Jumpstart Automotive Group

We’ve been talking a lot about creativity lately. It’s a weird thing, creativity, as soon as you mention the word people immediately tend to get uncomfortable. Many assume that to be creative you have to draw, write, paint, sculpt and generally, make things. However, I’ve always believed creativity isn’t shown in simply the ability to create art, rather it’s found in how one views the world and approaches challenges.

Throughout my career I have worked with some brilliant creative directors, writers and art directors. It may come as a surprise that the most successful of the lot weren’t the ones who could draw a perfect portrait. Instead,they were the ones who could look at a problem from all angles, clearly articulate the business problem they were trying to solve, and fundamentally understand the client’s objective and target audience. They first studied all of these facets, and then, put the business issues aside and come up with fun, cool ideas that resonated.

In my current role, some of the most interesting things I see don’t come from my creative team. Now, don’t get me wrong — they are doing incredible work, but I see creativity coming from all our business units. Take our sales group: who have done some innovative thinking about how we approach our clients. In our product group, the team successfully wrestles with the big question of what the web’s next iteration will be. In our tech team, the job is not just about fixing computers, but rather how to get things more efficient and more seamless. There is creativity all around us. Inspired by these various applications of creativity, I have guided my creative team to expand our power by pulling in people from every level, exec to intern, and every discipline from marketing to IT.

The idea for the Catalyst Awards came out of one of these discussions last year. As we sought to improve the initial program we got together a broader group of people to brainstorm. We hope that the changes we have made for this year will prove to make the awards even better. If I told you everything here I’d ruin the surprise. So you’ll just have to trust me, it’s going to be fun and there will be enough creativity to go ’round.

I encourage you to remember that there is value to every idea and that you are likely to find some of the most interesting ones in places you never expected. I look forward to showcasing the winners, and their creativity, in Las Vegas at JD Power.