What is the corporate creativity cure when R&D stagnates?
Progressive Failures, Brain Skills & Precision Culture Interventions
A Two-Part Reflection from the Brain Economy Meetings at the 2024 Science Summit of the 79th United Nations General Assembly by Theo Edmonds, Culture Futurist® & Founder, Creativity America | Bridging Creative Industries and Brain Science with Future of Work & Wondervation™
PART ONE
The Only New Thing Is New Perspective
A friend said to me recently that they have known me across all three of my careers, and they were excited to see how those experiences would shape my next one. That’s right—not three jobs, but three careers. The first was in corporate healthcare from the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s.
During that time, I was the executive overseeing the transition of one of the largest and most prestigious cardiovascular physician practices in the southeastern United States, leading it to nearly 4x growth in just three years in one of the most competitive cardiovascular markets in the country. I also led the regional alignment of cardiovascular service lines across three states for multiple hospitals acquired and merged into a single system. Finally, I led the development of a strategic brand identity and services expansion for the largest non-military cardiovascular service line in the Pacific Rim.
In all these roles, the transitions, reimagining, and expansion efforts I led were multifaceted. Simultaneously, a business transition was underway as healthcare navigated the rise of managed care; a technological transition was underway with the digitization of non-invasive diagnostics; and a cultural shift was underway as procedures largely expected to require open-heart surgery were increasingly performed as minimally invasive interventions sometimes close to an outpatient procedure.
Throughout those years, I learned much about the strategic foresight required to grow a high-tech, high-touch enterprise through significant systems change and cultural shifts. The evolution in cardiovascular services during the late 1990s—driven by advancements in interventional cardiology, the digitization of diagnostics, and the rise of managed care—illustrates how the intersection of business, technology, and culture conspire to shift our notions of what we believe to be possible and valuable. As cardiologists increasingly relied on technologies like echocardiograms and other imaging tools, traditional skills like listening to heartbeats began to decline. Dr. Valentin Fuster, former president of the American Heart Association, raised concerns about this trend, stressing the need to balance these technological tools with essential hands-on examination skills, like using a stethoscope. This led to innovative retraining programs, including collaborations with musicians and orchestras to help physicians regain sensory awareness and sharpen their ability not just to read digital data, but to listen again to the human body.
Today, collaborative partnerships between the arts and medicine, once considered groundbreaking, have become widely accepted as essential to the professional development of healthcare providers. Institutions like Yale School of Medicine’s Program for Humanities in Medicine promote collaboration between the arts and medicine. The University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus Center for Bioethics and Humanities generates unique opportunities to create transformational learning, groundbreaking scholarship, thought-provoking art, and inclusive conversations for Colorado’s health professionals.
The key takeaway is this: innovation flourishes when technology and expertise are balanced with human creativity, motivation, perception, and collaboration, ensuring that care remains both advanced and deeply personal.
Decoding the Heart of Creative Foresight
This week, I attended the annual Brain Economy/Capital meetings at United Nations General Assembly Science Week. Between sessions with thought leading colleagues in neuroscience and economics, I also attended the Fast Company Innovation Festival’s dynamic dialogues with IBM’s Darío Gil (SVP of Research), Netflix’s Ted Sarandos (Co-CEO), creative force Lin-Manuel Miranda, Jennifer Doudna (Founder of the Innovative Genomics Institute and Nobel Laureate), and Microsoft’s Satya Nadella (Chairman and CEO). Bouncing back and forth between the two events offered a remarkable perspective on the human and technological frontiers that shape not just what can be done, but what people will be motivated to do—driven by human factors beyond technical capabilities.
During the week, I recorded an episode for the Art Works for Teachers Podcast on how educators can unlock creativity as a hidden advantage in the classroom. I also presented on the emerging opportunities between the arts and AI at an Americans for the Arts event.
A personal highlight this week was announcing the inaugural team of cognitive neuroscientists and organizational psychologists joining Creativity America’s ambitious decade-long mission to integrate the arts and science of creativity into mainstream business innovation.
Creativity America, in part, stems from my ongoing work with the Brain Capital Alliance, which co-hosted this week’s UN meetings. While Brain Capital includes both brain health and brain skills, nearly all of UN dialogue this week centered on the brain health component —its challenges, costs, and wide-reaching implications. This all seemed very familiar to me because it closely paralleled how we framed conversations in the mid-’90s to the mid-2000s, when the cardiovascular industry was forced to rapidly adapt, rethink models, and innovate under pressure.
Today, we face a similar inflection point—this time, with AI and quantum computing reshaping the human-digital landscape. However, the lessons I learned from my previous career leading in healthcare’s transformation provide a roadmap, I believe, for arts, science and business “fusion” industries today that depend on a delicate balance between high-tech and high-touch to deliver value to customers and stakeholders. Namely, agility, curiosity, human-centered/culturally-responsive innovation, and willingness to stay open to finding new meaning and possibilities beyond conventional wisdom will be critical as we navigate these new economies.
From my experience leading healthcare during that radical period of technological, business, and cultural change, I’ve learned that creativity is the key to success for teams tackling complex challenges in uncertain markets to find breakthrough solutions.
As research shows, solving complex problems requires generating solutions that are not only novel but deeply adapted to specific contexts. Creativity in healthcare is about more than just new ideas; it’s about using them to address the unique, real-world challenges of different patients and medical environments. While some treatments are broadly applicable, the most effective solutions often come from local teams who understand the subtle, site-specific factors that drive success.
Creativity does not sacrifice precision. Evidence suggests it enhances it. The adaptability in healthcare over the past few decades led to the rise of learning health systems—teams that continuously integrate creativity and evidence-based strategies to refine their approach to patient care. The same principles can apply to innovation teams in business. Much like healthcare professionals treat patients, innovation teams are tasked with “curing” stagnation and driving organizational growth. In both settings, generic solutions often fall short, and a creative, tailored approach is needed to solve the root problems with precision.
Visionary Blueprints: What if team-level personalization is the key to scaling innovation?
In healthcare, a groundbreaking approach known as precision medicine has transformed how doctors treat patients. Traditionally, medicine has relied on a “one-size-fits-all” approach, where treatments are designed to work for the average person. While this has been effective in many cases, it often leaves patients with less-than-optimal results. Precision medicine, by contrast, tailors treatments to the individual based on their unique genetic, environmental, and lifestyle factors. Rather than using a standard treatment for all patients with the same disease, precision medicine analyzes the specifics of each person’s biology to identify the most effective treatment. This not only improves outcomes but also reduces unnecessary treatments and side effects.
For instance, in cancer treatment, instead of prescribing the same chemotherapy drugs to everyone, doctors now use precision medicine to examine the genetic mutations driving a particular patient’s cancer. With this information, they can select therapies most likely to target the cancer effectively, leading to better results with fewer side effects. In short, precision medicine moves away from broad, generic solutions and focuses on what works best for each patient.
This approach is not just about treating disease; it’s about optimizing the treatment to meet the specific needs of the people it serves. Precision culture, the core of Creativity America’s methodology, applies the same principles to business—particularly in how companies foster innovation within their teams. Just as precision medicine uses data to tailor treatments, precision culture uses data from Creativity America’s evidence-based Creative Brain Capital™ Index to design targeted interventions that unlock the creative potential of teams and bring orderly action to innovation cultures in companies. The potential for precision culture to revolutionize business innovation should excite every executive in America with its promise and possibility.
This transition from generalized culture programs to precise, data-driven interventions tailored to the unique needs of R&D teams is the key to unlocking full human creative potential. By focusing on what truly drives creative breakthroughs, organizations can move beyond incremental improvements and catalyze transformational innovation.
Why Tech Alone Can’t Ignite the Future We Dream Of
R&D today faces a paradox. On the one hand, businesses are rapidly adopting advanced technologies like AI, quantum computing, and automation to enhance their processes. On the other hand, these investments often fail to deliver the market-shaping innovations expected. The underlying issue isn’t technological; it’s human. Companies over-rely on the logic of automation but underinvest in the human creative brain skills necessary to connect these tools to disruptive innovation.
Data from leading industry reports shows that businesses attempting to innovate under current conditions tend to deliver incremental improvements, focusing on efficiency rather than transformational innovation. For instance, McKinsey’s research found that only 6% of executives are satisfied with their innovation performance, with most focusing on cost reduction and product extensions rather than breakthrough innovations. Similarly, Deloitte’s 2024 Human Capital Trends highlights how fewer than 30% of organizations make necessary investments in human creativity alongside technological advances, leading to short-term gains but missing out on longer-term, disruptive innovation. This focus on incremental changes is no longer sufficient in an era where markets demand new products and new ways of thinking and interacting.
Transformational innovation holds the promise of a brighter future for R&D teams. It requires them to operate at the intersection of technology and creativity, engaging in problem-solving that blends analytical thinking with imagination, collaboration, and cultural insight. This potential for transformational innovation should inspire hope and optimism for the future of R&D.
Treating the Cause, Not the Symptom
The incrementalism plaguing innovation today is not an accident; it’s a symptom of progressive failures in American business. Over the past few decades, three key issues have created an environment where businesses struggle to move beyond incremental gains and achieve transformational innovation: over-reliance on efficiency over creativity, short-termism driven by shareholder value, and cultural stagnation in leadership. This emphasizes the urgent need for a shift in business culture.
How Over-Optimization is Squeezing the Life Out of Innovation
Since the 1980s, American business has heavily emphasized operational efficiency, cost-cutting, and processes like lean management. While these methods have boosted productivity, they have also created a culture where incremental improvements are prioritized because they are perceived as easier to measure and safer to pursue. Companies have optimized processes to the point of diminishing returns, sacrificing the creative freedom necessary for bold innovation.
Symptom: Companies focus on cost-reduction and sustaining innovations rather than breakthrough ideas.
Cause: Over-optimization for efficiency, which starves R&D of the creative space needed to explore transformative possibilities.
Breaking the Spell of Shareholder Worship
Since the rise of shareholder value maximization in the 1970s, businesses have shifted toward short-term profits, often at the expense of long-term investments in R&D and innovation ecosystems. Incentivized by quarterly earnings targets, corporate leaders funnel resources into projects that deliver immediate returns rather than taking risks on creative ventures that could lead to disruptive change.
Symptom: Focusing on short-term financial performance results in declining investment in long-term R&D.
Cause: The dominance of shareholder value ideology has shifted companies away from bold, creative investments toward risk-averse strategies.
Leading with Creativity to Smash Cultural Walls
Leadership and workplace culture still need to evolve alongside the shifting demands of the workforce and the market. Traditional, top-down management structures stifle creativity and collaboration. Meanwhile, today’s employees seek creativity, flexibility, and purpose—yet many organizations remain entrenched in bureaucratic, risk-averse environments, leading to disengagement and burnout.
Symptom: A lack of innovation-driven workplace culture leads to disengaged teams and stagnation in creative output.
Cause: Leadership failures have kept companies from modernizing their cultural practices to foster environments where creativity and risk-taking thrive.
Vicious Cycle of Incrementalism
These failures—overemphasizing efficiency, short-termism, and cultural stagnation—have compounded over time, leading to innovation inertia. As businesses optimize for short-term gains, they cut back on the investments that fuel long-term innovation, trapping themselves in a cycle of incremental change. The result is a landscape where transformational breakthroughs become rare.
Companies like Google and Apple, which have invested heavily in creative ecosystems, offer a clear counterexample: They show that businesses willing to prioritize creativity and innovation outperform those stuck in the efficiency and short-termism mindset.
Decoding Creative Know-how: Unlocking the Hidden Brainpower that Drives R&D
Using the energy of this week's UN General Assembly events, I was thrilled to announce the leadership team and inaugural group of collaborating researchers for Creativity America. Creativity America is on a mission to weave the arts and science of creativity into mainstream business innovation. We propel businesses into the future of work by making creativity a measurable, strategic asset, building Creative Brain Capital—a powerful blend of cognitive, emotional, and collaborative brain skills essential for people and organizations to thrive alongside technology.
The Creative Brain Capital Index is the core metric that sets Creativity America apart in its approach to team creativity. It moves beyond superficial metrics like employee engagement or organizational culture scores, precisely measuring a team's cognitive, emotional, and collaborative capacities. These three vectors—Head (analytical and creative thinking), Heart (motivational/emotional experience drivers), and Hands (collaborative skills)—are scientifically tied to creative performance. When deployed wisely, specifically and with intention, they provide actionable intelligence for unlocking the human creative performance of teams—exponentially improving the group’s ability to produce transformational, not just incremental, innovation.
Much like how precision medicine targets specific biological markers to tailor treatments to individuals, the Creative Brain Capital Index allows organizations to tailor cultural interventions to their teams' specific creative strengths and weaknesses. For R&D departments struggling to break through stagnation, this diagnostic tool offers a blueprint for where to focus development efforts, whether enhancing critical thinking, fostering curiosity, or improving team collaboration dynamics. Importantly, the index doesn’t measure creativity as an abstract concept but ties it directly to enterprise performance metrics, making it immediately actionable for decision-makers.
Wondervation Accelerator: Sparking Market Shifts with Precision Creativity
With the Creative Brain Capital Index serving as our diagnostic tool, we then introduce the Wondervation Accelerator program as the intervention. This program is designed to take the quantitative data set from the index and apply it in a structured way that develops the brain skills necessary for teams to thrive in innovation-heavy environments. What makes the Wondervation Accelerator unique is its emphasis on multimodal learning—blending brain science with arts-based methods to activate the full spectrum of human creativity.
Here’s the critical shift: Creativity America doesn’t just focus on individual creativity—which is where most creativity programs stop. Instead, it recognizes that innovation is a collective process. The accelerator is geared toward building team-based creative capacity, where groups of people learn to function as dynamic, co-creative systems. This team-centered approach is a game-changer for R&D, where success is often measured by how effectively a team can collaborate on complex, long-term projects that demand both technical and creative skills.
The Wondervation Accelerator addresses companies' lean challenge: overreliance on technology without corresponding investments in the human capabilities needed to harness it. Creativity America enables organizations to produce groundbreaking ideas, not just incremental solutions, by teaching teams to move fluidly between logic and emotion and to operate comfortably within the tension that characterizes transformational innovation.
Precision Culture Interventions: Solving the Human Side of Innovation
The concept of precision culture is central to Creativity America’s methodology. While businesses increasingly understand the value of diversity, inclusion, and employee well-being, they often struggle to connect these ideals with tangible R&D outcomes. Precision culture, as used by Creativity America, mirrors the principles of precision medicine—where interventions are tailored not just to broad trends but to the specific characteristics of individuals or groups.
For companies, this means using the Creative Brain Capital Index to identify where their teams are strong and vulnerable. Maybe your team excels in collaboration but needs more curiosity and resilience to take risks and push beyond conventional thinking. In another company, a key R&D group may have innovative ideas but need more support to execute them due to weak team trust or poor emotional intelligence. Creativity America’s precision culture interventions provide tailored strategies for addressing these kinds of gaps, turning weaknesses into strengths, and aligning human creative potential with the company’s strategic priorities.
This precision approach improves team dynamics and directly impacts the company’s ability to innovate at scale. By ensuring that teams have the full range of brain skills necessary to function creatively, businesses can maximize the return on their technological investments, pushing past incremental gains to create the kind of disruptive innovations that define market leaders.
Escaping the Innovation Trap: How to Leap Beyond Incrementalism to Breakthroughs
At its heart, Creativity America’s approach is about moving beyond the chronic incrementalism that characterizes most R&D today. Businesses have traditionally sought to optimize efficiency, streamline processes, and reduce costs. While these strategies have their place, they are insufficient in a market that increasingly rewards bold, paradigm-shifting ideas.
The Wondervation Accelerator teaches teams to think within this creative tension—where logic, emotion, curiosity, and collaboration meet. The program creates environments where teams can experiment, fail safely, and prototype new ideas in a way that feels organic but is structured to produce results. The outcome is more innovative products and a more innovative way of working, where the creative process becomes a strategic asset.
When applied at scale, this method has the potential to transform industries. By helping teams move fluidly between analytical problem-solving and wonder-full thinking, Creativity America bridges the gap between what is technically possible and culturally and emotionally resonant. This approach isn’t about making minor adjustments to existing products or services—it’s about creating entirely new categories of innovation that redefine how businesses operate and succeed.
Creativity Is Currency
In a world where the demands for innovation have never been higher, Creativity America’s model offers a breakthrough for businesses stuck in the cycle of incremental improvements. By applying the precision tools of the Creative Brain Capital Index and the strategic development pathways of the Wondervation Accelerator, companies can finally solve the human side of innovation that has been holding them back.
What Creativity America brings to the table is the ability to measure, develop, and apply team creativity in a way that is precise, actionable, and aligned with the strategic priorities of R&D. This is more than just a cultural shift—it’s a business imperative for companies that want to stay relevant, competitive, and transformational in an increasingly complex world. In this new landscape, creativity truly is currency, and Creativity America is showing businesses how to spend it wisely.
Theo Edmonds, Culture Futurist® & Founder, Creativity America | Bridging Creative Industries and Brain Science with Future of Work & Wondervation™
©2024 Theo Edmonds | All Rights Reserved. Please credit the author when using any of this content. The views expressed above are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of any organization with which the author is affiliated.