

But why do we focus on a series of creative Danish products and personalities? We do so because there is much we can learn from listening to their experiences with working creatively. In addition, as we ourselves are based in Denmark, it gives us the opportunity to discover the key components of a possible Danish and globally sustainable model of creativity. As the reader will discover, we will not try to draw up a generic, cookie-cutter Danish formula for being creative, but the stories we share carry a certain Danish flavour, connecting in particular to the collaborative and collective nature of creativity discovered through the interviews. In Denmark, there is a rich tradition for involving employees in strategy development with short distances from the highest to the lowest levels in the organizational hierarchy. Our claim in the present book is that these short distances promote creativity because they allow a genuine knowledge to flow from the bottom to the top and vice versa, which is essential for actually creating something of value relative to particular topics, particular settings, and particular fields of interest. We do not, however, wish to maintain an exemplary idea of creativity either at a personal or a national level. You need not match Ingolf Gabold’s, René Redzepi’s, Peter Stenbæk’s, or Denmark’s creative powers to be creative. On the contrary, we have written this book because we believe that more people can be more creative than they are at present – and because hearing about those who are particularly creative can inspire us all.

The need for this greater belief in creative potential is reflected in a recent state of creativity survey conducted in March and April 2012 and based on 5000 respondents’ beliefs and attitudes concerning creativity. The survey covered answers from 1000 respondents each from Japan, the UK, the USA, Germany, and France¹. The survey showed that creativity is thought of as key to economic and societal growth. However, less than half of the respondents in the survey described themselves as creative, and only one fourth of the people asked thought they live up to their own creative potential. The respondents report the experience of increasing pressure to be productive rather than creative at work, and people report spending only 25% of their time working creatively. In the survey, Japan is considered the most creative nation – although not by the Japanese themselves. As such, there is evidence of a creativity gap between one’s own and others’ conceptions of creative potential respectively as well as between the need for creativity and the actual working conditions that favour creativity. Our hope is that the present book can help fill this gap.

BEING CREATIVE BY DARING
TO DO NEW THINGS!

We argue that we can become better at working creatively if we know what this requires. Once we know what is needed, it will be easier the next time around. This is fundamentally an issue of daring to seek out creative openings and creative practices and becoming better at acting in creative ways. In our interview with the architect Bjarke Ingels later in this book, he explains that he does not always know in advance where a creative process will lead him. He has, however, worked his way into experiences with creative practices over the years. This means that he acts in accordance with certain anticipated patterns, which offer him a degree of security. Like Bjarke, we must test out the path before us, learn from our experiences, and know that this is how things must be.

Tim Ingold, a British anthropologist, believes that creativity is a kind of backward reading of how something enters the world. Even though experiences with creative processes can be accumulated and systematized, there is an improvised side to the creative process. This requires that we have the courage to go out and explore. We can decide to courageously venture into creative processes, but we cannot attempt to predetermine what the results will be or seek to plan each detailed move in advance. The courage to act is thus a decisive criterion for creativity. Yet it also helps if one is located in a place that nurtures creative openings. In conclusion, then, we can already say that:

¹ http://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/pressroom/pdfs/Adobe_State_of_Create_Global_Benchmark_Study.pdf

   Everyone can be more creative if they dare to improvise and explore the world.

   Creativity thrives along the edge. Many of our interview subjects tell us both about redesigning and reshaping existing products or ideas and about working on the boundaries of professional groups and knowledge areas.

   Creative courage is necessary. Our interview subjects talk about the need to take risks and the need to be able to make mistakes – and to admit that one has been mistaken. We need to be able to keep going despite resistance. For some of our interview subjects, this courage is part and parcel with experience. The more you believe in yourself and your own judgment, the more courage you have to “get stuck in”, as Bjarke Ingels puts it.

   Limitations and maximized development are strongly correlated in the creative process. Sometimes, more ideas mean more of a chance of hitting upon something useful. Other times, it is the limitation or the obstacle that generates the urge to surpass that which already exists.

In businesses and organizations, it is vital to frame creativity with clear goals, ensuring that people are not simply thinking to no purpose. It is also, however, necessary to foster a work culture characterized by a willingness to take risks and to encourage idea-generating processes. We believe that personal and organizational creativity go hand in hand and that organizations that wish to keep changing and developing innovatively are deeply dependent on the creativity of their employees and members. This requires leadership that opens up and establishes frameworks without controlling every step in the process, trust in new initiatives, and the ability to combine production and innovation. It also requires the ability to work along the lines of existing products and to rework these in accordance with the market’s requirements and opportunities. The first part of this book concentrates on the personal aspects of such process, and the latter is more focused on organizational aspects.

But how, precisely, should we understand creativity? Where does the word come from?