The reports are in...

As a strategist there is no end to the reports and forecasts that are sweeping over me like an avalanche. Do I want to know that creativity really is the key( as it has been announced since 2016)? Or how AI can best serve my burning wish to optimise workflows and take a creative team to the next level?

I know I should say yes. But that would be a lie.

The more reports that are shoved down my throat, the more I feel that creativity is still in the back seat. Don't get me wrong, I studied sociology and I am deeply in love with behavioural science. I often turn to universities and databases like PsycInfo to find a study or thesis on something I am working on, and my never-ending love for knowledge, specifically human perception, will never be an itch I can satisfy.

However. The reports.

Am I the only one who is disinterested in commercial truth-sayers? You know, the reports made by experts that, if I’m being honest, feel more like a LinkedIn brand-building tactic. As a nerd, and with an innate streak of rebellion and suspicion of prestige, I don’t want to read what "Nick", "James", or "David" eagerly want to tell me.

I want to know what a professor has to say about digital behaviour. Or I want a graphic designer’s take on how to keep the nerve alive in a specific choice of typeface.

I love being buried in research, as long as it’s the kind that actually has something at stake. Hand over the professor who dryly maps out digital behaviour, without trying to turn insight into a personal brand. Throw me a designer obsessing over form, tension, and taste, not a “thought leader” selling a five-step framework.

And honestly, I prefer listening to the people who don’t even want to be on stage. I want the findings from someone who doesn't try to get me to download anything. Which is tricky, because the ones who want the spotlight are usually the ones who grab the mic.

But I’m less interested in the person performing expertise, and far more interested in the one sitting at their desk, making something, thinking something through, quietly, without the need to package it as a brand.

The commercial truth-sayers, the shiny expert reports doing the rounds on social? They don’t energise my creativity, they drain it. They’re rarely written to expand a thought, they’re written to expand and optimise. And as a human being, my main focus isn’t always to optimise, if ever...

So tell me, are you reading anything this spring that genuinely feeds your creativity? Let us know in the comments below, and share your best recommendation.