Day 1 - Christian Lindholm at TED Global 2010, Oxford UK

I am excited to be working at the TED Global conference taking place in Oxford, England on behalf of Fjord this year. TED is a real case study for what can happen when you bring powerful minds into the same room as each other to focus on creative outcomes, and indeed, much of the talk at TED this year has been about how patterns of successful creativity happen through collaboration. Several of the talks have already been underpinned by the idea that creativity and innovation is amplified and more readily achievable as a product of group action.

The first to really touch upon this theme was the American popular science writer Stephen Johnson, author of the book ‘Everything Bad is Good For You: How Today’s Popular Culture is Actually Making Us Smarter,’ and the upcoming ‘Where Do Good Ideas Come From?’ I first met Stephen during Nokia’s LifeBlog project, and he was as cogent and engaging as ever in his account of how creativity works. Stephen argued that in order for good ideas to be realised, it was crucial that they happened as a product of collective action.

Stephen’s latest book is about studying innovative environments and asking where good ideas come from. His conclusion was that the big breakthroughs typically occur in lab meetings, where ideas are shared and debated amongst a group of people. He called these gatherings liquid forums.

At Fjord, we have already been embracing the power of collaborative innovation for a while now. Our Fjord Rumble workshops are two day sessions, where clients and designers work on a particular topic or product area. We set 2-3 people short tasks, with the brief of generating idea nuggets around concepts. Although there is always more that we can do to embrace the idea of a liquid forum, the Fjord Rumble shows our belief in the power of collaborative innovation.

In addition to this, Fjord also has creatives working in pairs on more general tasks. This is a recognition of the creative power of duos. An example which we often talk about as a case study at Fjord is the 2009 documentary film The September Issue, which was a powerful demonstration of the creative power of the relationship between Vogue editor Anna Wintour and Creative Director Grace Coddington. Wintour’s knowledge of the big picture, and the fashion ‘rules’ was enhanced by Grace’s lightness of touch and attention to detail.

One of the key issues in innovation at the moment is how you scale innovation across large organisations, and retain this collaborative element. Apple is perhaps leading the way in this. Steve Jobs is a strong leader, but he is not a dictator. A dictatorship is characterised by a person holding their position by force in some way, but Steve Jobs does not work like that. Apple works, as a meritocratic dictatorship. He has an authority granted to him by his own brilliance, and has a core team around him, who provide a body of innovation.

In a seminal article for the Harvard Business Review entitled ‘How Pixar Fosters Collective Creativity’, Ed Catmull, the President of Walt Disney Animation Studios and Pixar Animation studios examines the processes at work at Pixar, and argues that, far from being a ‘mysterious solo act,’ creativity involves a large number of people working on a multidisciplinary basis to solve problems.

Pixar’s development department, unlike at many movie studios, does not aim to generate ideas for films, but rather find people who can work together to generate great ideas, and to support these people. Pixar has also assembled a ‘brain trust’ of eight directors who can be convened to provide support when a creative team feels that they need support. This is an example of allowing collective innovation to flourish, and then bringing in a collective to support that process when required.

Through all of this, we see a pattern of innovation being reinforced by creativity. I was glad to see that we employ some of these processes at Fjord, and I’m sure that there is more that we can learn as we unpack the lessons from TED Global 2010.