All the ways Sir John Hegarty is wrong about creativity

In the closing months of 2024, Charlie Bowden - an ex colleague of mine - emailed me a post Sir John Hegarty had just put on LinkedIn with the note, “This just popped up in my feed. Sharing in case you fancy a Friday morning LinkedIn argument.” He was right - I did. This was the response I wrote on Sir John’s post which I include here as it captures much of what I think about creativity and how much it can be codified.

“Yes - Creativity has always had a whiff of alchemy about it—a process shrouded in mystery, impossible to quantify entirely, and all the more captivating for it. You are a living legend to me Sir John – but even magic needs structure. How else does Pixar, time and again in factory-like fashion, conjure stories that both delight and endure? They lean on the timeless scaffolding of the Hero’s Journey. And what of the 4Ds of Design Thinking? Another ‘formula’ that, far from stifling invention, helps frame creativity to non-creative professionals as something accessible and actionable.
The main issue is this: When creativity is framed as instinctive brilliance—an unpredictable stroke of genius—it can be unsettling for CFOs and CEOs (?) Might such posts risk painting creative agencies as little more than roulette tables? (If so, just down the road there’s a management consultancy they can hire with the promise of rationality, predictability, and no surprises). Creativity can’t just be about only chaos; it’s about calculated transformation. The real gamble isn’t placing your trust in creativity—it’s ignoring its serious value.”