wieden's stupid approach endorsed by Harvard Business Review

Little attention has been paid to ignorance as a precious resource. Unlike knowledge, which is infinitely reusable, ignorance is a one-shot deal: once it has been replaced by knowledge, it can be hard to get back. And after it’s gone, we are more apt to follow well-worn paths to find answers than to exert our sense of what we don’t know in order to probe new opinions. Knowledge can stand in the way of innovation. Solved problems tend to stay solved – sometimes disastrously so.

 

David Gray. “Wanted, Chief Ignorance Officer”. Harvard Business Review November 2003

(Via Grant McCracken “Chief Culture Officer”).

 

This reminded me very much of our own ‘Walk in Stupid’ philosophy, as described here in a 2007 interview with W+K founder Dan Wieden in The Independent.

 

Step into the London offices of Wieden & Kennedy, one of the world's most cutting- edge advertising agencies, and the first thing you see is a mannequin in a pinstriped suit and buffed shoes, his head replaced with a kitchen blender and the words "Walk In Stupid Every Morning" inscribed in pink on his briefcase.

 

"Blender Man" embodies the chaotic creative spirit of the agency that Dan Wieden founded with David Kennedy in Portland, Oregon, in 1982, but the motto is just one of many slogans found in this strangest of workplaces. "Fail harder" is another, "Welcome to Optimism" is another.

 

W&K (says Wieden) still thrives on a culture "built around a friendly relationship with chaos", a concept represented by Blender Man. "I think it's important that if you're going to be innovative, that there's not a process for everything. Sometimes it seems that if you're never lost you're never going to wind up any place new. It's only if you're willing to be completely fucked-up that you're going to do anything important."