20 Lessons of Creativity For 2015
The Editor in Chief of Fast Company
shares lessons from this year's Most Creative People in Business.
What if you could develop a cure for
Ebola? Or a nuclear power system without environmental risk? How about an app
that kids love playing with—and, in the process, teaches them how to code? Or a
game that executives love to play—and teaches them about cybersecurity?
Wouldn’t it be great if the United Nations used cutting-edge technology to feed
starving children? Or if the most urgent societal issues of our day—race,
class, gender, age—were being addressed with thoughtfulness, humor, and impact?
All of these wishes are coming true,
right now. And they’re only a small slice of what this year’s 100 Most Creative
People in Business are achieving.
I love Fast Company’s Most
Creative People franchise. I just love it. With each annual installment, we
identify 100 all-new honorees, people who have not been profiled previously in
the magazine. When our reporting begins, it’s a daunting mission. After all,
the existing honorees in our Most Creative People 1000 community are
ineligible. And yet as our team digs in, inspiration quickly follows. This
year, the depth and breadth of creativity we discovered in our business
landscape has been remarkable.
In recognition of Fast Company’s
20th anniversary, here are 20 lessons of creativity inspired by our honorees.
This year’s 100 honorees include 53
women, 43 people of color, and business sectors ranging from advertising to
animal welfare.
When the Ebola crisis hit, it was an
unassuming, little-known professor in Arizona, Charles Arntzen, who had a
potential cure—courtesy of plant-based technology. (That breakthrough earned
him the No. 1 spot on our list.)
Amy Poehler’s impact has spread from
TV to books to streaming video—and from acting to producing—thanks to her
willingness to break form and take risks. (That attitude also earned her a spot
on our cover and a No. 8 ranking.)
Jason Jones (No. 72) helped make
Halo a megahit for Microsoft, but he wasn’t satisfied just to milk the
franchise. So he turned his team toward a new idea, and the result—Destiny—is
the most successful new video game ever. 5. Fear can’t trump imagination. Vian
Dakhil (No. 41) has been targeted by ISIS and injured in a helicopter accident.
And yet the Iraqi parliamentarian still taps into YouTube and mobile technology
to generate global support for the Yazidis, who have been threatened with
annihilation.
Tracy Young (No. 31) was exasperated
by the inefficiency of traditional blueprints, so she created PlanGrid to solve
the problem; Martha Murray (No. 15) decided ACL surgery was unnecessarily
debilitating and came up with a new tissue-scaffolding approach that could ease
recovery for millions. 7. The bigger you are, the faster you can move. Nike was
iced out of World Cup sponsorship by Adidas, but that didn’t prevent Greg
Hoffman (No. 12) from building the "swoosh" company’s most expansive
cross-media effort ever around the tournament—and garnering 400 million views.
GE’s industrial scale hasn’t stopped Linda Boff (No. 22) from using humor to deliver
a larger cultural message about science. 8. Creativity turns bad into good.
When Zoe Quinn (No. 17) found herself the target of Gamergate online abuse, she
and boyfriend Alex Lifschitz (No. 18) launched Crash Override to aid other
victims. When Azzedine Downes (No. 33) of the International Fund for Animal
Welfare saw endangered animals under attack by poachers, he tapped into drones
and other technology to pinpoint perpetrators. 9. Creativity happens in 3-D.
Caitlin Oswald (No. 30) helped create Pratt & Whitney’s next-generation jet
engines by modeling with 3-D printers. Harvard professor Jennifer Lewis (No.
27) developed a machine that prints out 3-D electronics.
Designer Thomas Heatherwick (No. 24)
is dreaming up plans for Google’s new headquarters. But he pooh-poohs
right-brain "inspiration" as an idea generator, citing left-brain
logic and problem solving as his guides.
Christine Leonard (No. 48) has drawn
support from both the right-wing Koch brothers and the liberal Center for
American Progress in building the criminal-reform-oriented Coalition for Public
Safety.
An art collective called K-Hole
(Nos. 49–51) started satirizing business trends as social commentary; now
they’ve got a consulting practice for large companies.
Kelly Sue DeConnick (No. 64) has
made a female crime fighter into a hero for Marvel.
Leslie Dewan (No. 6) has developed a
molten-salt-based process that eliminates environmental challenges associated
with nuclear power plants.
Jocelyn Leavitt (No. 86) of
Hopscotch has spawned more than 1 million kid-coded games. Craig Stronberg (No.
83) of PwC built a game that allows execs to safely experience cyberattacks.
16. Bureaucracy is under assault. Veronica Juarez (No. 16) is making Lyft’s car
sharing acceptable to municipalities, while White House CTO Megan Smith (No.
45) and Hillary Hartley (No. 46) of 18F are remaking the federal government’s
approach to tech.
Dao Nguyen (No. 3) has relied on
virtual data to vault BuzzFeed into the top echelon of news media, while Danilo
Leao (No. 88) is using on-the-ground info to help cattle farmers in Brazil.
Larry Wilmore (No. 44) is elevating
discussions of race on Comedy Central, Janet Mock (No. 57) is furthering
transgender dialogue, and Mike Judge (No. 75) is dismantling hero worship of
the tech elite in Silicon Valley.
Jerome Jarre (No. 58) has become a
Vine star at age 25. Marques Brownlee (No. 28) is a popular YouTube tech
reviewer at 21. Isabella Rose Taylor (No. 77) has a line of clothing at luxury
retailer Nordstrom—and she’s only 14.
Whether you’re listening to the
music of Run the Jewels (Nos. 81–82), lost in a game of Minecraft (Jens
Bergensten, No. 5), or enraptured by Vosges chocolates (Katrina Markoff, No.
85), you’re benefiting from a creative vision brought to life. Wherever there’s
a problem to be solved, there are creative people imagining a solution.
—By Robert Safian
http://www.fastcompany.com/3045672/20-lessons-of-creativity-for-2015
No comments:
Post a Comment