What is Creative Technology?
When we think about technology, we often think about its application.
The field of Creative Technology was established in the creative industries, an industry that actively stands in front of the firehose of technological newness identifying and delivering commercially viable businesses, services and experiences for OEMs and brands, who are finding their place on the user adoption curve striving to increase revenue and brand engagement.
When we think about technology, we often think about its application.
However, take jelly, for example. It was invented by a carpenter who was looking for non-toxic glue! Gunpowder was first an elixir of immortality, and frisbees were originally pie containers. All these examples took years to find their application; think of it as a form of osmosis, the creative technology business is a little different in that it aims to do this in weeks or days.
If you were to visualise the creative technology process - you could draw a catapult (or trebuchet if you like...) firing different coloured jelly at a wall, with each throw a new colour representing the constant influx of new technology entering the market with a team expertly picking the correct blobs and hammering in nails to make them stick with a surprisingly high success rate due to the breadth of knowledge and experience required to identify potential.
Birds eye view
Sounds risky, what separates the winners and the losers?
The winners are those that successfully govern positive tension between creative, technology and business disciplines at the same time as making sense of chaos. It's a balance even though something may be achieved and delivered - often it does not punch through with sustained value as something wasn't quite right.
Creative Technology isn't about inventing new technology; this is for the universities, open-source groups and deep research centres. It's about making sense of what's there and creating a new user experience that triggers the right emotions and actions, the litmus test of all technology is people, it's a hard and fast Darwinian game.
Takeaway: Creative Technology is the active quest of matching technology with commercial application and a great user experience.
Discovery is key!
Creative Technology is a space where experimentation and risk are high to push through into the new ground, yet is often paid for by project budgets, within short timeframes. The idea that it's ok to fail in the discovery process has been overused to the point that it excuses poor management of the innovation and delivery process. Only inexperience will unknowingly let you go into a high-risk situation without a backup plan. Creative Technology leaders help ensure the core goals are consistently met by putting the appropriate amount of foresight and plan b's in place.
Takeaway: There should never be any innovation delivery failure - only adjustments.
Don't ever lose sight of the story.
With so much new tech - it's easy to get seduced by being associated with the latest tech buzz - however, the challenge is no longer what you should do; it's deliberately choosing what not to do. Winners and losers are defined at this embryonic stage of a project, and it's going to continue to get even more challenging with the constant influx of new technology.
The field of Creative Technology is bestowed with the responsibility of ensuring the balance is achieved between creativity (the story, in the content), technology (the mechanic to tell the story) and business (everything must always provide value).
Takeaway: Technology should always be a servant to the story, whilst both story and tech are servants to the commercial goals.
Commercial viability
Leaders working in the Creative Technology field require a skill combination of science, art, and business to understand the technology's potential, actively explore and develop the applications, and ultimately articulate complex concepts in simple terms to express why someone should invest money in a particular combination and then deliver on this, all in a relatively short period. It's like taking a three-day hackathon and condensing it into an applied business process.
The critical value to others is not about rushing to say you know something about the latest technology release (blind leading the blind); it's in the ability to identify creative potential with commercial viability within a vast (and ever-growing) area of technical complexity and having the applied experience to have the confidence that what's been identified won't be a waste of effort and treasure.
Takeaway: With an experienced and talented Creative Technology company, you don't need deep market research and feedback loops to minimalise the risk of falling down the large gap between cool tech and commercial viability.
Sounds good, should I build a Lab?
Short answer: No
Over the past 15 years, a wave of "Digital Labs" appeared in an ironic exploration of managed exploration - yet dwindled as these quickly became a liability on the company's balance sheet with no way to link to revenue other than using them as new business/marketing vehicles.
True creative tech playgrounds that sit outside of client budgets require a substantial amount of disposable money to sustain, which is often reserved for the tech unicorns with their surplus millions in search of their next internal unicorn product.
The field of Creative Technology is less meandering lab and more "on the job" applied lab. Someone quite wise once said - there's nothing quite like a deadline to focus the mind.
Take away: Don't create an internal lab, create a network of Creative Technology companies.
Permission to create the future of experience
Creative Technology will create the future of experience, driven by VC funds creating new startups as a vehicle to seek out a new market or a brand, driven to establish a new way of purchasing their product in selected markets.
The proving ground of new experiences is in live events. For instance, the network "edge", IoT, QR codes and VR experiences were established over a decade ago. This is where wild ambition can run free in a sandbox environment with controlled user feedback; it's like a "Live Lab". The best bits are selected and make their way into the mainstream.