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June 23, 2011
Empowering a Culture of Creativity
About Us‣ Digital agency‣ Based in Brooklyn
‣ 50 People‣ Two dogs
‣ In our second decade
Clients
HOW DO WEEMPOWER CREATIVITY?
BETA
We’re only 1% done.
BETA
“ —Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook
Stop chasing perfection.
BETA
Stop chasing perfection.Start listening.
BETA
Stop chasing perfection.Start listening.Continue optimizing.
BETA
BETA
It starts with three questions‣ What’s our purpose?‣ What are our values?
‣ How do we want to work?
Purpose can shi over time… but it has to be clearly understood.
EXISTING NEEDS EMERGING PRACTICE
EXISTING NEEDS EMERGING PRACTICE
EXISTING NEEDS EMERGING PRACTICE
EXISTING NEEDS EMERGING PRACTICE
Help businesses communicate
digitally
EXISTING NEEDS EMERGING PRACTICE
Help businesses communicate
digitally
Create deeply engaging
experiences
EXISTING NEEDS EMERGING PRACTICE
Help businesses communicate
digitally
Create deeply engaging
experiences
Make useful stuff
EXISTING NEEDS EMERGING PRACTICE
Help businesses communicate
digitally
Create deeply engaging
experiences
Make useful stuff
Make stuff useful
EXISTING NEEDS EMERGING PRACTICE
Help businesses communicate
digitally
Create deeply engaging
experiences
Make useful stuff
Make stuff useful
Inent new products
EXISTING NEEDS EMERGING PRACTICE
Help businesses communicate
digitally
Create deeply engaging
experiences
Make useful stuff
Make stuff useful
Inent new products
Sole business problems
What’s our purpose today?
‣ Help businesses communicate digitally‣ Create deeply engaging experiences
‣ Make useful stuff‣ Make stuff useful
‣ Invent new products
‣ Solve business problems
Values must remain concrete.
Our values‣ Have fun because fun leads to quality‣ Take care of each other
‣ Be brutally honest‣ ...but don’t be a brute
‣ Always take clients beyond their comfort zone
‣ Flex every single muscle in the company‣ Everyone has a voice and everyone participates
‣ Everything we do must be exceptional
We have to rethink what work means.
STRUCTURE APPROACH
STRUCTURE APPROACH
CulturePeopleSpace
OUR CULTURE
Collaboration Creativity
CaringCommitment
What does work sound like without collaboration?
What does work sound like without collaboration?
What is creativity?(hint: it’s not art)
Our people‣ Everyone participates‣ Everyone shares
‣ Everyone has a depth of expertise and a breadth of knowledge‣ We don’t hire jerks no matter how talented
‣ We keep relationships personal
‣ We want people to bring their personality to work‣ ...and we take care of each other
Our Space
STRUCTURE APPROACH
CulturePeopleSpace
STRUCTURE APPROACH
CulturePeopleSpace
FrameworksIteration
Tinkering
“ Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.—Attributed to Albert Einstein but first mention was made by Rita Mae Brown, 1983
‣ Work as a multi-disciplinary team‣ Produce exceptional work
‣ Be profitable‣ Take care of each other
➡ The rest is up to you
Teams are guided by three principles
‣ What are you trying to accomplish?‣ What are your business goals?
‣ What are we trying to do here?‣ How are we going to do it?
uestions are guided by zero presumptions
QUESTIONS WE ASK OURSELVES
QUESTIONS WE ASK CLIENTS
Develop notions quickly and act on them
LISTENTHINK
DESIGN
ITERATEAMPLIFY
“ Creativity is just connecting things.
When you ask a creative person how they did something, they may feel
a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It
seemed obvious to them after awhile. That’s because they were able to
connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things. And the
reason they were able to do that was that they’ve had more
experiences or have thought more about their experiences than other
people have.
Unfortunately, that’s too rare a commodity. A lot of people in our
industry haven’t had very diverse experiences. They don’t have enough
dots to connect, and they end up with very linear solutions, without a
broad perspective on the problem. The broader one’s understanding of
the human experience, the better designs we will have.
—Steve Jobs
EMBRACE TINKERING
How we encourage tinkering
‣ We’ve created a culture of sharing ‣ We encourage people to explore
‣ We look outside for behaviors we can borrow‣ We provide budgets to teams for the explicit purpose
WHAT’S NEXT?
SOLVING BUSINESS PROBLEMS
We solve business problems
(from a natively digital perspective).
A cheat sheet for empowering creativityDefine your purpose
Agree on your values
Develop a culture that rewards sharing and collaboration
Allow everything to be questioned
Embrace frameworks over processes
Create an environment that’s open and empowering
Look for efficiency only where it’s needed
Let people explore and discover – encourage tinkering
Don’t penalize well thought out decisions that don’t work
Don’t confuse creativity with art
...and have fun.
