Sometime in the 1960s, Freddie Mercury, the lead singer of Queen, started to think of a song he called the ‘Cowboy Song’, which he hummed and played on a piano. It had lyrics about shooting somebody with a ‘gun against his head’. By the time the song was released, it was a decade or more later, in 1975. By then, it had incorporated an opera, become 3 songs in one, and by the current standards, stood at an absurd 14 minutes. The record company suggested bring it down to 5.55 because otherwise, no radio station would play it. Strangely though, it became a radio hit even before the single was released and they had to scramble to get it out. In 2015, the Economist called it “one of the most innovative pieces of the progressive rock era.” We are of course talking about Bohemian Rhapsody, the song that broke the mould. The band members said the song grew spontaneously, as it was being recorded.

In 2007, an Argentinian director called Juan Cabral shot a video for an ad. When he showed it to his client he was told that he would never air it. It was too long, didn’t actually feature the product, and lacked a message. It was set to a popular pop song from a few years ago. But he persisted and managed to get it on air. It went on to become one of the greatest ads of all time. But the idea of a gorilla drumming to a Phil Collins song came to Cabral at a completely different time while shooting something else.

If corporate innovation is like a fire that creates energy and light, almost all the thinking and writing around it is to do with arranging the wood, creating the right temperatures, getting the fuel right, how to blow and sustain it, and how to grow it, and repeat it. But what about the spark that sets it all off? There seems to be very little focus on that tiny bit of magic that kickstarts the fire. Genius as you know is 99% perspiration but today I want to talk about that 1% of inspiration because it’s largely under-explored. Every business wants to create it’s own Bohemian Rhapsody, something that decades later will still be recognised as a masterpiece of innovation. Yet very few attempts work. Largely because much of the 99% is repeatable and can be put into processes, that 1% often remains elusive. Consequently, businesses focus on the process, the structure, the investment models and all the other repeatable parts, and hope that the people involved will somehow find the inspirational idea. 

So where does the spark come from? And is it absolutely essential? The latter question is easier to answer —no, it’s not. There are enough examples of serendipitous innovations (3M Post-Its) as well as inventions (Penicillin). However, the replacement for the spark here is serendipity, which obviously can’t be the basis of a strategy. Many organisations also outsource this to agencies or bypass it by acquiring ideas. In 1984 Robert Gaskins joined Forethought Inc, in Sunnyvale and sought to disrupt the corporate presentations market —a $3.5bn market driven by overhead projectors and transparencies. It was launched in 1987 as Powerpoint, and within weeks was snapped up by Microsoft for $14m. Microsoft has since acquired a number of ‘ideas’ from Hotmail, to Skype, whilst also being fast followers in spreadsheets, gaming consoles, and cloud computing (though Bezos might disagree on the last one). It is, therefore, possible to be a fast follower, but it runs the risk of missing out on really disruptive bets and being blindsided by truly creative competition. Of course, it’s also a strategy only available to businesses that are already highly successful with products that are cash-generating. 

This means we have to ask ourselves how we can create the spark, and whether it can be engineered. Of course, I mean engineered in the broader sense of the term. Designed, or architected would apply just as well. Corporate innovation often translates to design thinking, or R&D. Design thinking is the current corporate craze, but people often miss the empathetic mindset in their hunt for the process —and I don’t know of any great product that came out of a corporate design thinking workshop. R&D also often pushes the boundaries of the possible creating entirely new opportunities, but new technologies, are not new products, and the gap can be significant. Sometimes the answer might even lie in commercial innovation, such as Gillette (give away the razors, make money on the blades), or movie theatres (make money on the popcorn). But none of these three individually or collectively are synonymous with that inspirational moment. By making deep investments in these areas, you can of course increase your chances of finding the spark. However, it is not sufficient. If innovation could be entirely process-driven, then the success rate would soar through the roof. Funded startups would almost always be successful. Every design sprint would result in a fabulous new feature. Obviously, none of this represents the real world. 

Where can we look for examples of how the spark is enabled? Well, music and art are obviously excellent reference points. Filmmakers (Tarantino, Spielberg), artists (Picasso or Van Gogh), even the great cartoonists (Randall Munroe or Gary Larson) and animators (Walt Disney) would be good studies because they thrive on the spark, and on finding it regularly. Another interesting area is sports. Because sporting success is non-determinate and can’t be “processised”. Much like corporate innovation, the 99% effort needs that 1% of magic to elevate the good to the great. Ryan Giggs, the Manchester United great, and the most decorated football player in England played for 22 years in the first team and has a career total of 161 assists. As you know an assist is the pass leading to a goal, so it’s really the most accurate available statistic for a creative role in a football game. To put this in perspective, the second person on the list, Cesc Fabregas has 111 and the player with the most assists currently playing is James Milner with 85, and he’s 35 years old. So it would also be instructive to see what made Giggs so great and so consistent? You could also consider other sporting greats from Maradona to Michael Jordan, and from Federer to Shane Warne and you might find similar answers. 

To be sure, one of the key lessons from sporting greats reinforces the 99%-1% axiom. You have to have polished your technique and craft and have the strength, stamina and conditioning to world-class levels, else the spark doesn’t go anywhere. Giggs famously gave up driving sports cars and turned to yoga to protect his hamstrings and agility well into his 30s. But most great sportspeople will also have heightened peripheral vision, a birds-eye view of the game, a capability of thinking a couple of steps ahead of others, and the ability to do the unexpected. Some of this is innate, but a lot of this can be sharpened and improved. In the business world, we are often guilty of becoming narrower and narrower specialists. Peripheral vision is neither sought nor rewarded. A warehouse manager will rarely get rewarded for her insights on the supply chain, or packaging, or for her grasp of the overall direction of the evolution of eCommerce businesses. And as far as doing the unexpected is concerned while a success rate of 80% is considered excellent in sport, a failure rate of 20% would be a disaster and a career-limiting statistic. This is a work structure issue, and some businesses are better at creating the right environments for trying things out and making controlled mistakes. But just because you make the environment available, it doesn’t mean people will become very good at it instantly. It’s a skill that needs honing too. 

When Paul Simon visited South Africa in the 1980s, with the region still under apartheid rule, a lot of eyebrows were raised. Simon didn’t have a plan or a strategy. He went with an exploration mindset, to get out of a mid-career funk. He went to be inspired, having heard a bootleg tape of mbaqanga music. Simon’s method was to immerse himself in the local music, jam and record sessions with all kinds of local groups and musicians and just be in the flow for a couple of weeks. Some follow on sessions were then done in New York with a number of other artists involved based on his own heroes and favourites. Lyrics were written around some of the emergent songs, and more sessions were done. Then for the title track, Simon found himself unable to get away from the line ‘I’m going to Graceland’. But the album was all about South Africa, and Graceland didn’t fit. But the lyric wouldn’t leave his head, so he drove down to Graceland, Elvis Presley’s home in Memphis, Tennessee and his experiences and thoughts of the trip became the lyrics to the song Graceland. The album became one of the greatest in musical history and certainly Paul Simon’s most successful album. In all of this, the commitment to the flow, the instinct, and the lack of a structured plan, or fixed outcome, or even a timeline is critical. But it would be wrong to say that it was completely haphazard. Most creative people have their own rituals and methods. Some are more outrageous than others. The writer Dan Brown does physical exercise every hour and even hangs upside down to stay creative. Philip Pulman writes with a pen on A4 paper and doesn’t tidy his desk during the course of a book. 

Now, what would be obviously absurd is for a record company to say “okay, now we’re going to get each artist to pick a region, travel there, and recreate the Paul Simon Graceland process so we can make a hundred more similarly successful albums”. Nor could you take any artist to replace Paul Simon and expect the same outcome. Yet in businesses, the fundamental belief is in the process, rather than the individual. People are “resources” and you can replace one scientist, designer, or product owner with another. But is this valid and should we really be looking to find the right people rather than just fix the right process? When it comes to the spark, to what extent are we willing to let people follow their own methods? 

Even Paul Simon can’t reproduce his success of Graceland on demand. And history is littered with one-hit wonders. But you do see a pattern with people who have long-term success —sometimes the answers are counter-intuitive to business principles and they involve breadth rather than depth. Un-reason and instinct rather than logic and process. Messy and ‘flow’ driven approaches rather than directed and outcome-oriented processes. And of course, it involves errors. Ken Robinson has articulated this better than almost anybody I know, but the most successful innovators often have the highest error rates. Prior to Graceland, Paul Simon made Hearts and Bones, one of his least successful albums. If Simon was evaluated the way most companies work he may have been sacked at that point or shunted out to a job where he could do no harm. 

Remember that the spark is often that last 1% which is useless without the remaining 99%. During the recording of Bohemian Rhapsody, the Queen band members sang 10-12 hours each day and did 180 overdubs of the song which were sliced and diced in the studio to create the final song. Paul Simon was a consummate musician who had been recording since he was 16, and had 11 studio albums including 5 with Art Garfunkel by the time he started recording Graceland. 

My day job as an innovation lead benefits greatly from not having a tightly defined mandate being able to create my own goals. I usually modify and adapt my goals more regularly than the rest of the organisation. I’m allowed to continuously find new ways of delivering value to the organisation, whether it’s changing how we onboard new employees or how we run workshops for clients and explore problems ranging from retail to healthcare. I also benefit from being free to roam across domains, technologies, design, industries, and platforms. And I find that my own background of having worked in multiple industries, cultures, and formats, has helped me to synthesise faster, and also to look at problems from a number of different aspects. You might say that the global distribution of vaccines is a tricky challenge given the temperature constraints, but you should check out how the floriculture industry already solves this problem, even the global frozen foods industry! Oh, and I’m able to work on flows, and in messy ways, and make mistakes and follow instincts. 

In summary, the creative spark at the heart of innovation may just be the 1%, but it’s a very critical element for great innovation. It can’t come from a process, but creative professionals have their own methods. As a professional, you have to know what works for you and as organisations, we need to make room for those methods. But also as organisations, we need to foster a culture of experimentation, provide space for the creatives to find their flow, and find people with the right combination of craft and breadth who can bring diverse thinking into the experimentation space.