Ross Chowles is an academic specialist and professor of practice at Michigan State University, where he teaches creativity and innovation, including CAS 114. Before joining MSU, Chowles spent more than four decades in advertising and design. In 1994, he co-founded The Jupiter Drawing Room in Cape Town, which became Africa’s most awarded independent advertising agency. He has also judged international advertising competitions, including Cannes and The One Show, and has worked with creatives around the world.
I first discovered my creative talent in a fifth grade religion instruction class. I was drawing David and Goliath when my teacher noticed what I was doing. She was impressed and fussed over me and for the first time, I realized I had a talent for something the other kids didn’t have. That realization was significant for me. I’m dyslexic, so I didn’t excel at traditional academic subjects. I was also hopeless at sports. But I had found something I was good at – and that something grew until creativity became part of my identity.
It eventually led to a career in advertising and design where “ideas” are the tool used to persuade consumers in favor of a client’s brand. I excelled in this kind of creative communication.
That lesson became especially important when I co-founded The Jupiter Drawing Room, an advertising agency in Cape Town, and from the beginning, we wanted to build something different.
We acted like no other agency. We produced work like no other agency. We managed our people like no other agency. Being unique is a superpower, albeit, scary. I detest businesses that look like competition and rely on cost-cutting and extraction for growth. Building a unique business is rewarding and fulfilling – and more importantly, you leave a positive legacy with the people who worked for you. I think the same principle applies to entrepreneurship.
First, you need to think up a unique idea, or angle for your venture. This has to be the most fun part. Then comes creating the brand – the name, the logo, the design, etc, which is hugely creative. As you bring that idea to life, you’ll face hundreds of obstacles that require your creative mind to solve. It’s constant: the need to solve problems and hurdles. No entrepreneur ever said “I’m bored”.
I’ve always thought that if I were to become an engineer, I’d love to be one that builds production lines in factories. There would be a hundred engineering problems to solve to work out how a ‘thing’ moves from here to there, whilst this happens to the thing before that thing happens. I don’t know if AI is going to do this in the future, but it sounds like a cool job.
The upshot is that there is a huge amount of technical, financial and process planning in entrepreneurship, but those actions are overshadowed by creative thinking and problem solving.
My career in advertising has taught me that producing something normal or average is a waste of time and energy. Creativity is about making people notice, remember, and connect with. When I was a kid, each car brand had a distinctive look that you could identify from a hundred yards away. Notice how now all SUVs look the same. It is genuinely hard to tell one car brand apart from another. Except the Tesla Cybertruck.
That is distinctive.
We are in the human business, and humans like distinctiveness and novelty. We are interested in the human condition and all our foibles. Yet businesses produce parity out of fear. Creativity is fighting the urge to conform.
Strategic decision-making is one of the most fun parts of business. You pick a direction or solution, and then you see if your decision was correct. But choosing a direction means the direction has a unique angle. That is creativity and problem-solving manifested. To be creative, you need to learn to live with fear. I believe students need to rediscover that creative part of themselves. They have a creative mind buried beneath all that “common sense” thinking. School, parents and society make us chase grades, conformity and mechanical thinking, which can bury our creative side.
It takes time to shake off that common-sense thinking. But once you do, it is like the veil has been lifted. Using the creative and problem-solving side of your mind is much more rewarding than completing mechanical tasks. The feeling you get from coming up with an idea or solving a problem is huge. It is addictive. Creativity, and its output, is what makes you, you.
That is what I hope students take away from my classes at Michigan State University. Creative thinking is the key to a rich and rewarding life. Students may not see it now, but one day, it will click, and they will understand what I was trying to teach them.
I would rather die exhausted but fulfilled than die with regret from inaction. We have an opportunity to think differently, to create, to solve problems and to build something that did not exist before.
An extraordinary life awaits. You just need to go open that door and step through.
The question is whether we have the courage to open the door.