Issue 108: A Bulletin for Big Ideas and Better Business
Outsiders - The people on the edge often see what everyone else has stopped noticing - and that’s where the real creative advantage lies.
ISSUE 108/
A BULLETIN FOR
BIG IDEAS AND
BETTER BUSINESS.
OPINION / Creativity
Outsiders.
💬 Sir John Hegarty
I was reminded, once again, that creativity rewards the outsider.
I was listening to a talk about David Hockney and his time in Los Angeles, particularly his painting A Bigger Splash. The subject? Swimming pools. To a Californian, they are ordinary - background detail, part of the architectural landscape, hardly worth a second glance. So familiar they become invisible. But Hockney grew up in Bradford, Yorkshire, where the only pool you were likely to encounter was a covered municipal one - tiled, echoing, functional rather than glamorous.
I was reminded, once again, that creativity rewards the outsider.
I can smell the chlorine from here. So when he arrived in LA and saw pools everywhere - shimmering turquoise rectangles beneath endless blue skies - he didn’t see the mundane. He saw the miraculous. He saw light playing on water, geometry. And from that outsider’s eye came some of his greatest work. |  A Bigger Splash, David Hockney |
The outsider marvels at what everyone else has stopped seeing. That is the advantage. Familiarity dulls perception; the more something surrounds us, the less we question it. The insider knows the rules, the conventions, the way things are done - and over time begins to accept them as inevitable. The outsider hasn’t absorbed those assumptions. They look at the same thing and ask, quite innocently, “Why?” And sometimes, more dangerously, “Why not?”
The outsider marvels at what everyone else has stopped seeing. That is the advantage.
Of course, being an outsider isn’t a prerequisite for great thinking. Talent, discipline and craft still matter. But distance helps. It sharpens perspective. It prevents complacency. Many of the most original artists and thinkers have stood slightly apart - culturally, socially, intellectually. Inclusion is vital, of course it is. But let’s not forget the value of those who sit on the edge. Those who sit there often see more clearly than those at the centre.
And their view might actually be more valuable.
Last week in Creativity:
Athlete-Led Storytelling - At the Winter Olympics, brands moved beyond the predictable hero film and built athlete-driven narratives long before the Games began. The event isn’t the strategy anymore - it’s the amplifier.
Constraint Breeds Creativity - After the UK Supreme Court ruled oat “milk” can’t call itself milk, designers turned regulation into material with redacted packaging mock-ups. Limit the language, not the imagination.
Design as Cultural Memory - The Art of Noise at the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum shows how objects - from record players to the iPod click wheel - shape how we experience sound. Even a soft “tick” can become memory.
Building Beyond the Game - Beyond Your Limits, led by former Nike CMO Greg Hoffman, explores how athletes build brands that last. Episode one with Emma Coburn is now live.
Head to Instagram for more detail - and what this means for creativity…
The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.
Unlock your creativity.
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