Ask most business leaders whether creativity matters and they’ll say yes without hesitation. Ask whether their organisation is actually built for it beyond their creative teams — and the answer isn’t as clear cut.
Part of the problem is how creativity gets defined. It’s easy to conflate creative thinking with creative expression, but they’re not the same thing. Being bad at art doesn’t mean you can’t be a great creative thinker. Creative thinking is about finding new ways to look at challenges and solve problems. It’s not aesthetic — it’s fundamental.
Yet for most businesses, creativity is still treated as a departmental function rather than a core business capability — something owned by marketing or design. That was always a limiting approach. As AI absorbs more execution work, it’s becoming a strategic disadvantage.
More critically, businesses lose the early warning signs that creative thinking provides: the ability to spot shifting consumer behaviour and untapped opportunities before they become obvious to everyone else.
When creativity is confined to creative roles, it creates bottlenecks. Ideas stagnate, campaigns start to look the same, and opportunities to innovate across other functions — commercial, operations, research — get missed.
External pressure is only increasing. Research from Anthropic suggests a significant share of marketing tasks could be automated. As execution gets handed to machines, human creativity becomes all the more valuable.
“As execution gets handed to machines, human creativity becomes all the more valuable”
This shift is already showing up in the job market. The World Economic Forum has identified creative thinking as one of the fastest-rising skills globally — on par with AI literacy by 2030. Gartner has made a similar call, positioning creativity as a defining capability for organisations that will outperform — not just as a marketing skill, but as a core business one.
We know the demand for creativity is accelerating. At the same time, the conditions for it are eroding.
With unemployment rising and job mobility falling, people are becoming more cautious. They’re not staying in roles because they’re satisfied — they’re staying because they’re uncertain. In that environment, taking creative risks can feel like professional exposure.
When suggesting a different approach invites scrutiny you’d rather avoid, you don’t suggest it.
What leaders can do differently
- 1. Treat creativity as infrastructure, not a department
Cross-functional creative roles, embedded researchers and innovation leads outside traditional hierarchies aren’t luxuries — they’re enablers of better performance. Spotify offers a useful model, with cultural and editorial thinking spanning product, data and marketing, allowing the business to move in step with culture rather than react to it. - 2. Protect creative time collectively
Giving people discretionary creative time rarely works because cultural pressure fills it. A collective approach is more effective: a shared protected day, a studio-wide initiative, a structured block of time that makes stepping back from day-to-day delivery feel normal rather than exceptional. When it’s mandated for everyone, it carries no guilt. - 3. Build in self-direction
Dedicating a meaningful proportion of the working week to self-directed development — experimentation, side projects, learning free from the pressure of delivery — changes the quality of thinking. The commitment matters more than the ratio. Netflix reinforces this through its culture principles, which prioritises innovation and independent thinking. - 4. Make it safe to challenge the brief
This is the hardest and most important shift. Creativity doesn’t thrive in fear. If the culture signals that questioning the brief is overstepping, people won’t question the brief. Pixar understood this early with its Braintrust model, deliberately removing hierarchy from feedback and giving anyone in the room the authority to challenge an idea. Without that kind of psychological safety, creativity stalls.
Creativity for commercial impact
The commercial case for creativity is no longer “soft.” Businesses that embed creative thinking across every function are better equipped to adapt, collaborate, and solve problems that logic alone can’t fix. They don’t just produce work that cuts through—they build a culture that is resistant to stagnation.
This approach is also a powerful tool for retention. In a climate defined by caution, there is a massive competitive advantage in keeping people who are driven by ambition rather than a lack of better options.
The irony is hard to miss: at the moment companies most need bold thinking, the environment is encouraging them to play it safe. Breaking that cycle requires more than a mission statement; it requires treating creativity as a core capability that everyone shares, rather than a job title for a few.
Ask most business leaders whether creativity matters and they’ll say yes without hesitation. Ask whether their organisation is actually built for it beyond their creative teams — and the answer isn’t as clear cut.
Part of the problem is how creativity gets defined. It’s easy to conflate creative thinking with creative expression, but they’re not the same thing. Being bad at art doesn’t mean you can’t be a great creative thinker. Creative thinking is about finding new ways to look at challenges and solve problems. It’s not aesthetic — it’s fundamental.
Yet for most businesses, creativity is still treated as a departmental function rather than a core business capability — something owned by marketing or design. That was always a limiting approach. As AI absorbs more execution work, it’s becoming a strategic disadvantage.
