Embracing change can boost design creativity

Have you noticed how, in terms of business, we’re all being urged to change, to do things differently? It’s inevitable, given the impending new millennium that both consultancies and clients are seeking to express themselves in different ways. But change was also an underlying theme of the Design Business Association’s last Design Debate of the year, on the subject of creativity.

Speakers such as Michael Frye, chairman of educational charity The Nowhere Foundation, among other things, and Aziz Cami of The Partners hinted at change as a creative generator. Frye described creativity to last week’s audience at the Imagination Gallery in London, as “the soul of innovation” – itself to do with change. To achieve it he advocates total upheaval within organisations to end restraints.

Change has been more than a debating point during the Nineties: it’s been a fact of life. Recession, advancing technology and the rapid growth of the Internet have forced us to reassess the way we live and work. Yet experts maintain we are afraid of change, and, therefore, of creativity. Hence management consultancies have added “change management” to their repertoire to meet business needs.

The creative industries have largely benefited from such changes, despite the pain recession brought. A change in Government, bringing Tony Blair’s design-friendly Labour team to power, has helped boost their standing.

Yet, while many design groups advocate change to their clients as a way of differentiating themselves from commercial rivals, few have taken the concept on board themselves. There have been shifts in management structures to ease succession for the longer established groups and a host of takeovers by the likes of WPP Group and FutureBrand. But though we’re constantly hearing of start-ups that “think outside the box”, that hackneyed phrase has come to have little real meaning and consultancies continue to compete largely against equals.

There are exceptions: ad agencies St Lukes and Mother and client advisors The Fourth Room and Circus spring to mind. But how long can they rely on “being different” unless they embrace change as a key part of their culture?

We’re going to see a lot more change over the next few months, particularly on the mergers and acquisitions front. Let’s hope that some of it will set new models for design consultancy in the 21st century in the way that the likes of Pentagram, the old Michael Peters Group, Imagination and, arguably, Enterprise IG have done in the late 1900s.