Canada’s missing ingredient: creativity

The Edmonton Journal‘s Ray Turchansky interviewed a local economist out with a new book about what’s missing from the Canadian economy: creativity.

Speaking with Alberta Treasury Branch‘s chief economist Todd Hirsch, Turchansky notes that for far too long, we have relied on our status as “hewers of wood, drawers of water” to fuel our prosperity (no pun intended, Alberta). Even without the current resource & commodities boom that’s driving Western Canada and keeping the country as a whole afloat during these difficult economic times, its been evident for quite some time that Canada suffers from a “productivity gap” compared to our southern neighbors.

This gap is literally visible in the US’s consistently higher GDP per capita and I think it’s also intuitively felt when companies and talented workers migrate south to get a bigger bang for their buck, though admittedly, this gap now seems to be closing for the first time ever.

(It ain’t because we’re suddenly innovating– a contemporaneous piece in the Globe and Mail cites the usual frustrations SMEs have in Canada: small venture capital market, taxation structures, a lack of coordination between public & private agencies, few mentors and weak commercialization processes.)

Much of this is a result of our own complacency.  Hirsch, who looks a bit like Rick Moranis with windswept hair, says “we need to stop asking the government to make us productive and creative.” He & Robert Roach have authored a book that tackles this issue: The Boiling Frog Dilemma: Saving Canada From Economic Decline. The title’s a bit alarmist but he does make a few salient points.

Hirsch offers some interesting anecdotes around creativity and the subsequent lack thereof, such as our increasingly rigid educational system (when “our crayons are taken away”) and the Overseas Experience (i.e. “Gap Year” ) that Australians and New Zealanders regularly take in between finishing school and starting work to refresh and rejuvenate themselves.

This is not to say that Canadians aren’t creative–witness everything from the invention of insulin to the construction of the Canadarm to Research In Motion–but for the most part Hirsch says we are too comfortable in our abundance.  And it’s not like the opportunities aren’t there: as one of the world’s energy hotspots, Hirsch says Alberta should be leaders in areas of relevance such as carbon capture & storage technology.

(my favourite example)

Interestingly, the article finishes by looking at what he considers the three components of applied creativity: invention, innovation & design.  Innovation is a tired, overused term while design is the easiest and most economical to build upon, according to Hirsch. (I would posit that design itself is in danger of being beaten into a cliché. Time for a new word but more on that later).

He cites the world’s number one firm as an example of how to “do” it right: “Apple doesn’t really invent anything, it just takes existing technology and adds tremendous design that people connect with.”

Banks, social media and design thinking.

Banks are lousy at social media.  That’s been proven over and over recently.

Or has it? Just because a bank maintains the slimmest of presences compared to other brands doesn’t mean its “lousy” at social media.  Maybe its by choice.  One could easily argue that banks just haven’t fallen for the hype around social media and squandered a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to establish a narrative by acting in haste.  Canadian banks in particular maintain an almost literal facade over their respective Facebook or Twitter personalities with little beyond the obligatory Wikipedia entry, some basic contact info and the barest idea of what it actually does.

Up until now, I don’t think this was a bad thing.  Think about it–Social Media (not even a generation old and inherently skewed to Millennials & “digital natives”) and some of the world’s oldest institutions.  Precociousness v. Prosaic.  How is that going to go?  Given how badly or awkward social media efforts by brands can be, seeing an inherently conservative entity marching onto Facebook like any other brand would look like your dad trying to get on a skateboard for the very first time: tragicomic.

In this sense, I think the banks acted wisely.  Why mess with a medium that, however intriguing, has a limited impact on your core business, is far from where all the real action is (entertainment and consumer packaged goods) and can so easily backfire?  The learning curve is steep and companies fundamentally lose a certain aspect of control when they venture into new media, so hesitation on their part makes sense.  Take Facebook Walls for example–look at any company that lets users post anything they want about the company on their Walls and it quickly morphs into a “Wall of Shame” by embittered & unhappy customers.    Even more so, legitimate statements by the bank or its officials can be reinterpreted completely independently and often incorrectly.  Better to wait and see how this plays out then act decisively.

Still, social media is not to be ignored.  According to this recent report by Accenture, that time is running out.  It predicts that up to 90% of banks plan to devote resources to social media in 2012, including as much as 10% of their marketing budgets (and by now it goes without saying how influential social media itself is).

In a way, the script is already set: banks are in a particularly interesting place given that they serve an essential function in any consumer society (hence the not-insignificant barrage of privacy, legal and regulatory issues to deal with) yet so many of us engage with them almost entirely online, with little or no “real” face-to-face interaction inside an actual branch. So a virtual relationship (and a pretty important one at that) already exists. The question is how can you explore that one without endangering the “real” one?

So if banks are going to bravely sally forth into highly capricious territory, perhaps design thinking can show them a way forward.  Some banks have already started doing this.  As I mentioned in February, Fidelity worked with Stanford’s “d.school” to re-envision its website for a better user experience and ended up with some interesting results.

Similarly, with online banking obviating the need for branches, some banks have used design thinking to completely redefine them into cheery, sociable “branches of the future.” To my knowledge, the first was Umpqua Bank in Portland, Oregon (cheekily-styled “the World’s Greatest Bank“), designed by Sohrab Vassoughi & Ziba Design.  It has since caught on here in Alberta with Alberta Treasury Branch opening sleek and opulent branches in upscale Edmonton & Calgary locales via the firm Karo.  Some of these design-inspired features include open-concept lounges, concierge-like service and even something called the “Wow Wall” that interacts with passers-by as they well, pass by. Not only does this revive an area of the business badly in need of reinvention, it establishes a customer-friendly personality. And the results seem to be positive.

Umpqua Bank in Portland, Oregon

ATB’s “Dream Centre”

The “Wow Wall”

So if design thinking can unleash all that with a willing client and result in happier customers, just imagine what it could do in service of customer relationships via the many social media touchpoints between institution and customer–everything from advertising & promotions to loyalty programs to allowing user-shared reviews to the direct proliferation of financial advice to allowing actual transactions.  All guided by design principles like storytelling and ethnography. The possibilities for banks and social media are tremendous. And approaching fast.