"Creativity isn't just a way of thinking; it's a way of attack, an entrepreneurial mindset that should be applied to every business situation." -Adam Brandenburger, Harvard Business Review, Strategy Needs Creativity
Traditional strategy is primarily about analysis—about breaking down a goal into steps, sequences, and budgets. Contribution margin, EBITDA, consumer sentiment, market sizing, supply-chain mapping, customer segmentation, risk analysis and financial modeling are all key inputs to this process, but what about creativity?
Creativity applies a different lens–one that synthesizes all the inputs into a cohesive whole. One that subverts linear approaches and invites asymmetrical thinking into the strategy process. Its contribution isn’t just making something new; it’s about making something new that actually works–often in surprising ways.
A business that fully integrates creative leadership into strategy development gains a superpower: the ability to see beyond a fuzzy idea wrapped in data to a more fully-resolved world of unexpected possibilities and end-states.
Apple's transformation in 1997 comes to mind.
How You Think Makes a Difference
People forget that when Jobs returned to Apple in 1997, the company had become a joke within the industry. It's stock was tanking, and critics were calling its computers "toys" that were incapable of accomplishing real-world tasks. Apple's market share was shrinking, and its computers had been written-off as machines for "creatives" with a niche operating system that was incompatible with mainstream offerings.
Steve Jobs went on offense, famously taking a decisive creative approach to rebuilding and repositioning Apple which caught most people's attention in the Think Different campaign.
However, there are less obvious ways in which creativity played a role in setting a new course for Apple that went far beyond that clever tagline.
Form = Function
For starters, the product itself was redesigned from the ground up by Jony Ive. It's easy to forget that the iMac G3 was revolutionary-even radical–for its time.
The industry standard gray box was replaced with a colorful, huggable piece of translucent machinery that was equal parts fashion, art and technology. This wasn't simply an aesthetic decision, it was a holistic, company-wide effort to make a computer more personal and playful.
At the time, CPUs were largely purchased by businesses and tech enthusiasts, but the general consumer had not yet taken interest. The internet was, however, starting to build momentum and general consumers were paying attention.
By transforming the CPU into a trendy, fun and approachable egg that made accessing the internet easy, it activated the imaginations of non-tech savvy customers. For the first time, they started thinking computers were for them.
The product itself was an earned marketing juggernaut. Quite simply, the G3 stood out...a lot. Yes, journalists took interest, but the impact was more granular. Colleagues and friends would notice it sitting on your desk and strike up a conversation. This was a big unlock for Apple.
When your product has cultural cachet, two hard-working human emotions collide: pride and curiosity. G3 owners were proud of their computer and eager to share all of its virtues with curious friends. This dynamic was commonplace, and it led to explosive word-of-mouth lead generation. And the era of Apple fandom began.
More than a Pretty Face
Jobs also fully reconfigured Apple's production and distribution models. He started by slashing seventy percent of their product roadmap. He then found production partners who could move faster which enabled him to reduce warehoused inventory, cutting their go-to-market in half and expanding margins.
Taken together, these structural changes also enabled Apple to do what all great luxury brands do: create scarcity–or, at least, the appearance of it. They could now architect limited availability upon release to amplify demand among early adopters and then speed up production to meet the wider demand once they gauged the appetite of the general consumer.
Speed-to-market also gave Apple the ability to create a more responsive product that could adapt and adjust to customer feedback which gave them an edge in the fast moving market.
Campaign With Purpose
Finally, after creatively reimagining the product, production and distribution, Jobs wrapped this company-wide effort in a marketing campaign led by Chiat Day’s Lee Clow called Think Different. Here, another bold creative move was made: instead of engaging in messaging about mips-n-megahertz–the industry's standard measuring stick–Jobs presented Apple's intrinsic offering.
Thinking Different is a mindset we all aspire to reach, so Jobs and the team at Chiat Day positioned Apple as the conduit to make something meaningful in your own life. This was also the same mindset that Jobs used to change Apple internally, and it became a powerful brand platform for the business.
This multifaceted strategy cemented Apple’s reputation for innovation in the luxury compute category and set the course for a market cap larger than the GDP of France. It also marked a shift within Apple from an engineering and marketing led company to a design culture that prioritized creative thinking.
Jed-AI Mind Trick
Microsoft recently initiated a clever and unorthodox strategy which reset the entire chessboard in the race to AI dominance.
For years, their business appeared to be disadvantaged as AI became the next frontier of innovation for tech heavyweights like Alphabet, Amazon, and Meta. While those companies raced to acquire top talent and compute power, Microsoft tailored a strategy that addressed yet another limitation: itself.
Decades of antitrust regulation in the U.S. and Europe meant that Microsoft's every move was being scrutinized. Their iron-grip on software and computing in the 90s and 2000s had led to a series of lawsuits, oversight and restraints to its business. But, throughout them all, Microsoft was never broken up, and they intended to keep it that way.
The reason, of course, is the market power they gain from bundling software across their product portfolios. Microsoft's search, cloud, enterprise, productivity, and gaming offerings are used by billions of customers. They have a dominant position in many of these categories, but especially in the cloud compute and enterprise solutions.
Their Azure platform is essentially a global utility for modern cloud computing. So, if Microsoft were to build another compatible utility in an adjacent market–like say, AI, it would almost certainly bring regulatory scrutiny. This would, in turn, dramatically slow their ability to bring it to market. But, if they invested in this market instead, they could move quickly while regulators played catch-up.
In 2019, they rolled out their strategy. Microsoft made a surprising series of investments – totaling more than $10 billion–in OpenAI, the buzzy AI non-profit founded by Elon Musk and Sam Altman.
On its face, it was an uncharacteristically large investment for the somewhat quiet Windows maker. But the real genius lay in the structure of the deal.
Rather than acquiring OpenAI outright which would have triggered regulators, Microsoft structured interdependencies into the deal.
In exchange for funding, cloud compute power and a massive slice of their profits, Open AI granted Microsoft advanced access and a perpetual license to new systems like Chat GPT which allowed them to tailor a Microsoft branded Copilot across its search, cloud and enterprise portfolio.
This gave Microsoft a first-mover advantage, and a huge leg up on competitors–like Apple–whose Apple Intelligence will now be built on the Open AI platform.
While other giants like Alphabet spent billions expanding internal AI labs and fighting talent wars, Microsoft took an asymmetric approach– gaining a fundamental role in AI innovation through an investment rather than brute force. In so doing, Microsoft found a side entrance to AI's inner sanctum – with regulatory compliance as a core design principle.
As new AI models continue reshaping software, Microsoft has and will no doubt continue to face regulatory scrutiny, but they already made their move. And they sit in a coveted position–as leaders in the next tech revolution. Not because they pioneered AGI, but by creatively mining the private sector for innovation and making their entire product portfolio the beneficiary.
Mustache Madness
In the cut-throat world of ride-sharing, Lyft has proven creativity can help disrupt even the most ubiquitous competitors. Long before they reached billion-dollar "unicorn" status, Lyft was a scrappy startup looking to take on Uber's black car dominance. So how did they gain a foothold? They emblazoned their modest fleet of Toyota Priuses and Honda Civics with a seemingly silly, yet instantly iconic accessory – bright pink mustaches.
And it worked. Lyft's goofy mustache cars caught people's eye and helped the company gain major traction in cities across America. What began as a small, underfunded player soon started gnawing significant market share away from larger, deeper-pocketed incumbents like Uber.
Today Lyft has gone mainstream, removing the fuzzy mustaches from most cars. But the spirit of mustache madness remains – reminding both riders and rivals that even billion-dollar companies can be disrupted with a bit of creative strategy.
