John Jay, ECD of our Portland office, visited yesterday and spoke to the agency. It was an inspiring talk, covering many aspects of what’s going on in culture just now and the challenges and opportunities Wieden + Kennedy faces for the future. Amongst the many thought-provoking bits and peices he shared with us was the following list of notions of innovation from Google. I thought these were interesting and, though we’re in a very different space from Google, it’s easy to see how we can usefully apply these to what we do.
9 notions of innovation
- Ideas come from everywhere. (Google expects you to innovate.)
- Share everything you can. (Every idea accessible to everyone.)
- You’re brilliant. We’re hiring. (Google favours intelligence over experience.)
- License to pursue dreams. (Employees get a ‘free’ day a week to pursue self-set projects.)
- Innovation, not instant perfection. (Google launches early and often with small beta tests.)
- Don’t politic, use data. (Use of ‘I like’ discouraged.)
- Creativity loves restraint. (Give people a vision.)
- Worry about usage and users, not money. (Provide something simple to use, easy to love. Money will come.)
- Don’t kill projects, morph them. (There’s always a kernel of something good that can be salvaged.)
If you accept that comms agencies have to innovate constantly or die (because new ideas and new ways to gain competitive advantage are what we get paid for by our clients) then these seem like good principles to adopt. I love the suggestion that everyone is expected to innovate. We sometimes make the mistake of thinking that creativity resides solely in the creative department.
And I like number 5. We’re sometimes so obsessed with executional excellence that we endlessly defer completion. We could sometimes do with a ‘ready, fire, aim’ approach to avoid ‘great but late’.
Several of the others seem to reflect how we already operate – especially 2 and 8. And all of them are worth considering.
