Draftfcb CEO and President Laurence Boschetto welcomed on-stage best-selling author Jonah Lehrer and Matthew Willcox, director of strategic planning at Draftfcb San Francisco and executive director of the Institute of Decision Making, which applies fields such as behavioral economics and neuroscience to marketing communications.
Lehrer is the author of “How we decide” and the soon to-be-published “Imagine: How Creativity Works.”
He is a contributing editor at Wired Magazine and National Public Radio’s Radio Lab.
He has also written for The New Yorker, Nature, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.
The 45-minute long seminar saw Lehrer provide fascinating scientific background into how the human brain functions creatively including how to encourage ‘moments of insight’, why brainstorming doesn’t work and the ideal combination of ‘insiders and outsiders’ to make up a creative team.
Lehrer’s content was complemented by Willcox from a creative standpoint, which included the screening of Draftfcb’s award-winning campaign for EA Games ‘Your Mom Hates Deadspace 2’ as a humorous example of how criticism is both powerful and necessary in achieving results.
Highlights from the seminar included insights on creativity: Two defining features of a moment of insight — it appears out of the blue and you know it’s right to creative insights are preceded by alpha waves which are triggered by moments of relaxation; Harness the power in criticism to reach success sooner; Discussion of papers written by Benjamin Jones, a professor at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, and his findings that collaboration is more effective than individual genius.
It provided a look at Brian Uzzi’s work in understanding the relationship between casting of the creative team behind musicals and the success of those musicals.
Uzzi is the Richard L. Thomas Distinguished chair in leadership at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management.
