It’s an expression you hear a lot in the media these days. Our times are very much our own it seems, without precedent. Whether it’s the state of the world economy, the war on terrorism, the unstoppable collapse of ice caps and fish stocks or the fall of GM. We are living in a period for which there is little apparent precedent: comforting or uncomfortable...

...So now all of us are modern day James T Kirks, ‘boldly going, where no man has gone before.’

What excitement and fear.

Excitement for the possibilities that emerge from chaos, from the tumbling of institutions and inertia; fear from the unpredictability and inability to answer what next?

But the underlying theme that emerges in unprecedented times is one of the need for free thinking.
Companies that have been confident with process , linearity and crystalline thinking modes will be challenged.

Companies that are comfortable with being eclectic, lateral and open minded will be challenging.

There is not much use journeying into the known, carrying the mental baggage and attitudes of a more predictable age.

In this new age creativity does not have a beginning or an end, a department or a specific project phase.

Nor is it contained by the discipline your agency happens to excel in.

Creative people don’t just exist in trendy Hoxton warehouses, or Sloaney West End glass buildings. They are in architects practices, circus troupes, research labs and universities.

In an age where answers don’t exist, creativity needs to open up not close ranks.

The human minds’ greatest defining skill is its ability to ‘anticipate the future’. The more we leverage possibilities through working with different types of people, ways of working and ways of framing problems, the greater the chance of being able to anticipate a future for which there is no precedent.