The Creative Shift: How to Power Up Your Organization by Making Space for New Ideas

A brass-tacks guide to delivering and successfully executing one groundbreaking idea after another, without interrupting business as usual

“An essential book.” —Frederick W. Smith, founder and executive chairman, FedEx Corporation

A USA Today Bestseller

How can organizations prioritize innovation and execute new ideas, while also continuing to do what they do best? We want Mercedes to be careful, methodical, and risk-averse when testing their vehicles. But we also want them to be able to remove their blinders when envisioning next-generation car technology. How can a company strike a balance between operation and exploration?

Andrew Robertson, the CEO of BBDO, an advertising firm considered to be the gold standard of creativity, knows that it is critical to conduct business as usual while pursuing business unusual. Most companies focus on the former, while giving lip service to the latter. In The Creative Shift, Robertson offers the tools to help individuals, teams, and companies switch into creative mode, seamlessly and effectively, including:
 

• Developing a common language to convey when a creative shift is needed;
• Generating an array of possibilities and applying them onto your problem until something clicks;
• Managing unhelpful personality traits;
• Properly incentivizing and protecting creative contributions;
• Getting out into the world to “forage” for ideas.

This book is for every manager, leader, and entrepreneur who needs to rally a team, an organization, or themselves to think big and keep the flame of invention burning brightly while under suffocating pressure—which happens to be when you need creative problem-solving the most.

Andrew Robertson is Chairman of BBDO Worldwide. He served as President and CEO for two decades, during which BBDO was recognized as the world’s most effective network five times, and as Network of the decade at Cannes Lions. Inducted into the Advertising Hall of Fame in 2022, he has taught guest classes at NYU, UNC, and Wake Forest University, appeared on CNBC, Bloomberg News, and The Today Show, and is a Chairman Emeritus of The Advertising Council.