John Maeda

Art for Innovators 101

So many organizations and companies are downtrodden in this economy — they are dead inside — because they have lost the ability to imagine. They need something more vibrant, more emotional and more connected to being human. That’s what I think art brings.

If returning BIF storyteller John Maeda could design a new curriculum for innovators, he would start with a pencil, paper and sketchpad.  These supplies would not be for taking notes or brainstorming ideas. Rather, Maeda would use art as a way to open the mind, stimulate creativity and cultivate truly radical ideas. He calls it “art thinking.” Maeda sees the concept—which he admits is still a nascent thought in his own mind—as a direct result of the experience he’s having as president of the Rhode Island School of Design, a place world renown for nurturing artists and designers of all stripes.

For Maeda, art thinking is a necessary counterpart to ideas of “design thinking,” an approach that has gained popularity as a potent way of helping organizations think more deeply about how people use products, experience services and interact with environments. 

 “If you think of design as a way of making ideas, I think art is the ideas itself. Art thinking is everything that design thinking isn’t,” he says. “If you think of an image, you have the image and then you have everything that sits in the white space. Art is the part that isn’t defined yet and I find that perspective quite exciting.”

When pressed to explain how art can help innovators solve real world problems, Maeda doesn’t flinch. “So many organizations and companies are downtrodden in this economy -- they are dead inside -- because they have lost the ability to imagine. They need something more vibrant, more emotional, and more connected to being human. That’s what I think art brings.”

Maeda is firm in his definition as art, and sees a distinction between creative doodling and the discipline of art.  “If we teach organizations art, we must teach them that art is made through an arduous process of practice and skills-based approaches, and how art is made through a process of intense, passionate and personal critique,” he says. “This different from the limited view of art as something ‘loosely goosey’ to make, it’s a disciplined art.”

Maeda’s shift to art thinking (instead of design thinking) is closely linked to his belief that American culture and our approach to innovation has lost its appreciation for thinking for thinking’s sake. “Design thinking is a process rationalized ideation and that’s a good thing. But making ideas for the sake of making ideas is also valid. The instinct of making things for no particular rational reason, I think, is pure, raw innovation. We need to bring back radical thought-breaking approaches and that means thinking how artists think.  Artists are about as radical as it gets.”

Yet what sources exist for people to hear about “radical thought-breaking approaches?” Maeda says the Business Innovation Factory is a good start. "BIF's annual summit,” he says, “provides creative leaders from various industries and backgrounds the opportunity to be inspired and energized, and to apply ideas and new ways of thinking critically to their own organization or project."

In the end though, can art help innovators truly innovate?  Maeda recently put this thinking to the test and was encouraged by the results.  In the summer of 2009, he was invited to lead a workshop on creative leadership in Geneva for the World Economic Forum Fellows program. 

Maeda pulled no punched with his students, an elite group of young talent from across the globe.  “For the first two hours I had them drawing pictures of their cell phones. At the end of that session many were wondering ‘who brought in the coloring professor.’ But, by the end of the first day, they were troubled by how hard it was to draw and think and compose.  And many had begun to wonder how they could use this new discipline in their work,” he recounts. With the right context and coaching, says Maeda, the group was hooked. “By the end of day two, they were all on board.  Many were even inspired to consider expanding their studies to learn more.”

When asked to distill down to the basic principles of art thinking, Maeda thinks it starts with reacquainting ourselves with an “almost child-like fascination with the world.” Yet, he is quick to note that the idea is still brewing. “It took [IDEO founder and design thinking champion] David Kelly ten years to get design thinking down to something real, and I’m not ready for that yet. I’ve just started!”