Why Business Creativity Is Your Survival Strategy (Not Just a Nice-to-Have)
The insights shared in this post are drawn from a recent webinar led by Lewis Evans, serial creative artist, author, business consultant and brand builder. Watch the full webinar here.
When Kodak invented the digital camera, they buried it to protect their film business. Blockbuster could have bought Netflix for $50 million but passed. These weren't failures of intelligence—they were failures of creativity.
Lewis Evans, a creative strategist who has worked with organizations ranging from the United Nations to major phone manufacturers, has witnessed firsthand how the absence of creative thinking destroys even the most powerful companies. "I worked with Kodak during their heyday," Evans recalls. "They had two huge warehouses, were developing incredible films, and felt completely invincible. But they weren't selling the dream—they were selling practicality. Fuji was creating films that made holiday snaps look lovely, while Kodak focused on technical accuracy."
In today's rapidly evolving business landscape, creativity isn't just about brainstorming sessions or marketing campaigns. It's the difference between thriving and becoming irrelevant. As Einstein observed, "Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere else."
The Hidden Cost of Ignoring Creativity Most organizations operate at a fraction of their potential. Research shows that 80% of productive work happens in just 20% of the time. Add to this that 80% of our brain operates subconsciously, and you realize we're effectively 96% switched off from our full capabilities. This isn't just theoretical. Consider these real-world casualties:
- Kodak developed superior film technology but lost focus on strategic creativity, eventually filing for bankruptcy
- Blockbuster maintained strong sales and management but lacked vision for digital streaming
- Borders gave Amazon their ebook business, a decision that ultimately destroyed them
The pattern is clear: companies that stop being creative start dying, even when everything else looks fine.
Understanding the Intuitive Compass Framework Evans introduces the Intuitive Compass, developed by French strategist Francis Cholle, which maps how individuals and organizations operate across four critical quadrants. This framework reveals where your strengths lie—and where fatal weaknesses might be hiding.
The Four Quadrants of Business Success Northwest (Strategy & Perspectives)
- Between play and reason
- Focused on reflection, options, and planning
- Where vision and strategic thinking live
Northeast (Management & Systems)
- Between reason and results
- Analytical, methodical, organized
- Your operational backbone
Southeast (Performance & Sales)
- Between intuition and results
- Commitment, clarity, determination
- Where deals close and goals are met
Southwest (Imagination & Growth)
- Between play and intuition
- Gut feelings and creative thinking
- The most neglected quadrant—and the source of all growth
"We tend to rely on the cortex more than the limbic system," Evans explains. "We rationalize everything, but imagination is a unique human ability—the capacity to envision something that previously didn't exist."
What Failure Looks Like Organizations typically fail when they're strong in only two quadrants while neglecting the others:
- High strategy + management, low creativity + sales: The United Nations model—lots of reports, little impact (Evans worked at the UN and observed this firsthand)
- High management + sales, low strategy + creativity: The Blockbuster pattern—selling hard but blind to change
- High creativity + strategy, low management + sales: Brilliant ideas that never become profitable businesses
- High creativity + sales, low strategy + management: Chaotic success that can't sustain itself
The goal? Square the circle— build strength across all four quadrants, like Apple, Google, and Virgin did in their prime.
Why We Resist Creativity (And How to Overcome It) Evans has encountered this resistance throughout his career. He shares a striking example: "I met a woman in Vancouver with ankylosing spondylitis, a severe form of arthritis. I told her there was a cure—I'd seen my friend Adam completely recover through metabolic therapy. But I couldn't break through her programming. She was more comfortable believing she'd spend her life in a wheelchair than considering something creative."
Creativity feels uncomfortable because it disrupts our established patterns. The moment you have a creative thought, you become a minority of one—and humans are wired for conformity.
The Programming That Holds Us Back From childhood through education and into corporate life, we're conditioned to:
- Follow established processes
- Seek validation from others
- Avoid mistakes and failures
- Trust collective thinking over individual insight
As Bertrand Russell noted: "The fundamental problem in the world today is that the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt."
The cocksure follow narratives and live in the past. The intelligent question, search, test, and create the future.
The S-Curve: Your Innovation Roadmap
Every business follows an S-curve pattern, Evans explains:
- Start with a creative idea that disrupts the market
- Build process and systems to scale and improve
- Reach the top where you risk becoming irrelevant
- Fall into the innovation gap if you don't start a new curve
The critical question every leader must ask: Where are we on the S-curve?
Companies that recognize when they're approaching the peak start innovating before it's too late. Those that don't become cautionary tales.
"Kodak did various things," Evans notes. "They invented the digital camera but buried it to protect their film industry. They also invented an alternative to Polaroid. By not maintaining their creative understanding, they risked everything and lost. That can happen to anyone."
Seven Practical Strategies to Unlock Business Creativity
1. Follow Your Gut, Not Just Data Intuition isn't mystical—it's your subconscious processing patterns your conscious mind hasn't recognized yet. When something feels right but doesn't make logical sense, that's often where breakthroughs hide.
2. Question Everything Relentlessly "I question everything," says Evans. "If I hadn't questioned everything, I would never have figured out the currency trading framework or recognized the problems with cell phones."
Don't accept "that's how it's done" as an answer. The best innovations come from asking:
- Does this serve our actual purpose?
- What assumptions are we making?
- What would this look like if we started from scratch?
3. Create White Space for Exploration Creativity can't happen under constant pressure. Build organizational rhythms that include:
- Dedicated time for exploration without immediate ROI expectations
- Permission to fail and iterate
- Space between consuming information and creating solutions
"You have to make time for creativity," Evans emphasizes. "Within that time, you have to give yourself time. The first ideas are usually rubbish—clichéd, stimulated by stuff you've seen before. You need time to get past those."
4. Cross-Pollinate Ideas The most creative solutions come from connecting unrelated concepts. Olympic cyclist Graeme Obree looked at washing machine bearings and revolutionized bicycle design, developing the "Superman position" now standard in velodrome racing.
Evans applied this principle to currency trading: "I looked at the environment in which currencies move and discovered they follow fractal patterns determined by the Fibonacci sequence. I developed what I call the Absolute Fibonacci Framework—currencies absolutely move to these patterns, and you can predict where they're going."
5. Work with a Beginner's Mind Expertise can blind you to new possibilities. Approach challenges as if you're seeing them for the first time, without assuming you know the solution.
"The way I work is with a beginner's mind," Evans explains. "It's not learning a technique. It's taking a white canvas and building something new every single time. Everything else has rules attached to it. Creativity is about discovery, not confirmation."
6. Embrace Productive Discomfort Growth lives outside your comfort zone. When you feel uncomfortable with a new idea or approach, that's often a signal you're onto something valuable.
"Most successful people don't follow a plan—they follow their curiosity," Evans notes. "Plans give you comfort. Curiosity gives you breakthroughs."
7. Know When to Move On Don't fall in love with yesterday's creative breakthrough. Stay alert to when an idea has run its course, and be willing to start fresh.
Real-World Creativity in Action The Currency Trading Innovation Evans developed an unconventional approach to currency trading by questioning the entire industry framework. While everyone analyzed charts with indicators and algorithms, he recognized that currencies move in fractal patterns.
"The industry accepted that 50% of your trades worked and 50% didn't," he explains. "But by understanding the Fibonacci framework, I could predict exactly where currencies would go. I was so successful that brokers started blocking me—like a casino banning someone who keeps winning."
The lesson? Creative thinking can reveal patterns that others miss entirely, but be prepared for resistance when you challenge established systems.
The Mobile Phone Protection Case In the 1990s, Evans took a contrarian view of emerging cell phone technology. "I discovered that every single major phone manufacturer had filed a patent for a device that would protect people from their own products. They all knew the phones were dangerous."
Using B2 stealth technology, he created a protective device and launched it at the Institute of Directors with national media coverage. "Someone at Vodafone complimented me on it but said, 'We can't admit there's a problem.' The industry had a powerful PR operation to flatten anything like this."
Sometimes creativity reveals uncomfortable truths that powerful interests don't want exposed.
The Art Career Pivot After decades in photography and marketing, Evans took a creative risk that changed his trajectory. "I did an oil painting of someone's dogs without knowing how to do an oil painting. I had no idea what I was doing, but it worked."
This led to meeting Stanley Kubrick's wife, Christiane, who provided access to world-class art facilities and serious artists. "That taking that risk of not knowing led to the start of my art career, which has fed my business more than anything else I've ever done."
The Creative Leadership Advantage Organizations with creative leadership experience:
- Constant dynamic evolution and adaptability
- Sensitivity to internal and external changes
- Flexibility and inspired teams
- Opportunities for efficiency improvements and cost savings
- Fresh marketing perspectives
- Discovery of new strategic directions
- Stronger brand loyalty
- Engaged employees operating at higher potential
The companies we remember—Apple, Google, Virgin—squared the circle by maintaining creativity across strategy, management, performance, and imagination.
"Steve Jobs wasn't thinking about computers," Evans points out. "He was thinking about thinking differently. While Bill Gates was selling the capacity of computers, Steve Jobs was selling the vision of what computers could do for you."
Common Creativity Killers to Avoid
1. Algorithm-Driven Thinking "Thanks to algorithm-driven confirmation bias, many people have become polarized and happy with turning off creative, critical, and independent thinking," warns Evans. "They're living in peer group bubbles of indoctrination rather than getting uncomfortable enough to investigate all possibilities." Use technology consciously as a tool, not as a replacement for creative thought.
2. Over-Planning Excessive planning creates the illusion of progress while avoiding the messy, uncertain work of actual creation. Start exploring instead of endlessly preparing.
3. Seeking Validation Before Acting Waiting for others to approve your creative ideas ensures you'll only pursue mediocre, safe concepts that everyone already understands.
"When you're creative, as soon as you have one single creative thought, you're in a minority of one," says Evans. "You have a job to do—introduce it, give it context—because most people prefer to sit back into processes."
4. Following Conventions The people we remember—from Richard Branson to Steve Jobs—didn't follow conventions. They celebrated their individuality and thought independently. Evans illustrates this with a personal example: "The education system I went through actively suppressed creativity. If you had an original idea, it had to be tested against what some famous person said in the past. If it didn't agree, you were wrong."
Balancing Heart and Mind Evans presents a compelling way to understand the Intuitive Compass diagonal: Bottom left (Southwest): Heart
Purpose, promise, mission, vision, values The creative, imaginative space
Top right (Northeast): Mind
Process, administration, management, delivery The operational, analytical space
"That line across the diagonal is really hard to cross for a lot of people," Evans observes. "A financial person talks a completely different language than a marketing person. Take Dragon's Den—you have people in suits demanding that creative people justify themselves, and the creative people can't figure out the language they need to convince the suits to give them money."
The solution? Organizations need both sides in harmony to be successful in business, life, and relationships.
The Urgent Need for Creative Thinking We face revolutionary challenges as a society—from resource scarcity to energy crises to the implications of surveillance technology. The only way forward is through creative problem-solving that questions established approaches.
"We face revolutionary challenges," Evans emphasizes. "Water—2.4 billion people lack safe drinking water, yet we're pouring vast amounts into cooling computers for AI. We have a global energy crisis driving poverty, yet AI is being pushed as the way ahead while consuming amounts of energy that could drive whole cities."
As conscious beings, we're either creating—building our future, power, and unique fulfillment—or consuming, giving ourselves away to whatever we're consuming.
Evans poses a critical question: "Conscious being enhances creativity. Unconscious doing kills it. So can you see the miracle in front of you—the miracle that you are? If not, maybe you need to slow things down a bit."
Your Next Steps Business creativity isn't just about generating ideas—it's about survival, growth, and staying relevant in rapidly changing markets. Whether you're an entrepreneur, executive, or consultant, developing your creative capacity and that of your organization is non-negotiable.
Lewis Evans has spent decades helping organizations unlock their creative potential through strategic consulting, working with everyone from UN agencies to major corporations to individual entrepreneurs. His unique background spanning photography, art, technology innovation, and business strategy provides a rare perspective on how creativity actually works in practice.
If you're ready to unlock creative potential in your business or team, consider working with Lewis Evans or other experienced creativity and innovation coaches on ExpertEase who can guide you through frameworks like the Intuitive Compass and help you square the circle in your organization.
Connect with Lewis Evans on ExpertEase to explore how strategic creativity can transform your business before you hit the innovation gap.