Lessons on Creativity & Human Nature from Rory Sutherland & Rick Rubin
Contrarian wisdom from two hyper-successful creative misfits
Rick Rubin is one of the most prolific and important music producers of all time, though you wouldn’t know it judging by his matted wizard's beard. He founded DefJam Recordings from his dorm room and popularized hip-hop for the wider world of whitebread squares. He’s helped an obscenely diverse set of artists do their most important work, including Johnny Cash, Slayer, Jay Z, The Beastie Boys, The Chili Peppers, and Adele. He recently wrote The Creative Act, his blueprint for idea-having that doesn't rely on hallucinogenic substances (Rick is relatively straight-edge).
Rory Sutherland leads the Behavioral Science practice at Ogilvy, the legendary ad agency that inspired Mad Men, and writes my favorite non-product book for product managers - Alchemy: The Dark Art and Curious Science of Creating Magic in Brands, Business, and Life.
Rory recently appeared on Rick’s podcast Tetragrammaton. I’ve attempted to distill their three-hour convo into the following 11 lessons on creativity, human nature, and bringing new ideas into the world. Enjoy!
(1) There are far more good ideas that you can post-rationalize than pre-rationalize.
So why make the ability to rationalize something a prerequisite for trying it?
Permit yourself to try bolder, more interesting ideas. Rory is also fond of saying, “Test unconventional ideas because your competitors won’t.”
I know, I know… some biz person trying to sound smart in a meeting will inevitably ask: “Do you have any data to back that up? Where’s your biz case, bro?”
Yet some of today’s most successful companies are based on ideas that sound totally shit and had zero evidence they would work - an app that lets you book an air bed on a stranger’s floor (Airbnb), an app that lets you hitch a ride with strangers (Uber/Lyft), a social app in which photos disappear as soon as you send them (Snap).
This is what Andrew Chen calls the Dumb Idea Paradox—Why great ideas start out sounding dumb.
Use the following question to push your boundaries when coming up with new ideas: “What is a risker version of this?”
(2) Stop arguing about the theoretical.
“Something I've noticed from working with bands is that there tend to be arguments about the theoretical that create conflict out of nothing. One of the rules I have in the studio is: demonstrate everything. Instead of telling you my musical idea, I play my musical idea. At the theoretical level, things are far more divisive.”
The analogy to product work is to stop wasting time in protracted debates about feature ideas; instead, bring them to life via prototyping or by shipping the idea and testing it in the wild.
(3) Optimize for solving problems, not winning arguments.
Too often, business meetings turn into high school debate clubs. We make the mistake of thinking the person with the best arguments has the best solutions. Optimizing for the cleverest arguments is a failure mode. “Problem-solving is much more Darwinian, much more iterative, and also relies on the subconscious mental process and tacit skills that we can’t completely codify.”
You don't just "do" creativity like following a recipe. There is no paint-by-numbers guide. It is more of an overall approach that favors experimentation and the freedom to follow hunches.
(4) Anecdotes are data.
“Because they are outliers, the fact that we find them interesting suggests that, in evolutionary terms, they are important. You should never discount anything as being anecdotal.”
When creating new things, customer anecdotes are often far more useful than data, which tend toward less-than-helpful averages and board generalizations that lead to hyper-generic products.
Similarly, Bezos likes to say, “Anecdotes beat data.” When data conflicts with anecdotes, trust the anecdotes. They end up winning because there’s some nuance or complexity your data or measurement system doesn’t account for.
One of my favorite product pivot stories is that of Play-Doh, which was a failing wallpaper-cleaning product until they read anecdotes about Cincinnati school teachers using the compound to teach the children in their classes.
(5) Use “Behavioral Bundling” to make the strange familiar.
We humans are more likely to adopt a new behavior if it is bundled with a pre-existing behavior.
There was a time when the masses didn’t consider Hip-Hop to be “real music.” Rick helped popularize the genre with Run-D.M.C’s Walk This Way, which featured rap over Aerosmith’s traditional rock track.
Soy and Almond milk don’t need to be refrigerated, but consumers didn’t adopt them until they were sold in the fridge, just like traditional milk. Most meatless products are sold as versions of things consumers already eat, like hot dogs and hamburgers. The designers of the first digital cameras added the familiar “click” sound when users snapped a photo to mirror the experience of point-and-click cameras.
(6) Social Awkwardness is friction.
Most fast food restaurants have moved to touch screens to take your order instead of using a person. These restaurants have seen average order value increase - men, in particular, are much more likely to place orders that include two burgers. As Rory says, “It’s not the cost - it’s the awkward social conversation.”
Similarly, Dominos found that people order more pizza toppings online vs. over the phone. Liquor stores sell more hard-to-pronounce wine when placed upfront, sparing people the unconscionable experience of stumbling through the pronunciation to ask an associate to bring the wine out from the back.
A UK restaurant drastically increased their Champagne sales after introducing the Champagne button - allowing people to get their bubbles sans conversation with the waitstaff and the potential of being judged.
(7) Explore/Exploit Tradeoff.
Bee colonies, just like businesses, must balance the idea of exploring what we don’t yet know vs. extracting what we do know.
Scientists used to be baffled by the behavior of Explorer Bees, who seemingly ignored their daily instruction to extract pollen, opting instead to fly off in random directions. After further study, they noted that an Explorer Bee’s day often doesn't end with any tangible accomplishment, but occasionally, they discover vital new resources for the colony.
If you overly focus on exploiting the resources you know about—i.e., the existing products/services you sell to your existing customers—you become trapped in a local maximum, over-optimized on the past, and the hive ends up starving.
In hunter/gather parlance, this is known as the Explore/Exploit Tradeoff. Any colony that is going to survive must be efficient at exploiting the known while continuously discovering the unknown.
You must allow for the “creative tax” of exploration if you want your organization to be adaptive and resilient.
This also makes me think of Peter Thiel’s advice to Mark Zuckerberg: "In a world that's changing so quickly, the biggest risk you can take is not taking any risk.”
(8) There is no substitute for curiosity.
Rory: “If you are trying to do something new, what is the single thing that Is impossible to substitute for?”
Rick: “Curiosity—what if it’s a different way? The interest in wanting to see something new and not settling for what exists. Fear of the obvious.”
One way to stay curious is to delay decisions until the last possible moment; this allows you to stay open to new information and new ideas.
(9) Embrace Two-Way Door Decisions.
Another Bezos-ism is the idea of decisions as Two-Way Doors. Most product decisions are like walking through a two-way door; if you’re wrong, you simply turn around and walk the other way. If you try something and it doesn’t work, it doesn't really impose a significant cost, so you can reverse course or try something different.
(10) Hedonic Opportuinty Cost.
When developing products, we tend to view humans as overly rational. Account for the "hedonic opportunity cost" of being boring. Life is short - have some godsdamn fun once in a while, and it will make your product better.
Put another way:
(11) To bring an idea into the world - fall in love with it before it exists.
Real creativity requires falling in love with something before it even exists. You can't seduce an idea into being through pure logic and PowerPoint decks. Worship at the altar of your idea before it's corporeal—will the bastard into existence. The sheer will to bring something into the world is like a superpower - but you can’t take my word for it; try it yourself.