Creativity Is Transformational

Madison Avenue in the 1950s and ’60s is remembered for its pithy slogans, but the best creative work of the era truly transformed a client’s business. Some clients had a product consumers didn’t yet understand. Some were stuck behind a bigger rival. Others were trying to win a new generation of buyers whose tastes differed from their parents. Those problems landed with copywriters and art directors who worked alongside clients to develop ideas that reshaped a company’s understanding of its customers, its products, and its place in the market. The advertising we remember was the expression of that thinking, but the transformation came from the creative partnership behind it. 

That dynamic captures what we believe at Two Things: commercial rigor and creative imagination are more powerful together, especially when they unite upstream to shape the products, services, and experiences a business offers. Company leaders bring deep knowledge of their brands and products, a clear ambition, and an understanding of the business realities an idea must navigate. Creative partners bring fresh perspectives, an ability to imagine alternative solutions, and the craft to make them tangible. Together, they can uncover and build opportunities neither would have reached alone.

From a Seat at the Table to a Way of Working 

Over time, the invitation for partners to help shape the business narrowed. Companies set the strategy, and creative partners were brought in downstream to give it form—with little opportunity to influence the thinking behind it.

Design thinking offered a route back into those conversations. It brought business leaders, researchers, designers, and engineers together to understand people, question assumptions, and explore new possibilities. Making was part of the thinking: prototypes gave teams something tangible to examine, challenge, and improve, allowing creative exploration and commercial judgment to shape the direction together.

In practice, adoption often stopped at the workshop stage: facilitated brainstorming, sticky notes, and promising concepts collected without future action. Carrying those concepts forward required cross-functional leadership, dedicated people and funding, and a willingness to continually act on what emerges. Companies implemented some of the methods without creating the conditions to turn the ideas into something real. What promised to be a breakthrough way of working too often remained solely an event.  

Sustained Partnerships Lead to Better Offerings and Better Investments 

For creative partnership to truly become a way of working, it has to continue as an opportunity develops. The people shaping the direction need to stay connected as it becomes a product, a service, or a new capability. Commercial questions inform the earliest concepts, and creative exploration helps resolve the practical questions that emerge through building.

Imagine a retailer trying to win younger shoppers. The team initially believes price is the main barrier, but early research suggests that shoppers also struggle to find products that feel relevant to their style. Working together, the team develops a prototype that lets customers explore different looks using the retailer’s existing assortment. Customer responses reveal which guidance is useful, while client partners identify how the service could draw on existing merchandising expertise.

As the concept develops, customer value and commercial viability inform one another. Personalized styling might appeal to shoppers but require more support than the business can sustain. Testing a simpler version helps the team identify what matters most. Designers and engineers can then explore how digital tools could deliver that value at greater scale, giving the business a clearer basis for deciding what to fund and build.

This is where creative partnership demonstrates commercial value. Building and testing give the business evidence to assess an unfamiliar opportunity, while operational and commercial realities sharpen the creative work. At Two Things, we keep strategy, design, and technology connected with client teams throughout that exchange, so learning shapes both the offering and the investment behind it. Done once, that produces a better decision. Done repeatedly, it becomes how the company decides what deserves investment and what needs to change—the difference between an occasional workshop and a lasting capability.

Transformation Takes Practice

The value of working this way extends beyond developing the offering itself. As teams develop and test ideas together, they build shared judgment: how to frame a useful question, recognize a promising response, work through a constraint, and decide when there is enough evidence to move forward.

Those capabilities develop through participation. A client team that has helped shape a prototype and interpret customer responses gains experience it can apply to the next opportunity. Leaders who have seen an idea evolve through testing gain a clearer understanding of how to support unfamiliar work and assess its potential.

Our role is to build that practice alongside our client team. Sometimes that means building, sometimes guiding, and throughout it means helping the organization develop the confidence and capability to continue. As those habits take hold, creative collaboration becomes part of how the business works.

That is what we mean when we say creativity is transformational. The work changes what the company can offer. The capability built through it expands what the company can do next.