Friends,
I hope that all is well with you and yours, and that this e-mail finds you on a boat with shoddy connection, in the tropics, three months after I sent it.
In today’s guest columnist newsletter, Mark Rukman discusses why creativity is the new literacy, why it matters so much to organizations, and how brands might capitalize on its emergent importance.
Now accepting keynotes for 24Q4-25Q2
Every year for the last decade or so, I have created three main presentation decks. For 2025, however, I have (for the first time) added a fourth due to popular demand. They are:
What to Do When You Don’t Know What to Do: How to turn change into a competitive advantage. (Based on the new book by the same name.)
Leadership in a Time of Change: How to steer an organization through a sea of uncertainty. (Executive audiences only.)
Resilient Retail: How to build a profitable retail business in the modern marketplace. (Based on the 2025 follow-up to the highly praised 2022 white paper The Gravity of e-Commerce.)
Artificial Intelligence Beyond the Hype: How to understand the narratives, risks, opportunities, and best uses of a new technology.
If you want to book me for your event, corporate speaking slot, or workshop, merely send me an email. To make sure I am available, please do so at your earliest convenience; my availability is limited and the schedule tends to fill up fast. More information may be found here.
A couple of updates before we go-go
I can now officially reveal that James and I have begun negotiations with WARC for our next white paper on retail and broader digital commerce. If all goes well, it should come out early autumn 2025 after the customary Cannes keynotes next summer.
Without giving anything away, it will be a more ambitious undertaking than our previous (Gravity of e-Commerce) paper. Hopefully, it will also be even more successful.
After a conversation the other day, Steve and I decided that we will launch a joint talk on the role of human creativity in complexity, particularly against the backdrop of gen-AI. If you work at an advertising agency, you might want to get in touch; we will give you everything you need to justify your existence for clients that are suddenly unwilling to pay.
Now onto something slightly less cheerful. It is equal parts concerning and depressing to hear so many highly talented individuals, who could do absolutely amazing work, admit that they have been reduced into yes men (or women) for whoever is providing the highest salary - a result of corporate structures that suffocate employee will so long as it does not conform to the plan set by those farthest from the job.
It begs the rarely asked question whether the supposed war for talent is not, shall we say, “co-created” by a lack of managerial talent. The most basic requirement of anyone in a leading position ought to be that they can enable their employees to be their best selves. Unfortunately, it is becoming clear that many are unable to fulfill it. So has long been the case, of course, but it goes to show how damaging the old management paradigm (for we are still in it) remains.
Last, a couple of quick thoughts on recent financial market developments:
The Fed at long last decided to cut the US interest rates by 0.5 percentage points in the most drawn out “will they, won’t they” since Ross and Rachel finally got back together. This ought to improve the chances of a so-called soft landing.
The rate cuts might stimulate investments (the lower the rate, the cheaper it is to acquire capital), not least in AI infrastructure, from private equities and start-ups. The largest companies (i.e., “the magnificent seven”) have so much cash on hand that they are less affected.
I would be careful not to assume that all is suddenly well on the Western front, however. US consumer credit debt continues to increase and around 9% of credit card balances turned delinquent over the last year, the highest rate in over a decade. Eventually, something will have to give.
Moving on.
JP’s note: today’s guest writer is the one and only Mark Rukman. As so often is the case in these modern times, we ran into one another on LinkedIn a year or so ago and soon began to exchange ideas. Mark is immensely talented, as demonstrated by a background featuring plenty of executive roles, but also exceptionally well-read, which leads to very interesting conversations. Today, he works for Meta, though I need to point out that all opinions expressed are his own, not of his employer.
Creativity: the new literacy?
“To live is to have problems, to solve them is to grow creatively”
JP Guilford
Creativity, unbeknownst to many, used to be taboo. For a long time it was either the domain of the divine, or the rare gift of genius. No longer is that the case.
Our attitudes towards creativity started to change relatively recently, in the mid-20th century. Pioneers like JP Guilford and others looked at how creativity can be measured and harnessed for industry and defense at the height of the Cold War. The PC and internet democratized creativity further over the last 40+ years.
Today, creativity is being heralded as an engine of economic growth, but we are still in the early stages of creativity's impact on broader society. In many ways, creativity can therefore be said to be where literacy was in the early days of the New World, post printing press.
Literacy drove profound societal change
Literacy is taken for granted today in much of the world. The global average is almost 90%. By contrast, in the early days of the New World (1600s), literacy was below 30%. That the world has changed as a result is undeniable, but the impact of literacy goes far beyond what most consider. For one, it gave rise to modern personality traits such as optimism and awareness, according to Harvey J. Graff’s The Legacies of Literacy: Continuities and Contradictions in Western Culture and Society (Interdisciplinary Studies in History)
We can start to think of the scale of creativity’s impact in the terms below as we move from one historical era to another.: