For the last few years, I’ve had the opportunity to guest lecture at UCLA’s Anderson School of Management to MBA students.

My topic “The Beautiful Bullshit of Creativity” explores what I believe is a societal bias about creativity and who we tend to expect it from, especially in professional settings. 

By looking at the creative process and some good/bad examples of its output, it’s my hope that students can take some lessons from the ad industry and apply them to industries that aren’t generally considered “creative”.

These are the cliff-notes, but I love discussing it in detail. So hit me up.

Among other things, the lecture was inspired by the repeat experience I’ve had as a creative when really smart people decide to preface what might be a great idea with …”Now, I’m not creative. So just ignore what I’m about to say, but…”

I pointed out the simple fact that society makes creativity binary. We’re told we’re either born left-brained, or right-brained. I used Patagonia’s iconic sustainability campaign to introduce a concept I call “Wrong Brain” in which we use creativity to come up with the answer that logical thinking would have us believe is wrong. And because it’s so wrong, it’s actually so right.

As I was developing the presentation, I began to worry that it might come off like those cheesy motivational posters from middle school. So I embraced that insecurity, and wrote a series of motivational posters about creativity.