It’s Time To Think Different Interviewed by Christine Chirichella

Adobe headquarters, San Jose, CA. Gensler. ©Emily Hagopian Photography, emilyhagopian.com.

30 SOCIETY FOR MARKETING PROFESSIONAL SERVICES

BUILD BUSINESS 2019 SNEAK PEEK

We close our Build Business sneak peek and our conference with Friday’s keynote speaker Duncan Wardle. Wardle is an innovative keynote speaker and creativity consultant for id8 & innov8, which helps companies embed a culture of innovation and creativity using a unique design-thinking process.

Wardle spent 25 years at The Walt Disney Company and is the former head of innovation and creativity. He’s also a

multiple TEDx speaker and contributor to Fast Company magazine. Wardle teaches Innovation and Design Thinking Masterclasses at Yale University, University of North Carolina, and University of Florida. He received the American Citizen Award presented at the White House, as well as an Hons. MBA and Hons. Doctorate from Edinburgh University and the Duke of Edinburgh Award, presented by Queen Elizabeth.

In his keynote presentation, Wardle will share case studies from his time at Disney along with a unique set of innovation tools and techniques that everyone can use to get to breakthrough ideas. He’ll challenge attendees to think creatively, find a childlike curiosity again, and embed a sustainable culture of innovation and creativity throughout our organizations.

Below, Wardle shares a glimpse into his keynote and how you can begin to think differently in your personal life, career, and company.

Marketer: Duncan Wardle, tell our readers a little about yourself.

I worked for Disney for 25 years, even met my wife in Epcot. At that time, I worked in the UK Pavilion, and she in Mexico.

My first role at Disney was supervising characters, but I needed to have a backup plan. I remember one job where Roger Rabbit had to come down the stairs for the Princess of Wales. He was supposed to wait to see if she approached him. Instead, he tripped and went hurtling and was taken out by Secret Service. Disney loved that it showed what Roger Rabbit was supposed to do—the mad stuff. After that, I truly got to do the mad stuff.

Photo courtesy of Duncan Wardle.

31MARKETER APRIL 2019

Learn more during the Closing Keynote, “Think Different,” on Friday, August 2, at 3:15 p.m. in Washington, D.C., during the SMPS annual conference.

buildbusiness.org

WASHINGTON, DC | JUL. 31– AUG. 2buildbusiness.orgWASHINGTON, DC | JULY 31–AUGUST 2, 2019

I transferred to Disney in London and Paris to do PR. I got to see the world and have some phenomenal experiences. I got to fly on the Concorde, flew into the Soviet Union in the symbol of American capitalism as it was falling apart. I loved that I got to do all the great stuff, like a kid in a candy store. After that, I got a call from the chairman who said, “You’re the guy with all the big ideas,” and put me in a new role in charge of innovation.

Marketer: As Disney’s former head of innovation and creativity, what did a typical day look like and how do you translate that to the work you do now?

At Disney, we were maniacally focused on the story, and how the story is embedded in consumer truth. And that remains as true today as it did at Disney. I took on a lot of projects at Disney. I got to ask, “What if?” to solve our customers’ biggest pain points. Now I do this for companies around the world. I take the innovation toolkit into companies, and they learn by doing. It has the best ideas on design thinking and makes it easy, fun, and tangible.

Marketer: What is the inspiration behind your work and your company? What changes do you see coming that create the need for innovation?

When I was Disney’s head of innovation, I surveyed 5,000 people across all lines of the business and asked what were their barriers to innovation, which I’ll be sharing in my talk. I hired big agencies to run an innovation project, but as a company we never learned the design-thinking process ourselves.

I truly believe if your company is trying to change, you need to make innovation tangible for everyone. Innovation has to be easy and fun to change the culture. You have to give people something they want to use.

So after 25 years, I decided to leave as I saw a gap in the market. I think the next decade is going to be the most disruptive of our lives. It’s going to eliminate brands that can’t or won’t change. Companies have been product-centric versus consumer-centric: Build it and they will come. That has worked for the last 100 years, and the C-suite remembers that. But how many people spent the day in the living room of their consumers and truly knew them?

Other big workplace changes are coming fast. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the next big thing, with machines predicted to have 5,000 times more intelligence than humans in a decade, taking 30 million jobs. AI will strip high-level jobs during this time. Generation Z cares more about purpose than profit. Brands that believe in quarterly results over purpose will be severely challenged by this generation. Millennials aren’t lazy—they’ve just figured out at a much earlier age that life is more important than work.

Everyone wants innovation, but they don’t know how to get it. That’s where I come in, and business has been through the roof. I’ve even crowd-sourced projects to be able to help with no charge except travel. For example, we had a project in Mozambique up and running in just four hours.

Marketer: Without giving too much away, tell us a little about your design-thinking process and how it relates to your keynote topic, Think Different.

I genuinely believe everybody is creative. I believe we’re all born with four key assets: creativity, imagination, curiosity, and intuition. And those are the four assets that won’t be replaced anytime soon by AI. So they’ll become the most employable skillsets of the next decade simply because they cannot be replicated by AI.

I hope to be able to share two to three tools and behaviors to help people think differently. People aren’t marketers; they’re storytellers. If you worked in the Storytelling department, how would you think different? People don’t buy products and services; they buy stories. I’ll be sharing during my talk some key innovation tools that everyone can use to think differently and embed innovation into their DNA.

Marketer: What would you like the audience to learn, feel, and walk away with after hearing your keynote address?

I want people to realize and truly believe that they are creative and provide them with the tools that can help them to think creatively again. n

Adobe headquarters, San Jose, CA. Gensler. ©Emily Hagopian Photography, emilyhagopian.com.

32 SOCIETY FOR MARKETING PROFESSIONAL SERVICES