In a January 2025 podcast episode, Open AI CEO Sam Altman was requested what crucial talent can be within the age of AI. His reply was—in easiest phrases—the flexibility to ask inventive questions. Final summer time, Mustafa Suleyman, CEO of Microsoft AI, wrote that, for all of the worry about AI, he genuinely believes that “creativity will stay the true forex.” And in an August Business Insider feature, Autodesk CEO Andrew Anagnost stated that individuals might want to develop into “inventive orchestrators” in the event that they need to achieve an AI-driven office.
Should you hearken to sufficient AI specialists, you’ll inevitably hear the identical widespread chorus: Within the AI period, creativity is crucial asset an govt can have.
So the place are all of the inventive leaders?
In keeping with Nick Legislation, inventive technique and expertise lead for the inventive group Accenture Music, most individuals agree that creativity will probably be a core differentiator within the new method we work—however corporations aren’t assembly that actuality head-on.
Via a 12 months of analysis, his crew discovered that, whereas 81% of prime enterprise leaders say their group can generate inventive concepts, solely 16% stated they very continuously turned these concepts into initiatives that drove progress. That uncommon 16% noticed main outcomes from their efforts, although. In keeping with their analysis, these hyper-creative organizations outperformed their friends on income progress, worker engagement, and prospects.
The purpose of the analysis, which is introduced in Accenture Music’s new study “Utilized creativity—and methods to lead it,” is to know precisely how that golden 16% of corporations is changing inventive concepts into actual outcomes. It attracts on a quantitative survey of 1,725 executives throughout 14 international locations, in addition to 15 long-form interviews with leaders from corporations like Ikea, Lego, VSCO, and Rivian.
Accenture Music has boiled the outcomes all the way down to a three-part playbook that it’s publishing publicly—and, in the end, hoping to tailor to its purchasers.
Accenture Music shouldn’t be the primary firm to attempt to bundle a brand new organizational framework for a enterprise panorama in flux. Main adjustments in expertise are inclined to yield this sort of effort: Within the early aughts, for instance, the digital transformation ushered within the peak of “design thinking,” an idea popularized by the consulting agency Ideo that claimed to assist anybody, at any group, suppose like a designer.
As Quick Firm has reported, design considering is on its way out—and Legislation believes his crew’s analysis reveals it’s about time for “utilized creativity” to take its place.
What’s “utilized creativity?”
Design considering was as soon as the gold normal for corporations trying to undertake a framework that might assist them generate Apple-caliber inventive concepts. However the time period has fallen out of vogue at main firms, to the purpose the place job listings at the moment are far less likely to include the term. In keeping with Legislation, that’s as a result of design considering all the time had one deadly flaw, and AI’s shakeup of the office has introduced it into stark aid.
“The explanation that it stalled when it stalled was as a result of there was all the time a lacking hyperlink,” Legislation says. That hyperlink, he believes, was corporations’ propensity to think about creativity as a subjective high quality that anybody can have, as a substitute of a talent that requires coaching and expertise.
“It’s not dignifying the coaching and expertise that it takes to be inventive, and we by no means query that on the subject of technical capability,” Legislation says. “Nobody thinks that as a result of they’ve learn a number of articles on giant language fashions that they’ll go after which construct one, however someway folks suppose as a result of they see advertisements or as a result of they use merchandise that they’ll inform tales and create designs.”
The pseudo-expert phenomenon is accelerating within the age of AI, because the expertise lowers the barrier of entry for a lot of abilities that beforehand required years of particular coaching. Engineers, for instance, at the moment are able to whipping up visible property on platforms like Canva and Figma; conversely, designers can even use instruments like Claude and Cursor to generate code. Per a latest research referred to as AI in Design, a whopping 50% of designers at the moment are shipping code to production (an idea that, simply two years in the past, can be just about extraordinary).
David Droga, Accenture Music’s former CEO and present vice chair, says that because the technical taking part in area ranges, inventive experience will develop into way more essential to outline. “Everybody’s caught up within the energy of efficiencies and pace that AI is bringing to the market, however as quickly as everyone has entry to that, it turns into desk stakes,” Droga says, including, “It’s all the time going to return all the way down to the differentiation that manufacturers have to face for, and that’s going to be the inventive individuals who can reinterpret issues and see past what’s linear and logical.”
What to know concerning the “inventive penalty”
One of many first insights that Legislation’s crew gathered was that whereas most corporations perceive the significance of inventive considering within the AI period, many nonetheless view inventive concepts as inherently dangerous.
Through the report’s quantitative survey part, 83% of executives stated they acknowledge creativity as central for future success, each for themselves and for his or her enterprise. The identical quantity stated they imagine creativity will probably be probably the most essential management capabilities within the years forward. In the meantime, 63% reported that they know colleagues who’ve been held again for his or her inventive approaches, and 57% stated they themselves had been held again. General, 59% stated difficult the established order makes you “troublesome.”
In keeping with Ndidi Oteh, CEO of Accenture Music, the issue isn’t understanding creativity’s significance—it’s constructing an actual infrastructure round it. “I feel most CEOs wrestle not as a result of they’ve a creativity drawback, however they’ve an software drawback,” Oteh says.
Via each its quantitative and qualitative interviews, Legislation’s crew discovered that the businesses that efficiently utilized creativity had three key pillars in widespread: experience, dedication, and construction.
The three-part playbook to inventive management within the AI period
The primary pillar, experience, means establishing an govt management crew that’s constructed from inventive practitioners.
In an evaluation of 163 board members throughout the 5 largest corporations in hospitality, client electronics, and attire and vogue, Accenture Music discovered that solely 9% had inventive backgrounds, with careers centered on “shaping, elevating, or expressing the which means prospects see and really feel.” As Fast Company reported again in 2024, most corporations are inclined to elevate leaders from extra technical and operational backgrounds, even if a few of the most profitable leaders of all time—from Steve Jobs to Oprah Winfrey and Phil Knight—got here from inventive backgrounds.
The report discovered that when extra creatives had been integrated within the management construction, organizations had been extra more likely to “Have a buyer principle of thoughts that shapes all product and marketing growth” and “Actively mine a various array of sources for inventive inspiration—from prospects, to frontline workers, to on-line communities, academia, and traits reviews.”
At Nike, for instance, senior leaders are accountable for distilling complicated product and portfolio bets into clear, single-direction narratives that the entire crew can align round. At Lego, analysis is changed into bodily “play invites” whereby senior management work together with the product within the boardroom and resolve whether or not it matches with the corporate’s model objective.
The second pillar of utilized creativity, dedication, refers to how leaders be certain that their group doesn’t foster boundaries to creativity. Which may appear to be making a tradition of structured boards for workers to contribute concepts, or frequent pitch periods with inside and exterior contributors. Throughout Droga’s tenure as CEO of Accenture Music, he instituted a system the place anybody within the firm may e book a one-on-one assembly with senior management—together with himself—to pitch an thought or chat over work-in-progress.
The ultimate pillar is construction. “Construction provides the processes, determination rights, time horizons, and incentives that make creativity workable, and the contributions of inventive specialists rewarding, not dangerous,” the report reads. “At its core, construction is what strikes groups from asking questions to creating selections.”
Construction can take many varieties, but it surely primarily means having a transparent system in place for inventive brainstorming to be integrated in each a part of the enterprise. Ikea, for instance, has developed a system that lets innovation groups use AI-driven simulations to check concepts from end-to-end, which assist senior leaders develop larger confidence in inventive bets. The banking firm HSBC makes use of a mixture of gated funding and devoted experimentation time to ensure that inventive concepts aren’t stalled beneath compliance stress.
Accenture Music is making the pitch that, whether or not an organization makes a speciality of furnishings or monetary companies, this three-pronged method is a elementary place to start out. “What we’re arguing is that this inventive infrastructure is a common solution to flip concepts into concrete executions,” Legislation says. “It’s utilized creativity—it’s not inventive considering.”
How the key sauce driving Lego, Ikea, and Rivian comes collectively
The principle purpose of “Utilized creativity—and methods to lead it,” Droga says, is to indicate organizations that betting on inventive management is a robust technique, not a danger.
The report reveals that at organizations the place all three “utilized creativity” pillars had been in place, there have been a number of key ripple results. First, these corporations had been extra more likely to embrace inventive approaches in all places, fairly than solely in historically inventive silos like advertising and marketing and design—together with progress and technique, expertise, expertise administration, and even danger and compliance.
These organizations additionally confirmed clearer readiness for an AI-enabled office. They had been 37% extra more likely to strongly agree that investing in inventive management will outperform in an AI-enabled world, 27% extra more likely to strongly agree that leaders who can information groups by uncertainty and fast change will stand out, and 25% extra more likely to strongly agree they’re constructing a tradition the place human creativity and AI complement one another.
And that golden 16% of corporations that very continuously flip inventive concepts into progress initiatives see an entire host of advantages: They’re 53% extra more likely to considerably outperform their friends on income progress, 54% extra more likely to outperform on worker engagement, and 58% extra more likely to outperform on model fairness.
Finally, Droga says, he’s hoping that this report is simply the beginning.
“My dream state can be that we are able to really create one thing that adjustments the dynamics of who’s recruited and what’s taught in faculties,” he says. “No matter we are able to do to make creativity be seen as a invaluable useful resource and a necessity in companies—not only a nice-to-have.”
