Archimedes leapt out of the bath. Without so much as slipping on a toga, he ran naked through the painfully cobbled streets of Syracuse shouting “Eureka, Eureka!”
He had just connected the displacement of water from his bath with the volume of his body. Thereby solving an intractable and important problem – how to calculate the volume, and therefore the density, of an irregular object, simultaneously coining ‘the Eureka moment’.
We’ve all had this magical sensation – an epiphany, a moment of realisation. We find an idea, inside our own brains. What is going on?
Neurons are connecting with each other through synapses. Your brain is an enormous network of what Salk Institute’s Nicola Allen calls “electrically excitable cells”. These are neurons. When you form a new connection, electricity jumps from one neuron to another at “special connections” — “tiny gaps” — called synapses. These little buzzers “communicate all of your thoughts and actions”. When a number of them fire in sync, they make the chemical constellations we call ideas.
As strategists and designers, we put ideas at the heart of everything we do — therefore our work revolves around connections. We use words and images as our electricity, making leaps and links to create useful, simple and inspirational ideas. Ideas that light up brains and inspire creatives to act. We use design and storytelling to connect the conceptual with the tangible, demonstrating how an idea can come to life in a visual, experiential and verbal way. We connect an idea to reality, showing how to make it happen over time and across touchpoints.
Good strategy has no loose ends. Great strategy makes unexpected and original connections.
When good, everything connects to form a seamless whole, a tight bundle of thinking. There’s nothing unnecessary. Nothing unconnected. Nothing hanging there, fraying at the edges, waiting to be pulled, threatening to unravel in a complex tangle.
But when great, strategy connects ‘what is’ with ‘what could be’, transporting us to new possible constellations. The new connection has a captivating tension. The idea has its own energy. It overpowers us and unleashes a flood of new connections in our mind.
The problem with many ideas, especially in the imperfect commercial environment, is that they are often disconnected. A brand’s purpose may not connect with the truth. A brand’s positioning may not connect with its expression, behaviour or personality. Or the insights driving a brand may not connect with the latest reality in a fast-changing consumer space.
Very often, it’s the articulation of an idea that fails to connect. An idea, so vivid and compelling inside the creator’s mind, ends up flat on the page or the screen. Too much is lost in the translation from the private world of neurons and synapses to the public realm of words, images and experiences.
Ultimately, it’s only words, images and experiences that we have at our disposal to communicate our ideas. They are the special synapses of our culture, the buzzers that enable ideas to make the jump from one mind to another. Each and every one must count.
Ideas must be perfectly connected and beautifully articulated. When they are, they have the power to make us famous – and not just for running naked through the streets.
Written by Hugh and Jamie.
