Generating ideas for business: BBDO Worldwide's Andrew Robertson on the secrets of creativity

Creativity & Innovation - The advertising industry distinguishes between innovation (improving existing solutions) and genuine creation (new products/services/processes), where the latter's impact is measured in orders of magnitude and requires creativity [3] - Many organizations struggle to unlock creativity due to bureaucracy and processes that prioritize predictability, operational excellence, and compliance [5] - Companies should engineer conditions to unlock employee creativity when needed, without changing their core business practices [6] - Generating a high volume of ideas, even bad ones, is crucial because the more ideas generated, the higher the likelihood of finding a good one [19][20] - Separating the idea generation phase from the judgment phase is important to encourage more people to contribute ideas [21][22] Risk Management & Decision Making - When evaluating ideas, companies should quantify the downside risk, which is often less severe than feared, rather than solely pursuing certainty, which leads to average results [10][11][12][13] - The Bud Light campaign is cited as an example of failing to properly quantify the potential downside [14][15] Employee Empowerment - Transformative ideas can come from employees at all levels, such as Amazon Prime originating from a junior software engineer [17] - Companies should aim to create an environment where employees can think and behave like children to foster creativity [25] Advertising & Marketing - The National Australia Bank (NAB) "big breakup" campaign, where NAB publicly broke up with other banks, was successful because the CEO quantified the downside risk and found it acceptable [7][8][9][10][11]