On the cutting edge:
Sharp leaders drive business transformation with creativity
Business transformation that drives exponential growth may be the holy grail for any company.
But it’s easier said than done.
New research with business leaders, conducted by LIONS and Deloitte Digital finds that creativity can be the crucial ingredient for successful transformation; yet it's hard to embed in practice.
In this report, we outline the common approaches, strategies and tactics business leaders have used to unlock creativity within their organisations. Discover practical steps, inspiration and examples that you can apply to lead with creativity today.
What can the results of Creative Business Transformation look like?
Dove, Mastercard and Oatly achieved these results through business transformation fueled by creativity. They combined process and rigorous methods with new ideas, innovation, empathy, galvanising communication, and imagination.
LIONS and Deloitte Digital call this Creative Business Transformation.
What is the difference between business transformation and creative business transformation?
Business transformation uses innovation to address pre-existing inefficiencies, often through cost-cutting. Because of the presence of innovation, business transformation already contains elements of creativity, but only in part.
LIONS and Deloitte Digital consider creative business transformation a more holistic way of applying creativity. It layers all aspects of creativity - empathy, imagination and communication - on top of innovation to fundamentally change how an organisation grows.
The vital role of leadership
Creative Business Transformation involves the weight of the whole business, but it often starts with an individual who leads.
LIONS and Deloitte Digital set out to find out what makes leaders like this special. We interviewed executives with backgrounds in creativity who have gone on to take up roles outside traditional creative domains – both laterally and upwards. These leaders openly shared what it takes to transform with creativity.
We found that leaders of Creative Business Transformation typically propel exceptional growth through three practices:
1. Recognising triggers to apply creativity
2. Turning promise into value
3. Harnessing and directing new ways of working
This practice is not new. Creativity is essentially human, and humans have channeled it to solve the most complex and existential challenges since the beginning of humanity. But in business, this uniquely human strategy often lies fallow. Many business transformation programs rely on practices of linear problem-solving, historical data-driven ideation and incremental change processes to the exclusion of human ingenuity. LIONS and Deloitte Digital believe both are needed.
But before we look forward, let’s remind ourselves where we as a species have been.
Human creativity, the unsung hero
Figure 1. Early hand axe, North Bridge Acheulian, 790,000 years ago. (Source: Upper Galilee Museum of Prehistory, Isreal.)
When considering the most creative person in human history, there is one individual who rises above all others. A pioneer whose contributions set the stage for humankind to survive and flourish.
Their name is not known, their personality remains a mystery, and only generally can guesses be made about when they lived. What is known is that after approximately three million years of humanity, this person was the first to come up with a game-changing innovation. It was an invention so groundbreaking that it would see only minor modifications for another 1.6 million years. What was this hallmark of human ingenuity? The multipurpose hand axe with a sharp blade (see figure 1). 4
Today, leaders who harness this same human ingenuity are needed. Because if the solutions to our biggest challenges were linear and predictable, we would have found them by now. Speed is not progress without growth. The time for creativity in business is now. As the inventor of the hand axe might say, “chop-chop.”
Concept to action
Ancient Greeks and Romans first conceptualised creativity as the aesthetic value we assign to something (see figure 2). This has guided our modern perspectives and, through that lens, it could appear to us that the original hand axe was exclusively a functional tool. But this is a false dichotomy. Why are the practical benefits of function at odds with the aesthetic of a thing? The hand axe was both functional and aesthetically pleasing. 8
Creativity unites function and aesthetics together to transform everything. In business, this false dichotomy restricts our capacity to transform and it undermines outcomes and ROI. What if your next project achieved functional objectives, drove financial results, and inspired people with aesthetics and wonder? What if your next creative endeavour exceeded financial goals and re-engineered your ways of working to create compounding ROI?
If you can imagine this, you are envisioning Creative Business Transformation. LIONS and Deloitte Digital believe Creative Business Transformation is the way to solve complex business challenges and achieve results.
Figure 2. A brief history of human creativity.5,6,7
*6 million years ago to 10,000 years ago: Scientists believe the increasing speed of creativity during this period could be due to a combination of physiological (i.e., larger and better-organised brains) and social (i.e., increasing human interaction) factors that progressed over millions of years.
^Present: The speed of human creativity continues to increase dramatically and, with the ubiquity of AI/Gen AI, will only get faster in the future. AI can expedite the linear processes that make us more efficient, but it cannot replace the originality of the human mind.
The critical question is – how?
Methodology
To take a comprehensive view of how individuals use creativity to transform business, Deloitte Digital and LIONS interviewed 21 leaders with demonstrated abilities to successfully execute Creative Business Transformation from the highest levels of the organisation. We looked at CEOs, General Managers, Heads of Strategy, and other executives who leverage creativity as a strategic asset for business transformation. The individuals featured in this report have led Creative Business Transformation throughout their careers at the highest levels of the organisation.
These include:
15 in-depth interviews with executives currently leading the marketing/creative/brand function in their organisation who have been recognised for their creative and business leadership (e.g., Business Insider’s Most Innovative CMOs in the World, Forbes’ World’s Most Influential CMOs, CMO Hall of Fame inductees, Marketing Hall of Fame inductees, Ad Club Marketers of the Year, and Cannes Lions award winners)
6 in-depth interviews with executives currently at the president/CEO/strategy level in their organisation with marketing/creative backgrounds and who have been recognised for their creative and business leadership (e.g., Business Insider’s Most Innovative CMOs in the World, Forbes’ World’s Most Influential CMOs, CMO Hall of Fame inductees, Marketing Hall of Fame inductees, Ad Club Marketers of the Year, and Cannes Lions award winners)
Leaders interviewed:
Tuomas Yrjölä, President - Global Brand, Innovation and Sustainability, Essity
Raja Rajamannar, Chief Marketing and Communications Officer, Mastercard
Jane Wakely, Chief Consumer & Marketing Officer, PepsiCo
Pierre Calliau, Chief Marketing Officer, KFC France
Fernando Machado, Brand Advisor and Board Member
Alessandro Manfredi, Chief Marketing Officer, Dove
Kathleen Hall, Chief Brand Officer, Microsoft
Kevin Miller, Chief Marketing Officer, Fresh Market
Aline Santos, Chief Brand Officer and Chief Equity Diversity & Inclusion Office, Unilever
Sean Tresvant, CEO, Taco Bell
Douglas Martin, Chief Brand & Disruptive Growth Officer, General Mills
John Schoolcraft, Global Chief Creative Officer, Oatly
Julia Goldin, Chief Marketing Officer / Executive Vice President, LEGO Group
Antonio Lucio, EVP and Chief Marketing and Corporate Affairs Officer, HP Inc
Sofia Colucci, Chief Marketing Officer, Molson Coors
Martin Renaud, EVP & Chief Marketing and Sales Officer, Mondelez
Ann Mukherjee, Former CEO, Pernod Ricard North America
Bennie Johnson, CEO, American Marketing Association
Surabhi Varshney, Vice President, Global Corporate Strategy, Celanese
Esi Eggleston Bracey, Chief Growth and Marketing Officer, Unilever
Anton Vincent, President, Mars Wrigley North America & Global Ice Cream, Mars
This report is co-authored by LIONS and Deloitte Digital:
From LIONS:
Spencer Fox, SVP, LIONS Advisory
Annie Smith, Head of Content, LIONS Advisory
Georgia Scobie, Senior Content Manager, LIONS Advisory
From Deloitte Digital:
Stacy Kemp, Principal and Executive Lead of Deloitte's CMO Program
Andy Sandoz, Partner and Global Chief Creative Officer
Rory McCallum, Research Manager – CMO Program