Thursday, 13 May 2004

How do you measure the creativity of your company?

Speaker: How do you measure the creativity of your company?
Is the creative economy just a management fad? Can a good idea really add dollars to your business? How do you measure the creativity of your company?

Commentator and broadcaster Adam Spencer lead a panel of senior executives in a debate about the importance of creativity in business at City Recital Hall, Angel Place in Sydney on May 13, 2004

Among the speakers:

• Kylie Kwong, restaurateur, TV chef and author
• Steve Vamos, CEO Microsoft
• Siimon Reynolds, CEO, Love Communications
• Carla Zampatti, fashion designer
• Edmund Capon, director NSW Art Gallery
• Graham Hardy, Managing Director, Audi Australia

Transcript

THIS IS AN EDITED TRASNCRIPT OF HEAR IT FROM THE BOSS, HELD AT THE RECITAL HALL, ANGEL PLACE, SYDNEY ON MAY 13.

ADAM SPENCER: Good evening ladies and gentlemen, thanks so much for coming along to “Hear it from the Boss”, as distinct from Who's the Boss, the Tony Danza situation comedy of the 1980s that some of you might recall. Tonight, as opposed to anything featuring Tony Danza, should be both informing and entertaining. No offence to any hard core Tony Danza fans.

We examine the concept tonight of corporate creativity. What does it mean, what's it about, happy to say I don't know myself, so I've done the sensible thing when it comes to all things creative, if you are not creative yourself, surround yourself with people who genuinely are and I have handpicked six of the best to help us discuss corporate creativity this evening.

Please welcome our speakers you will be hearing from tonight, a series of set speeches, answering questions, questions from me, and then you in the audience ripping them to pieces.

First up the CEO of Microsoft Australia, Steve Vamos. Designer, fashion guru and the chair of SBS, Carla Zampatti. We have all heard the phrase I don't know much about art but I know what I like. Our next guest knows about art, knows what he likes, and isn't afraid to tell you. Director of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Edmund Capon. While we are there, let's throw in the CEO of Audi Australia, Graham Hardy. The restaurateur extraordinaire, Kylie Kwong, and one of the major players in advertising and marketing in Australia, Siimon Reynolds.

Our panel are going to examine corporate creativity in all its aspects then questions from me and questions from you.

Let's start with someone who is lucky enough to be able to refer to himself as the creative director of love. How cool would it be if you could walk up to someone in a bar and say: How are you going? I am the creative director of love. It is in fact Love Communications, Love Interactive, here to talk about corporate creativity, Siimon Reynolds.

SIIMON REYNOLDS: There's a guy and he's working in his garden and he hears this noise, and he looks over the fence and he sees that his next door neighbour's kid is digging a hole.

He's watching this for a while and he says, "hey Davey, what are you digging the hole for?" And the kid says, "Oh, I'm burying my dead goldfish, Buffy". He says "Mate, that's terrible, that's absolutely terrible.” He says, "That's a pretty big hole for a goldfish though.” He says "What are you are you doing with it?" He said "Oh, mate, it's still inside your cat.”

I only mention that because when it comes to business and creativity it is the unseen and behind the scenes issue of ideas that I think no one ever looks at and yet it is one of the absolute most important parts of business success, I believe.

When you really look at the great business successes in the world, what's normally behind it is essentially a core superb idea.

Michael Dell of Dell Computer. You know, what is he, he is still 39, and I think the 16th richest person in the world. He was making hundreds of thousands of dollars a month within the first year of his business. Why? Because he was the first person to understand selling computers by direct mail. Pure idea.

Wal-Mart: People talk about the great management success of Wal-Mart, but the first 20 years of Wal-Mart were all about opening up shopping centres in towns that all the other shopping centre companies had assumed were too small to be profitable.

You know, when we look at The Body Shop, sure she was fantastic at PR and has the whole environmental thing happening. But at the core of Anita Roddick's success was understanding that people were quite prepared to buy soaps and cosmetics in plastic bottles if there was a good story around them. The margins were huge.

Ikea: Right around the globe, Ingvar Kamprad one of the great billionaires in the Forbes 400, at the core of his idea, fully accepting hard work and accepting good management is the fact that people are quite prepared to pay for furniture they have got to build themselves.

Starbucks: Howard Schultz understanding the idea that people are prepared to pay two and a half to three times more for coffee in the right environment.

Mambo in Australia: You know how outrageous was it 20 years ago when Mambo came out with these kinds of contentious quintessential Aussie pieces of art, inherently great ideas, and I am not degrading the importance of work, or the importance of luck, or the importance of good management and leadership. All I'm saying is the world is full of companies with all of those that don't do that well, because at the heart of them they don't have an inherently great idea and if you don't have an inherently great idea in business you are forced to compete on two things, hard work and capital. You need to work your ass off and you need to get a lot of money in order to expand.

I believe the creativity is absolutely pivotal to business performance.

I think there are three primary aspects of creativity enhancement and the first is, I think, critical if we want to be great ideas generators that we believe that we are. You know, there are so many people that I speak to who say, "I am not creative at all" and really, you look at their lives and they show creativity in all kinds of ways. But if you don't believe in creativity you tend to get that result.

When you really look at the brain it's absolutely absurd to say we are not creative. If you take the Cray Supercomputer as an example, the Cray computer can do over 400 million calculations every second. That's pretty impressive. But did you know if the Cray Supercomputer works for a century at its full capacity it can only do what our brain is capable of doing in one minute.

Do you know as you are listening to me now, with each word I say, your brain goes into a file of all the times you have ever heard that word, in order to understand its meaning for this particular sentence, and it returns in time for the next word.

You see, we have this incredibly powerful machine and I think it is more than capable of coming up with let's say a new flavour for cordial, and that's the kind of mundane but often highly profitable things that a business has to come up with. Everyone is creative, particularly at the level of commerce.

I think we must schedule ideas creation. It has got to be a priority, not in your spare time when you have got a few minutes, it is has got to be perhaps the first thing you do each morning.

You know, surely one of the great industrial success stories of our era is of course IBM, founded by Thomas Watson, and it is according to folklore that right round IBM in its first 15 years was a poster that just said one word, "Think”. Watson understood the importance of a single idea to change his corporation.

Most people don't want to think. It's hard work to think. We would much rather be busy.

I think it was George Bernard Shaw who said that most people hardly think in a year. He said "I have made an international reputation for myself by thinking once or twice a week.”

Just 10 minutes as day. I often will schedule 10 minutes thinking about Love, our ad agency, 10 minutes thinking about Photon group, our group of companies and I tell you the ideas you get out of that is just extraordinary, and it is embarrassing because I realise that if I had just spent 10 minutes over the last 10 years thinking about these issues, I would be a lot further ahead than I am.

I think the important thing about scheduling creativity is it starts with questions. Asking yourself, how could I double my income? How could I become famous in the industry? How could I cut my hours in half and still make more money, and then when posed with the question one is forced, the mind is forced to answer it. Really, in many ways questions are the answer.

Finally, I think when it comes to idea generation, we must persist. Edison is said by many to be the greatest inventor in the world, and I don't think there is a more extraordinary or far-reaching invention than the light bulb. But did you know that he had over 10,000 separate experiments to create the first incandescent bulb, 10,000 failures, and according to folklore he was a long way down the track and in his laboratory, of course, he had a log where he would record the results of the experiments.

There was a junior in the office and he said, "Mr Edison, I notice that you are up to 9,322 different experiments. Are you going to go past the 10,000 mark on this light bulb thing of yours? Are you going to have over 10,000 failures?" And Edison said, "Listen here son, let me tell you something. I haven't failed almost 10,000 times to create a light bulb. I have invented over 9,300 ways not to create a light bulb.”

I remember reading an interview where he literally said, "I knew I would succeed with the light bulb because I had quite literally run out of things that wouldn't work.”

The same thing with Disney. Part of the persistence is in selling the idea. Walt Disney went to 203 banks to get the loan to start Disneyland in Anaheim.

Colonel Sanders - over 1,009 restaurants he went to before one said yes to buying his recipe.

You know a friend of mine, Bradley Trevor Greive, who wrote The Blue Day Book, every single publisher he went to in Australia wouldn't publish it and in July he is going to come up to 10 million books sold. He is probably our most successful author in history.

Persistence: And finally persistence is equated with desire, and let me finish with a story about Aristotle, the great philosopher. Apparently a student came to him one day and said to him, "Mr Aristotle, I'd like you to teach me wisdom.” He said, "You really want to learn wisdom?" And he said "Absolutely, sure.” So he took him to a horse's trough and he grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and he shoved him under the water.

Of course the first 30 seconds the guy is thinking this is the great Aristotle, philosopher, making a point here. But Aristotle didn't let him up and the guy was struggling desperately minute after minute to get up and finally, at the last moment, Aristotle ripped him out of there gasping for air and he said, "When you want wisdom as much as you want air, you'll get wisdom.”

I think that the heart of creativity is when you want great ideas as much as you want air, then you get great ideas.

ADAM SPENCER: Thank you very much Siimon Reynolds. I presume for our next speaker if you are going to put a restaurant on the market you can't have 9,300 dishes that all suck before you finally have one that tastes nice. That is certainly not the case with Kylie Kwong. Her restaurant, Billy Kwong's was described recently in the Australian Financial Review as a bijou dinner box with plastic stools, ambient jazz music, Zen floral arrangements and subdued lighting. To give her thoughts on corporate creativity, Kylie Kwong.

KYLIE KWONG: "When creativity is regarded as a magic gift there is nothing that can be done about it if you are not lucky enough to have the gift, but everyone can develop some skill in lateral thinking and those who develop the most skill will be the most creative.” Those are the words from Edward de Bono and that's from Lateral Thinking For Management.

He also says, "There is a great deal of rubbish written about creativity, because like motherhood it is automatically a good thing. I treat creativity as a logical process rather than a matter of talent or mystique. The term creativity is too general, too vague, too full of artistic connotations and too value laden. Indeed, many creative people are not creative at all.”

Good evening everyone. I do agree with de Bono because creativity is not the right of the privileged few. I really believe that everyone can be creative and the more creative we are the higher our productivity level is.

When I think about creativity, creativity to me means bringing something into formal being out of nothing. It is about bringing something into existence by way of imagination. To me it is about developing and shaping and initiating. I mean, it's wonderful.

I asked myself about the steps in the creative process and I find that quite difficult to answer because of the very nature of creativity itself.

When I was thinking about tonight and I was looking at different areas of my life where one was creative, whether it is a writing a recipe or coming up with a new menu for my books, or my restaurant, or whether it is creating a new way to tackle a particular staff issue at the restaurant, whether it's working on new ways in which to conduct certain areas of my life, basically when I am creating I feel or I see that there is a process and the more I look at it, there are patterns to that.

To tell you what I mean, to demonstrate that, I want to give you an example. A few weeks ago I was dining at Stephanie Alexander's restaurant in Melbourne and I was sitting next to Colin Beer. Colin Beer is the partner of Maggie Beer, the wonderful food and wine providores from the Barossa Valley in South Australia.

They were speaking, as they always do, particularly passionately about their produce, their commitment to the best quality produce in the land and in particular that night they were talking about their game birds.

On the menu that might at Stephanie's was partridge. I must tell you I have never eaten partridge before. I have never thought about eating partridge before, because there are so many other things I have been eating, and I certainly haven't thought about putting partridge on the menu in my very Chinese restaurant. I mean cooking partridge Chinese style is absolutely unheard of. What I was tuning into though, when my sparks did begin to fly, was when I was tuning into the absolute energy and passion they were talking about. They were partridges, you know. I wanted to hear more of it.

I sidled up besides Colin. He is so cute anyway. I sidled up besides him, asking him more and more questions about this product. In the back of my mind I was thinking, I just want some of Maggie and Colin's magic in the restaurants. I started getting all feverish and speaking very quickly.

After a few phone calls later and a few weeks later these wonderful partridges arrived at Billy Kwong. The weekend before they arrived my chefs and I were filled with sheer excitement because this wonderful new product was coming. The day they arrived there was an absolute riot in Crown Street. The wonderful boxes with all of Maggie Beer's beautiful labelling arrived. These lovely plump, fresh, organic, free range birds arrived.

We are running around the restaurant, my chefs and I. Are we going to braise them? Are we going to poach them? Are we going to marinate them in Schezuan pepper and salt overnight and steam them? And then I said, "I was reading Maggie's book today and she said you have got to cook the legs longer because partridge legs are longer and, you know, they are they are more muscly and they take three times as long.”

This was a wonderful afternoon. There was high energy. We were highly excited. There was tasting and testing and cutting and chopping and observing and recording, but what I am trying to say is this wonderful injection of spark and energy which that gave us that afternoon, that's how it is for me. That's how I begin this creative process. It begins with a spark. I got the spark that night with Colin and Maggie at Stephanie's.

I also try to allow my mind to dream and bend and I try to let go of any preconceived ideas. Just because I have never had partridges before didn't mean I was going to rule them out. I think at that point, that point of where one is open, that is so important because when we are open to new things that allows the magic and the light and the innovation and the ideas to come through.

I also need to be relatively comfortable when I'm creating. By that I mean not feeling frightened or threatened or intimidated at all. That night at Stephanie's I felt very comfortable. It is a lovely dimly lit space. There is lots of wood. There is flesh flowers. There is a lovely warm vein running through the restaurant. I felt comfortable. I think you need to sense and feel where the energy is. When something is good we just want more of it. We start talking quickly. You start tapping your feet and it lifts your mood up and you want more of it. I think it is called inspiration. We navigate our way through the world via our intuition and our feelings so if something feels good, you know, God that's good, I just want more of it.

I want to investigate it. If it doesn't feel right we say I don't know about that, and we get a hunch and we proceed with caution. Our antenna comes out. Sometimes this is a problem, or it is a problem, we become so busy and our life is so noisy that we don't always listen, we don't always hear, and that's where this openness comes into it.

I love to turn my head inside out and upside down all the time. I really like doing that when I am creating, not that one wants to reinvent the wheel. But it is more about what de Bono was saying, what he talks about, this wonderful lateral thinking, starting off with these sparks, these initial ideas, and even creative people need to do work as well.

A creative idea is not a creative application without that part of the process being complete. So from that initial spark that I felt on that night, I jot down the spark and I explore the spark and I develop it and I refine and I refine the spark. So on the menu last night was the first night I hand wrote the specials at Billy Kwong, Colin and Maggie Beer's Free Range Partridges, red braised, caramelised and then served with Schezuan pepper and salt and fresh lemon. The process all worked for us.

We were all open to each other's creativity and spark and wonderful energy, you know, from Kylie, Colin, Maggie, my chefs, my waiters and mostly and most importantly, my customers. They came in that night, into the restaurant, bowled over by the sheer excitement and energy of this wonderful new idea, this wonderful partridge. They couldn't help but have it. It was a win/win situation. We were all open to each other.

That's why creativity is so wonderful. I feel so passionately about bringing things into existence through thinking laterally. There is nothing more amazing than creativity at its highest. This is pure soul food to me. It is long lasting nourishment and I don't regard this magic, as I said before, as an exclusive gift.

As de Bono said, everyone can have this openness. This openness is accessible to everyone and the more open we are, the more creative we are, the higher our output will be and the more meaningful our life will be.

Creative intelligence is not the luxury of the privileged few. It is a necessity for all individuals and for all organisations to move forward.

ADAM SPENCER: Thank you very much Kylie. Under his 25 years stewardship, the Art Gallery of New South Wales has transformed amazingly. We were backstage just before the show talking about how on a Wednesday night a couple of weeks ago between five in the afternoon and nine at night over 5,000 people passed through the Art Gallery of New South Wales to see a series of talks, displays, eat meals, et cetera and an amazing transformation, an amazing institution headed up by an amazing person.

I would like to ask a personal of question of you, Edmund Capon. What does corporate creativity mean to you?

EDMUND CAPON: Could you first slightly rephrase the question because corporate doesn't really mean anything to us. What does institutional creativity mean perhaps might be better..

There are a number of things. Firstly, let's think about what we are. We are an institution that is devoted to creativity. That's our life. That's why we are there. We have on the walls of the gallery the material manifestations of people's creativity and I think that immediately creates an atmosphere in which people want to think. They want to be inspired and they want to respond to and in a way they want to actually be part of that creative process and that's why people work there for Heaven's sake. That's why people come there.

There are two things which actually create the environment now of a public art museum, which adds to its creativity.

The first thing, and I think this is crucial, is a commitment to the institution and what it's about. I think most people come and work at a place like the Art Gallery of New South Wales because they really believe in it and they want to be there and they want to work there. That immediately sets them on a pattern of wanting to make it better and more interesting.

The other thing is a slightly odd one and I was thinking about it just now. It is actually we live in quite a competitive environment and artists are competitive.

Today we have the Archibald. Don't tell me they are not competitive. The Archibald is a classic example of a competitive spirit. The institution itself a competitive. We can't just sit there and do nothing. We have actually got to work for our audience. We have got to work for everything and we have got to work for our place in people's minds and imaginations.

That sense of competitiveness actually sort of creates a sort of collegiate atmosphere of creativity in the building.

We were talking just before about creativity and innovation and I actually draw a distinction between the two. There is a lot of innovation. Creativity is a product of the abstract. It is a product of the imagination. Innovation, I think, is actually using those exploits of the imagination but real creativity is, I suppose, what we are dealing with.

We are dealing with the creative imaginations and spirits and minds of artists and it is the innovation that we can apply to that in bringing it to the audiences which I think is probably the most important part of our sort of institutional creative sort of process, and there are ample ways to do it.

As I said, we are surrounded by creativity of varying degrees of excellence from the sublime to the ridiculous, as we know, and yet that whole atmosphere, I think, is one in which a natural creativity is born and inspired.

I always say to all the staff all the time that the great thing is you can have the most wonderful museums in the world with the most fantastic buildings and you go to Italy which has the most beautiful buildings, wonderful collections, but the spirit inside the building is dead and it happens, you know.

I always say to people that what's creating the atmosphere, and that's part of the creative process, is the people who work in the building. You are the people who actually give life to that building and to the art on the walls and make it a welcoming place and that needs creative thinking all the time and it needs those two things.

It needs that edge of saying let's do something better and secondly, that wonderful commitment to what our business is, of being a public art museum so that's, I think, the sort of idea about our institutional creativity.

Thankfully we are in a business where the horizons for creativity are absolutely endless.

ADAM SPENCER: Our next keynote speaker is going to give us a brief address before we move through to questions. He was recently referred to in a Sydney Morning Herald article as having worked in a variety of cultures over the last 15 or so years from the command and control model of IBM, through to the collegiality of Apple, through to the new age field of ninemsn, and is now in a change of culture of Microsoft from being a deliverer of products to a satisfier of consumers. You have worked in a broad area, a broad range of areas, what are your thoughts on creativity, Steve Vamos?

STEVE VAMOS: Well good evening. I want to start by asking you whether you have ever been afraid to tell the boss what you think, because it might be different to what they think. I can remember being in a very senior role and having my boss scream down the phone at me "don't think, just do.” Have you ever been unsure of where the business you are in or the organisation you are part of is heading? You are sitting in the organisation looking up and wondering where are we going and why, why are we here. Have you ever been in a department or in a role where you have felt second class? Maybe some people in the IT department, the HR department, a sales department of a product company, or maybe a marketing department of a sales company.

I remember when I joined IBM I joined in the mini computer division and Simon mentioned Thomas Watson Snr, the founder of the company, was a visionary, although his vision was that there was a world market for about, I think it was, six or seven computers, so it was a long time ago.

I joined in a new part of the business which was counter culture, mini computers, not the big giant computers that the company was renowned for making. I remember ringing someone who worked in the main frame area, the big computer division, to talk about a common customer that we had. I will never forget the sort of hand over the phone and the muffled sort of voice that picked up when they were trying to track down the person I wanted to talk to, who said, "Hey, it’s Vamos from the toy factory on the phone, do you want to talk to him?"

Have you ever been told to mind your business because you are asking someone about something related to what you are doing, but not necessarily in your area of control or responsibility? Actually I think that I have got one distinction of having been fired by my agency, my ad agency, because I dared to question or suggest ideas to the creative director on our account. It was a fascinating experience. I was sitting there saying, "hang on a minute, I'm the client.” I don't get that.

The words were, this is the creative director saying to me, "I knew it was over when you suggested some potential ideas for the way we went with the creative.” I think you have got to really watch people who think they are immune from being questioned because of their credentials or position.

Finally, have you ever been in contact with people in your organisation that withhold information or knowledge because that's part of their power and protecting their power base?

I will never forget in the very early days of ninemsn, which was only 1998, and a group of guys came in to talk about something that had gone terribly wrong. When they got to the end of the description of what went wrong, one of the directors of the company slammed the table and said, "I knew it wasn't going to work.”

I was quite taken aback. I turned and I said "What do you mean you knew it wasn't going to work? Why didn't you say something?" He said, "well, last time I tried to tell them what I really thought they wouldn't listen to me and they told me to mind my own business, and so I thought well, I'm not going to give them any information any more.”

This sort of stuff happens and this is the fabric or the behaviours that really breaks down and gets in the way of corporate creativity.

To me corporate creativity is about people being able to contribute more than they ever thought possible individually, but together to rally help an organisation quickly change and adopt and always develop to bring a better outcome for its customers, and through better ways of doing business, better profitability for the owners of the business. It is really just about that. It is working together to create the best outcome, keeping pace with change and looking after your customers.

It is not just an individual thing, it is a collective thing, and probably one point that might be a little bit contentious is that ideas are incredibly important. There is no question that a vision, a great idea, is the foundation of successful businesses. But many times at ninemsn where we started with 10 to 15 ideas and weren't executing any of the them well, and I keep getting phone calls from board member saying why don't you do this, why don't you do that, look at the opportunity, I coined the term idea de jour and I said to the board members leave me alone I've got more ideas than I can deal with for the next three years.

Whilst ideas are fundamental you can be distracted and you have to make sure the ideas are aligned with a purpose and you will have to at times say no, great idea but no, because it will distract us from the few things that we want to do very well.

Finally, how do you really drive corporate creativity? The first is leadership that doesn't need to have the answers but is committed to creating the environment where people find the right answers. It is about sensational teamwork at the top where no member of the team is second class, second rate,.

Jim Collins in his book, Good to Great, talks about that style of leadership, level 5 leadership is what he calls it, where the leadership team puts their collective good and the business's good ahead of their individual areas of particular interest or responsibility.

The third thing is the purpose that was talked about, the vision, the strategy, that is really simple and clear that really translates into what is important. Everyone has to understand what is important to the organisation they are working with, otherwise there isn't a context for creativity that is really going to result in good outcomes for customers and the business.

That leads then to the connection that every person needs to be connected to it and perhaps the most basic example is if someone's job, and this doesn’t happen all that often today, but if someone's job is stamping a form, you want that person to look at the stamp and question, is this the best stamp, and to look at the form, can it be better? In fact, do I need to do this? Why are we doing this? Is there a better way?

It doesn't matter how basic the responsibility is, if there is a context that allows them to question, you then have the basis for some good ideas and creativity coming up through the organisation.

Finally, most importantly, a culture of trust. A culture of trust where you share knowledge, where you care about the "we" not "me", and essentially build love in the management team and in the business and it can be done, and it is not that kind of love that you are thinking about, but it is a special kind of love, so thanks for the opportunity.

ADAM SPENCER: Given that he is now the chief executive officer of Microsoft in Australia we can say Vamos from the toy factory has done all right. Congratulations.

We have not one but two major players in the Australian automotive industry on the panel. We will be hearing soon from Graham Hardy. He is in charge of Audi in Australia. But we also have Carla Zampatti. What's the link? In 1985 Carla Zampatti was the first woman ever asked by a car company to come in and help design a car that was being made for women. At that time it was all just guys telling chicks what they wanted when it came to cars.

The 1985 Ford Laser and the 1986 Ford Laser that Carla helped design were massive successes but in particular you also you also worked in fashion and design in those areas. What does creativity and corporate creativity mean to you, Carla?

CARLA ZAMPATTI: Firstly, I started as a designer when I started my business and I thought creativity happened only in product, but what I have found as I grew more successful was that there was a lot of creative input in running a business, in thinking up ways of marketing your product, of staying ahead of the competition.

For instance, I was probably the first designer to have a boutique. I used to design, manufacture and wholesale and be frustrated by buyers, so I said I'm going to have a boutique in my head office in Surry Hills. Surry Hills at that time was completely out of the way, but people came because the product was good and I learnt a lot about customer service and what people liked.

You talked about teamwork. That is how it happens in our organisation. No one has exclusivity on good ideas. The whole team does come forward with ideas and I think that's really important. You have to have an environment in an organisation that creates products or creates programs.

I find this at SBS. People respond to opportunities to express their ideas so there has to be an environment where people can feel free, feel encouraged to come forward with their ideas.

ADAM SPENCER: Let me ask you, Graham Hardy, of all the people here you are possibly dealing in the most sort of limited base product. You guys make cars and cars are pretty much cars. You are not going to have the sort of revolution of a laptop computer or some of the stuff, wireless connection within cars. How are you creative in that sort of business? Does that place strictures on the sorts of creativity you need? Does it make the need to be creative possibly even more important?

GRAHAM HARDY: The challenge we face, and I guess our industry, is perhaps a little bit different to some on the stage here tonight, and certainly yes, a car is a car is a car but I think I need to share one of ours with you, Adam, I think, to give you some insight there.

Really, it is an industry which is I think very, very mature in its life cycle and it is also driven, because it's a product which has been, I guess, mastered is the way to talk about it. And it's an industry which is really driven by volume and therein lies, I think, the start of the challenge that we face, is that there is a worldwide capacity to produce cars of about 55 to 60 million and there is worldwide demand for cars of about 45 to 50 million and therein lies the first problem.

I guess the motor industry was one of the first to come up with a concept of marginal production, where once it exhausted your natural market, that it made sense to produce cars even if you didn't make a lot of profit on them, if they simply assisted. If you could recover the costs and cover some of your contribution and overhead it made sense to produce them.

That's the reality, I think, of what we face today. It is an industry that is really characterised by huge overproduction and that leads to being very sales driven and market driven in the sense of eking out the next marginal sale, really characterises our industry around the world.

I think working for a German car company just in terms of corporate cultures I think those guys perfected the concept of command and control in terms of a management style. I think it is very much the way of the auto industry, but certainly the German car business is a very, very simple one. You have your sales targets and the first question if you are behind in them is why are you behind and secondly, what are you going to do about it?

I guess that's why where I got my first look into creativity, coming up with the answers as to what's the problem. You have to be quite inventive.

At the moment towards our Audi colleagues, things are not going that well in Australia from a political point of view, and there are a lot of challenges and the housing market is softening and you have got to be very, very creative. I think it is characteristic of it.

We were also chatting about market share. We asked Steve what his market share was and he said well, in operating systems in computers it is around 80 per cent and I thought well, that's interesting, interesting business. We in the unique position about 99.5 cars sold every month are brands other than Audi.

Our footprint here, if I can use that phrase, is not big and one of the challenges that we face is actually who is Audi and where are Audis built … our first challenge is to survive with half a per cent market share in a market which I think is of the most competitive in the world and that really takes no prisoners and it is a very, very tough environment and survival and growth become our sort of departure point.

Thinking about the word creativity I am thinking what am I trying to create and what is our team trying to create in terms of Audi in Australia. I think the very, very first thing we tried to create is demand. That, with half a per cent share and 300 to 400 vehicle sales a month it is not enough. You haven't got the traction that you need. You haven't got the purchase that you need in the marketplace.

To create demand is the very point of departure where we come into the business and the second question then is well, how, and this is where, looking at the marketplace, where we have attempted to try something, and an approach which is perhaps different in not in the true sense of pure innovation, but through trying to do the business differently because we have a premium brand.

It operates right at the top end of the market. Our reference competitor is BMW. They have a longer history here and a very big car park and an entrenched image, and they are a competitor that we are trying to take share from, BMW, Mercedes Benz, and the one thing that is crystal clear in this market, it has become clear over time because of the issue of over capacity in the world production and the oversupply of cars into the market, that nine out of 10 cars are sold on the basis of price.

When all else fails and you are behind your sales targets, I invite you all to open the Sydney Morning Herald on Saturday morning and just read those two sections called Drive and virtually without exception it will be an autumn sale, or a clearance sale, or a financial year end sale, or factory bonuses or free equipment, free finance schemes, one third down now, one third in a year's time, and so on.

It really has come, and in a way I won't call it innovation, but it is very, very price driven and how many different ways can you choose to discount your cars? It is the biggest game in town, yet if we go down that road it is literally the kiss of death because we are aspiring to be premium and one of the very first reasons is you don't want to be asked why you chose a particular brand or have people think that you did because it was on special and they couldn't sell them, and it is a discount and a great deal. So our approach really is to try and take the longer term view in an industry which is driven by short term sales targets and try to build the Audi brand to a position where it matches the price positioning that we have, to Audi and where it matches the product excellence, and it is a story that is yet untold in the Australian market in terms of sales targets.

I think in coming to Australia the first visual lesson I got of this business, I stayed in a hotel in Darling Harbour and every single morning at 6am a car carrier docks and this is just Sydney. There of course is one in Melbourne and Perth and so on. Every single morning it looks like a moving block of flats parks there and disgorges its contents, hundreds of vehicles on to the quayside and during the next couple of days they are all whisked away, but its berth is taken the next day and the next day by another car carrier, so there is one that is one day out of Sydney, two days, three days, four days, all the way back.

Our shipping time from Germany is four weeks for example. So every single day car carriers dock. They disgorge their contents and they move out. Somehow they move out in the market to the dealers and must be sold.

I guess in an industry as mature and as competitive and as harsh as the car business, I think that this road that we are travelling is a difficult one.

I was in Germany last week and had, as I mentioned, some quite interesting debates. We were reviewing all of our advertising. A lot of it is pretty good. It is brand building communication as opposed to sales driven, and my German, the man who commands and controls me at this point in time said, "This is all marvellous stuff but we don't want to see you guys die in beauty.” I think that's his concept. In other words, put the numbers on the board and maybe save some of that stuff for a rainy day.

That's the challenge and certainly there is never a dull moment.

ADAM SPENCER: I will get a quick comment from Kylie on some of the things that Carla was touching on in particular and Graham there. One of the things, it seems, with creativity is if in a field you do something genuinely creative and it captures the public, and you probably have some of this too Steve, I presume your competitors start copying and other competitors spring up. When you started a few years ago, the contemporary Asian Australian cuisine was a fairly new thing. That's a fairly competitive market now. You are in Surry Hills which used to be well out of the way according to Carla. It is the place of pace now? It is where it is all happening now?

KYLIE KWONG: It is. I mean Crown Street, Surry Hills is one of the best eat streets in Sydney, as you know. As I was saying to Adam before, over the last year or 18 months I think I counted at least eight new modern Asian eateries opening up in Crown Street, so that keeps me on my toes and it is about how am I going to keep my business better than everyone else's? How are we going to keep Billy Kwong cutting edge?

ADAM SPENCER: That is eight direct competitors have opened up on the same street?

KYLIE KWONG: Absolutely, on the same street, from Oxford Street to Cleveland Street

ADAM SPENCER: What do you do?

KYLIE KWONG: What do we do? What do I do, I try to remain very focussed on what is real. I think Carla was touching on it before and so was Steve, it is like this internal integrity. People are going to feel it, so I do that by constantly sourcing out the best quality produce.

With the staff, absolutely the most important thing. About treating them as people. You know, we are people. We need to treat our staff as people. When I say people I mean we are multi dimensional people. We have a mind, body and a spirit. We are complex. We are not robots or machines, so taking time to get to know our staff when they begin. New staff. Learning what makes them tick. Learning what Hamish loves to do. Learning what Denile loves to do. Learning what Lisa loves to do. What is particular to them, and then steering them in that direction within my business.

Obviously before I hire them I have a set role that I need to fulfil in the business. I have this list of words that I created about four years ago. It is like the Billy Kwong template and it came about four years ago when we were designing the restaurant and I had a very hazy image of what I wanted the restaurant to look like physically. I couldn't visualise it but I knew very strongly, I knew very clearly and strongly about what I wanted people to feel when they walked in the door. That's the way I navigate myself through the world. I knew what I wanted the atmosphere to be. I knew what I wanted you to have, as a customer there, when you came in, the experience. Instead of giving Chen Liu a design brief? I'm not very good at those things and I don't really connect with them, I can't relate to them? I gave him three pages of all of these words that I used to describe this feeling and energy I wanted there and he then took them away and interpreted them in the way that he did, and some of the words on this list are traditional yet contemporary, simple, humble, energetic, generous, ever-changing, individual, artistic, and so on.

When I hire people I have this list of words running through my mind. It's like the Billy Kwong template. It's like my measuring stick. It is like a guide. It's like our back bone. When I'm hiring people I speak to them face to face for a long time and if they embody a large percentage of these words, these qualities rather, then things are looking good.

Whether I am sourcing a new provedore for my chickens or for the hand picked herbs, or whether I am using a particular florist or whatever, they all have these qualities about them, and I really love that and that's what I think is very important about keeping your staff happy, and the internals and the integrity of the place happy and dynamic and that in turn attracts and creates the same type of people and people keep coming back to the business. People can smell integrity and quality a mile off and they love that. It's a caring attitude.

People love to work in this environment because it makes them happy. There is no point in putting square pegs into round holes. I don't like making people do a job that they are not very good at. There is no point. They might be able to do it but it is a struggle.

I want my workers, my staff, to come to work and enjoy it. I don't want them to feel like it is a labour. When they enjoy it they produce better products. Their creativity is up. Their life becomes more meaningful and so it is a wonderful cycle. The customers taste it, they feel it, they sense it, they come back. Kylie is happy because her business is going on. When Kylie is happy her staff are happy and all of this.

EDMUND CAPON: You (the audience) live in a very creative community. I could not believe it. This year in the Archibald alone there were 732 paintings, so there are 732 portrait painters beavering away out there, and thousands of others. It is really quite daunting. I sometimes think I want to put a slight halt on creativity, if you don't mind.

I really do believe that creativity is not something that resides in everybody. I think that by creating what we have got to do, and you have to do, and everybody here has to do, is to create an environment in which creativity can flourish if it exists. If the seeds of creativity are sown, they will flourish.

ADAM SPENCER: How do we do that? You were talking about scheduling creativity, Siimon. What, you set aside minutes in everybody's working day?

SIIMON REYNOLDS: Yes, I really believe that. If you analysed and did a time and motion study about the amount of minutes that we did, actually generated ideas, it would be under 10 a week and for many people it would be under 10 a month, and for millions 10 a year, and no wonder you don't have any idea at the end of a certain period of time.

Now, let's say that you are an average idea creator but you spend ten times longer generating ideas per year than someone who is twice as good as you. Well, your total output will be vastly greater both in number, and I would argue quality, because the real trick to creativity is to come up with a lot of bad ideas and you have one good idea and everybody goes this person is such a genius, but really they have got the world's biggest waste baskets.

ADAM SPENCER: What about intelligence and creativity?Do you have to be intelligent to be creative and the other way around? Anyone on the panel?

SIIMON REYNOLDS: I think intelligence stops a lot of creativity because the analytical factor comes in too early and one of the great examples of this is Edward de Bono's provocative operations technique. What he often does is he will say something nonsensical in order to get to a result.

For instance, when he was working for Ford he said cars should have square wheels and of course everybody at Ford said that's ludicrous and he said, maybe not. At least no one will fall asleep at the wheel. As a result of that they started to work on techniques to keep people awake in cars.

When he was working for Boeing he said planes should fly upside down. And they said that's just stupid, what do we pay this guy for? What would be good about that? Well, the pilots would be really close to the ground and they could see when they land. When you think about that, you say why isn't the cockpit at the bottom?

When you are too intelligent you get too analytical too fast and you destroy the little germinations.

EDMUND CAPON: I think the greatest impediments to creativity are firstly bureaucracy and secondly consensus. I mean, I think creativity is the great experiment of the individual. Long may it live, I say, in the individual.

ADAM SPENCER: Let me ask, across the different fields in which you operate, because I was studying pure mathematics at university and if as a pure mathematician you have not created a work of world wide significance by about age 28, you probably won't. If you have done one by then you can lead fields for 20 or 50 years, but very few mathematicians hit the world stage at age 37 for the very first time anyone has ever heard about them.

In that sort of field you have got to be smart but young enough to have not been limited and just say why don't we try and solve it that way. Look, it turns out that is the correct way.

Across each of you, is there an age at which creativity peaks? Is it a field in which some people have short bursts of creativity and then fall off the pace?

EDMUND CAPON: A long way ahead. Look, Picasso was a towering, randy, genius at the age 80 and you know, I am looking forward to it.

ADAM SPENCER: Steve, when most people think about computer programming, and particularly writing code and software you think of some spotty faced 16 year old kid who is fuelled on Red Bull, pizza and modified pictures of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. In IT, and that broad industry, is there a peak age? When are people at their most creative?

STEVE VAMOS:Well, I don't hang out with guys like that for a start. I think that it depends on what environment you work in. I think in some areas there is a burnout factor and I think in others there isn't, and certainly one of the areas that surprises me is how in this whole environment of dealing with change and volatility in an industry like ours, and the way that the world is changing that life experience, is something that you just grow so much from. There is actually a great book called Leading Change and in the book it really talks about how because of this fast changing environment, the human experience, the maturity, and the ability to deal and have seen things before is becoming a more and more important factor in success in management. They are talking about growth through your 40s and 50s and 60s and whatever, whereas probably over the last 20 years it is more trendy to say it is all over by the time you are 30, so it depends on what role you are in. The burnout factor is one, but it is also to what extent is your role about people and life experience and bringing things together that perhaps come from disparate areas.

ADAM SPENCER: In fashion, Carla, is someone genuinely creative at age 19 or do you need to have worked in places and sampled the industry?

CARLA ZAMPATTI: I think you become better. You have to have ideas at 19, but I think you develop skills and look at Coco Chanel. She was 70 and still designing, I'm very happy to say, which means that you can, like in art, you can if you are really good, continue to be creative.

In fashion it is a renewal every six months. You have to come up with a brand new idea because people don't want to buy what they bought from you the last six months, so it really does mean that your mind is thinking about new things all the time and I think that keeps you very young, but experience makes your skills much, much better, so I think although you are really good at say 20, you can be very creative, I think you are probably are not at your top until mid thirties to 40 and on, and if you are really good, if you love the element of change, if you love the excitement of having to come up with a whole bunch of new ideas every six months, then there is a renewal with each six months.

SIMON REYNOLDS: I think you need a certain amount of years to immerse yourself in the structures of the creativity of your business. Like in advertising, you have got to learn structures in fashion. There are certain ways of cutting you have got to learn. Creativity is a bit like a ladder. People think you go to the top rung. Really it is quite a disciplined step, but there are spaces in between when there is nothing, anything could happen in there, and then you get to another structure and then you get to another structure.

The great Japanese inventor, Yoshiro Nakamatsu, who is still alive and in many ways I think he has over twice the patents of Thomas Edison, invented the digital watch, the floppy disk and all that kind of stuff, he said that he believes the first 10 years of anyone's schooling should just be the immersion of facts and then you have got a whole lot of data, a whole lot of clay with which you can work. I think regarding burnout it is really just lack of motivation. It is not age lead. It is often these people who were hungry and desperate to change the world, suddenly they have a nice house, they have a nice salary, they have got respect and they just get soft, and so the actual generation of ideas begins to cease and finally the trick is as you get more experience, the hardest thing is to stay open. It is like that great Zen saying: “In the beginner's mind there are many options, in the expert's only few.”

CARLA ZAMPATTI:In fashion, it is like a journey, it never stops. The minute you think you have arrived, I think that's when it stops. Really, as long as you think you have never, ever reached your peak and you have to improve on what you have done in the past, you have to be better than what you were yesterday, then you will keep growing and you will be strong, but I have seen many young designers feel they have arrived, the same issue that Simon raised, the comfortable kind of situation, motor car and house, and they think now I am famous I can relax and that's the end of that business, it stops.

ADAM SPENCER: Steve and Graham, you are both CEOs. You can't go any higher. Surely now you are going to relax and get soft?

STEVE VAMOS: I think what Siimon said is spot on. It is openness and motivation. Kylie talked a lot about being open and open-minded. The most graphic thing for me about that was when I was in my late teens sitting in a car with my father on the way to university, I would try to change the channel to get him to listen to seventies metal music. He wouldn't have a bar of it, would not have a bar of it, and I can still remember the frustration he would not even expose himself to it. When I am with my teenage daughters in the car I will never say that's garbage, I don't want to listen to it. I will give it a go because why not, why not stay open to new things, and I think that is fundamental.

GRAHAM HARDY: I think it is a quite a profound issue and the sort of characteristics that are being described, it can be the death of creativity in organisations. As you get older and you move up the ladder, particularly as you get responsibility, there are so many companies that are managed on a very short term basis, quarterly sales results, quarterly targets, and those become the issues and the burning fire and the passion of younger people has to be harnessed and cultivated because all of those youngsters are typically reporting in somehow through a structure to the kinds of mind sets that we are describing here, and how to keep that going, to be able to encourage it and let it flourish and not stop and die on the pre set minds made up: This is what we are doing, you are paid to not kind of think about things, just do as I tell you. That is the death of creativity.

All too often we forget when people join our organisations how excited they are. They have chosen our company and they have a lot of talent and can it survive our management process. Can it survive in our organisation? Is it something which is slowly but surely going to get stifled and that is not the way we do things around here, this is what you do.

We fall into that trap so easily as we think we see the bigger picture and the bigger agenda and this is important. Meanwhile we get out of touch with the youth and the energy and the ideas and don't do enough, I think, to create an environment where that can really blossom and be encouraged as a direction for the business, as opposed to the hard numbers and concrete objectives and concrete achievements. Create and make new.

ADAM SPENCER: Steve, I read an interesting point you made about harnessing the ability of the group and you said you did that well, you thought, at ninemsn but how to deal with an individual who might be really creative but night not work in the interests of the organisation as a whole. Tell us about that dilemma.

STEVE VAMOS: Well, the dilemma sometimes is that you have got a fantastic tennis player on the team but you are playing soccer, and it is not that that person isn't great at what they do, but it is not what the team needs, so designing the ninemsn home page we had a fabulous designer that could come up with great concepts, but it wasn't functional. It wasn't written to the brief.

The company needed to balance marketing and technical. You couldn't actually technically build it, so there were some fundamental issues, and we had to sit down and have a chat about the fact that when you got direction from the technical people and others, you didn't get all offended and upset by that and it wasn't encroaching on your creative ability but it was a business need.

We had a very happy conversation about the fact that around here it is going to be about team approach to the broad balanced business need in the creative process and he said "I don't want to work in a company like that". We said "great", we shook hands and said goodbye. The point is if you make it very clear what you expect? I think Kylie's words are fabulous, if you can articulate what the environment is, representing the organisation that you are part of, then what you will find is people will opt out.

The smart ones, they are generally good people but don't fit the culture but will say you know what, this isn't for me. It is not that I am bad or they are bad, it is just we don't suit each other. It is really so important if you can actually define and have your words then you will find a lot of those tricky ones that people are good at what they do, but they just don't fit in and will say "now I know what you want that's not what I want" and they will move on.

ADAM SPENCER: Siimon, do you often get a brief, look at it and say yeah we could get this and we could get the money, it is just I wouldn't want to do it. It is not what we do, or do you challenge yourself to take on if someone wants something advertised and they want it dealt with a certain way, how do you deal with that?

SIIMON REYNOLDS: First of all, you know in the case of say cigarettes or something that is clearly dangerous, we would never do it. Quite often though we will meet a client that just wants work that is not our core expertise and there is two parts of our business. We want to do ads that sell products and we also in addition to that want to enjoy challenging work...We think actually the way of making more money is just to fall in love with doing great work, to create great case studies and even though it is counter-intuitive, you think maybe you will go broke that way, we attract a style of client that wants someone passionate and exactly as you say, we repel everybody else without even trying.

ADAM SPENCER: Is that your brand slogan, we repel most potential customers?

SIMON REYNOLDS: I think that the most important thing as a company and as a person in business it to be a lighthouse, shine clearly, and let other people navigate their way towards you or around you.

ADAM SPENCER: Okay. I will take a couple of questions. They might be to individuals on the panel or to individuals as a whole.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: My question is just back to the one you just asked then about teams and Mavericks and things like that, because it seems to me there is a bit of a conflict between, for example, the sorts of creative people that Edmund represents, artists, and then we can think about authors and composers and people like that who would detest working really in a team. I sometimes wonder if corporations don't fall into the mistake of using the word team when they really mean committee, and we all know that committees are the death of creativity. The trouble is real creative ideas need a mother a father. They need a parent. They need an individual who cares about them and nurtures them. Teams, unless they are extraordinary, tend to create orphans in my opinion.

CARLA ZAMPATTI: I have to say I have a wonderful team but my creative work is done at home away from my team, and then I take it to my team and we all share it, and they have an input but I guess a mother or father probably is necessary. There has to be a team leader because otherwise it is a committee and it is not about a committee. Somebody has to make the final decision.

EDMUND CAPON: I think I said earlier that I regard consensus as a great impediment to creativity and I believe that because, to me, creativity is the manifestation of an individual. I really believe that's where creativity belongs and from where it stems, and in a sense you might need the team in order to realise it. But really the ownership of that creative moment is the inspiration and the imagination of an individual and in our business you are right, we have got a whole lot of contending creative spirits all beavering away in the gallery and all contending for space. Of course they do and that's why, in a sense, if you are in a creative environment you are absolutely going to be in a slightly competitive one as well.

ADAM SPENCER: Kylie, I have seen My Restaurant Rules. What's it like managing? You get out and get passionate individuals in a restaurant and you have people working under extreme deadlines from time to time. How do you manage the marriage, the sort of discipline that is needed there but also the creative flair?

KYLIE KWONG: I don't overwork them and, like I said before, I treat them as people, making sure that the working environment is very conducive to loveliness and creativity so they want to come there every day. For example, when we do our preparation in the afternoons between two and five we don't open during the day time, we only open during the evenings. There is about five chefs each day and we all stand around this lovely central kitchen bench, which is specifically designed to reflect a kitchen at home. I wanted it to be homey.

When I was designing the restaurant I wanted it to be a bit like you are going to Aunty Kylie's for dinner every night. It has a homely feeling, so naturally people feel comfortable there and the five of us stand around this central bench and we are all facing each other. There is no one hiding in the corner peeling bags of potatoes all year.

It is very interactive and very warm, I guess, and we talk about last night's service. We talk about the fish that has just come in. We talk about ideas that we would like to put on the menu. We talk about restaurants that we have been to and so on. It's all about involving your staff, making them feel a part of it, I guess, is what I am trying to say. We all know how much we feel, how filled up when our boss acknowledges us and takes notice of us, and we all make a difference. All the staff there make an absolute difference.

ADAM SPENCER: How do you make your workplace more conducive to creativity? Any tips?

SIIMON REYNOLDS: One thing we do all the time is applaud creativity and that needs to be structured, so one of the things we do, and there is a few people in the agency here who will laugh at this, but we have this idea of the week competition and every Monday at about 9.30 there is a big bit of butcher's paper and you have got to say what ideas did you come up with for clients that week. It is really interesting. It is very funny because everybody has to sell their idea. At the end of it, if they win they have this “I” on a pedestal that sits on their desk for the rest of the week. There is also a bit of pressure because if a few weeks have gone past and you haven't actually got an idea on the board, you kind of feel it, you know what I mean, and if we didn't have that system in there constantly, and if you came into our agency now there is a few things on the butcher's paper, but if you come in on a Monday it is empty. If we didn't have that empty space that has got to be filled with ideas every week, and that there is they are accountable for coming up with ideas every week, I think we would come up with a 5th as many as we do. I think structure is important and then applauding it.

GRAHAM HARDY: I think one thing that I have learnt is the importance of giving people autonomy and ownership of outcomes. So, for example, we have some very talented young people and they will run big projects. It can be a million dollar motor show investment or can be a major series of events and so on, and we have a team discussion which would sort of work towards the overall sort of outcomes that we are looking for and then leaving responsibility with one person who really then takes full ownership and what happens.

They will discuss things. They will talk about it and some more than others, but they are driven by the fact that this is clearly theirs and they are going to sign their name to it at the end of the day and it is an almost automatic thing. You can see them get swept up in it and they have got resources and an end destination and they are responsible and it is really very rewarding, and you can see each one gets better and better as they continue lifting the bar, trying harder, involving people, looking for the very best people to work with, knocking back ideas which don't fit, and really giving them that space to say this is my job, this is my project, and I'm really proud of it.

AUDIENCE PARTICIPANT: I would like to know how do you create ideas to differentiate your products?

STEVE VAMOS:It is very, very dangerous to assume that product is going to be a differentiation forever and a day, so fundamentally I think that actually the answer or the comment that Kylie made before about the human side, and making sure that people in the business are passionate, really together in serving customers and extending that passion to their customers, in my view that is the greatest competitive differentiation you can have and that's the quality of your relationship with customers. There is no code. You can actually publish a strategy and it won't matter because it is all about how you get it done. It is not easy to do and that is the source, I think, of sustainable competitive advantages, relationships you have within your organisation, with those you serve.

CARLA ZAMPATTI: I think service is actually important, particularly in the restaurant business and that's how McDonald’s built up their business, but it is really interesting that McDonald’s have now changed their product, so I think both elements are very important.

GRAHAM HARDY: ,/b>We are in a situation, and this is to come back to the opening remark about a car is a car is a car, it is true in many ways. What we are selling is not a product, it is a whole collection of attributes which at the end of the day satisfies a customer's needs so we are not focussed as much on car, A, B, C or D and trying to differentiate from our competitors, we are really trying to create something which is more holistic. It is more like a brand and to fill people's minds with associations that are positive about service, about quality, about innovation, and the reward and to give them reason, to give customers a reason to invest in your brand and become part of it when there is absolutely no limit to the number of products they can choose. We want out of that landscape to emerge "I want to be associated with Audi" and when they close their eyes at night and go to sleep.

ADAM SPENCER: Kylie and Edmund, just one thing each. What's one thing each that your restaurant or art gallery does better than any of its competitors? What's one of your strong points of differentiation?

EDMUND CAPON: I would like to think that everybody who leaves, leaves with four things: one is an enjoyable experience, two is something that they didn't know before, something that is actually tangible in their hands, and the fourth thing is the wish to come back.

KYLIE KWONG: I would like to think that customers leave Billy Kwong's feeling completely elevated. They might not remember the dish in a year's time but what they do remember is an energetic level, because we are humans so we are completely energetic, that they felt really great and happy when they walked out and that will stay with their memory, in their physical and emotional memory. That's what is really important to me.

STEVE VAMOS: I think that probably one of the things that we forget is that in most organisations, particularly service based organisations, everything we do together every day is shaped by the decisions we make and I think that we have got to get away from the idea that now we are going to figure out how to be creative. I think you have to create an environment where everything you do all the time, you are looking at how do we do it better to produce a better result. People aren't afraid to share those ideas and challenge each other and want to make it different, make it better. In a way my answer to you is that I would be a little bit worried if that was the process. My aspiration is to have an environment where we are always having the conversations about how can we do this better and that means challenging, it means questioning, and being open minded.

GRAHAM HARDY: I think people have got to be led to raising their own their bar for themselves in terms of what I would call constant improvement. If you can have a general direction everywhere you are headed and then people have got some space in which to work for themselves, but all the time they are feeling challenged to lift their game and to lift their performance and to get better at what they are doing, as opposed to becoming comfortable with what they are doing, so they can start to stretch themselves, and to be lifting the bar, lifting the bar, they want to get better and better and better.

It does force, if you like, a process of creativity because you have to think how can I do that better, how can I improve next time, and it leads to opportunities for those kinds of discussions with people to review things how did it go, what could have worked better, what do you do next time to create that kind of constant improvement as a way of doing business and then when people go back to their places of work, and however they might do it or whenever they might come up with the idea, you get the sense they are thinking they are trying and they are not satisfied and they are not getting comfortable and to the point where they say that's good enough.

I think that's where creativity stops. If you reach that in an organisation that's okay now, and we all get complacent, that's just fine. I think we have all seen so many examples where that is a precursor of a major change of direction. To keep lifting the bar, looking upwards, a sort of direction for the business, never to become comfortable.

ADAM SPENCER: I will ask this quickly of you Siimon, because I do know what you mean. This point in some degree of seriousness, I do think 20 or 30 years from now in corporate spaces people will realise that some people would give more back to their organisation if they only spend 20 hours a week actually sitting at the desk working and actually doing things like playing chess amongst other people at work, or had a bit of exercise built into what they were doing, or occasionally sit down with a guitar and played some music. I have read some stuff where you have actually talked, Simon, about there being broader ways than the more traditional ways to tap into your creativity.

SIMON REYNOLDS: To me it is an industry where we idolise long hours. Long hours, nine times out of 10, when you analyse how someone is spending their time it, is inefficiency therefore they work for a long time. There is a company called GTE Performance systems in the States. Anyway, they do the mental performance training for Pete Sampras … or a lot of Olympians and they also have a corporate course and their number one finding is people in offices work too long and don't rest enough and secondly, they don't go hard enough when they are in at work, and their major recommendation is work short hours but push yourself much more than you normally do and then rest. Like the old saying, the space between the notes is what makes the music. In business people just feel too bad about leaving at 5 o'clock.

ADAM SPENCER: I will sweep along the panel and get gems of information from you each on the concept of corporate creativity. Then we will wrap it up. Starting with the CEO of Microsoft, Steve Vamos, what have you got for us?

STEVE VAMOS: I will leave you with one thought and it is pretty basic, and it is a principle that we all learn and I think unfortunately doesn't exist in most workplaces as often as it should, and that is treat others the way you wanted to be treated. It says show them and explain to them where you want to take them and create an environment where they are able to contribute as much as they possibly can without putting limits on that because of defensive behaviours and lack of trust or protecting turf and as the leader or manager in an organisation like that, really be careful with your reaction to challenge and reaction to people questioning.

We all know as managers it is scary how often what we say isn't heard but when you say something to someone that is very personal and very direct, like "mind your own business" or "that's a dumb idea" or "don't be so stupid" you have just made a huge impact on that person and will limit their ability to create and contribute.

Remember that, just treat others the way you want to be treated. I think that is a very basic fundamental.

ADAM SPENCER: Designer and chair of SBS Carla Zampatti.

CARLA ZAMPATTI: I think if you have a good idea try and implement it. If you can't implement it, give it to a person who can, because an idea in your head just remains that. It never turns into anything, so it is very important. Take a risk and put it into something, or give it to someone to see. Put that idea to the test. It is worthwhile.

ADAM SPENCER: Director of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Edmund Capon.

EDMUND CAPON: I think the greatest source of individual creativity is to be an eternal optimist.

ADAM SPENCER: CEO of Audi, Graham Hardy.

GRAHAM HARDY: I think from, let's say with a commercial slant on it, particularly in the field of marketing, a quick message: The creativity must have an outcome. It has to lead somewhere, not just be creativity for creativity's sake, not award winning advertising, but advertising that sells, work that has results as opposed to work for its own sake. I am a very firm believer in that. There must be an outcome attached to creativity that takes you along your path of where you want to go.

ADAM SPENCER: Restaurateur extraordinaire Kylie Kwong.

KYLIE KWONG: Always just hang out with people who have lots of energy and put yourself in places and environments which you like, that makes you happy.

ADAM SPENCER: And creative director of Love, Siimon Reynolds.

SIMON REYNOLDS: Steal ideas. That is the easiest way of getting ahead because really, you know, why come up with them all yourself. You know the whole company Swatch was taking the concept of fashion and then moving it into watches. Disposable cameras probably came from disposable razor blades. Our new business system comes from real estate. Our clients satisfaction system comes from manufacturing. It's much easier to grab ideas from somewhere else and then apply them to your industry.

ADAM SPENCER: We will try to organise an AFR seminar on how to best steal ideas sometime between now and the end of the year. Could we have a big round of applause for our panel.

Venue

Angel Place Recital Hall, Angel Place, NSW