Applied creativity is the missing link for growth

Executives widely say creativity matters in the AI era—but only a small share routinely turn ideas into growth. A new Accenture Song study, “Applied creativity—and how to lead it,” argues the problem isn’t a lack of imagination. It’s the infrastructure needed

In a Jan. 2025 podcast episode, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman was asked what the most important skill would be in the age of AI. His answer was blunt: the ability to ask creative questions.

A few months earlier, Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman wrote that “creativity will remain the real currency.” In August, Autodesk CEO Andrew Anagnost added that people would need to become “creative orchestrators” to succeed in an AI-driven workplace.

The public message is consistent. Creativity is the differentiator. The uncomfortable question is what happens after the brainstorming ends.

That gap is the center of a new report from Accenture Song. the creative strategy and experience lead group within Accenture Song. Led by Nick Law. the group says its year of research found a stark contradiction: 81% of top business leaders say their organizations can generate creative ideas. but only 16% say they very frequently turned those ideas into initiatives that drove growth.

For that rare 16%, the outcomes look materially different. Accenture Song’s research says hyper-creative organizations outperformed peers on revenue growth, employee engagement, and customers.

The report. “Applied creativity—and how to lead it. ” aims to explain how those companies convert creative ideas into real outcomes. It draws on a quantitative survey of 1. 725 executives across 14 countries. along with 15 long-form interviews with leaders from companies including Ikea. Lego. VSCO. and Rivian.

The study lands with a broader corporate shift in the background. Accenture Song frames the moment as an organizational reckoning with how companies talk about creativity—and whether they’ve built the mechanisms to apply it.

The report points to the earlier wave of “design thinking. ” a framework popularized by the consulting firm Ideo in the early aughts. designed to help people “think like a designer” at any organization. Law argues the term has fallen out of vogue at major corporations, with job listings less likely to include it.

His reason is not simply that the brand went out of fashion. He says design thinking stalled because of a “missing link.” In his view, companies treated creativity as a subjective quality that “anyone can have,” rather than as a skill requiring training and experience.

Law puts it this way: “The reason that it stalled when it stalled was because there was always a missing link.” He argues that companies don’t apply the same mindset to technical ability—“No one thinks that because they’ve read a few articles on large language models that they can go and then build one. but somehow people think because they see ads or because they use products that they can tell stories and create designs.”.

In the AI era, the barrier to entry is shifting in both directions. Engineers can use platforms like Canva and Figma to whip up visual assets. Designers can use tools like Claude and Cursor to generate code. A recent study called AI in Design found that 50% of designers are shipping code to production—something that. two years earlier. would have been “virtually unheard of.”.

David Droga. Accenture Song’s former CEO and current vice chair. argues that as the playing field levels technically. creative expertise matters more as a differentiator. “Everyone’s caught up in the power of efficiencies and speed that AI is bringing to the market. but as soon as everybody has access to that. it becomes table stakes. ” Droga said. He added that differentiation will hinge on “the creative people who can reinterpret things and see beyond what is linear and logical.”.

That brings the story to a more troubling finding: even when leaders say they value creativity, many treat it like a risk.

During the report’s quantitative phase. 83% of executives said they recognize creativity as central for future success—for themselves and for their business. The same 83% said creativity will be one of the most important leadership capabilities in the years ahead. Yet 63% reported that they know colleagues who have been held back for their creative approaches. and 57% said they themselves were held back. Overall, 59% said challenging the status quo makes you “difficult.”.

Accenture Song CEO Ndidi Oteh frames the problem as less about belief and more about execution. “I think most CEOs struggle not because they have a creativity problem, but they have an application problem,” Oteh said.

Through its quantitative and qualitative interviews, Law’s team says successful application of creativity comes down to three pillars: expertise, commitment, and structure.

Expertise is about who sits at the top. Accenture Song says the study found that only 9% of board members across the five largest companies in hospitality. consumer electronics. and apparel and fashion had creative backgrounds—defined in the report as careers centered on “shaping. elevating. or expressing the meaning customers see and feel.” The report also points out that many companies elevate leaders from technical and operational backgrounds. even though it cites Steve Jobs. Oprah Winfrey. and Phil Knight as examples of leaders who came from creative backgrounds.

When more creatives were incorporated into leadership structures. Accenture Song says organizations were more likely to “Have a customer theory of mind that shapes all product and marketing development” and to “Actively mine a diverse array of sources for creative inspiration—from customers. to frontline employees. to online communities. academia. and trends reports.”.

Specific examples are used to show how that leadership translates into decisions. At Nike, senior leaders distill complex product and portfolio bets into clear, single-direction narratives the team can align around. At Lego. research becomes physical “play invitations” where senior leadership interact with the product in the boardroom to decide whether it fits the company’s brand purpose.

Commitment is the second pillar. It’s about removing barriers that stop creative work from becoming real proposals and proposals from becoming progress. Accenture Song describes this as culture and process—structured forums for employee contributions. and frequent pitch sessions involving internal and external participants.

Droga’s own approach is pointed to as an example: during his tenure as CEO of Accenture Song, he instituted a system where anyone in the company could book a one-on-one meeting with senior leadership, including himself, to pitch an idea or discuss work-in-progress.

Structure is the final pillar. and it’s where the report places its emphasis on making creativity “workable.” The report describes structure as supplying “the processes. decision rights. time horizons. and incentives that make creativity workable. and the contributions of creative experts rewarding. not risky.” It adds that structure is what moves teams from asking questions to making decisions.

Accenture Song says structure can look different across industries. but the principle stays the same: a system that ensures creative brainstorming feeds into every part of the business. Ikea is cited for a system that lets innovation teams use AI-driven simulations to test ideas end-to-end. helping senior leaders develop greater confidence in creative bets. HSBC is cited for using gated funding and dedicated experimentation time to ensure that creative ideas don’t stall under compliance pressure.

Law’s argument is that this isn’t just for design-led companies. “What we’re arguing is that this creative infrastructure is a universal way to turn ideas into concrete executions,” Law said. “It’s applied creativity—it’s not creative thinking.”

The study also maps out what happens when all three pillars are present. Droga said the report’s goal is to show that betting on creative leadership is not inherently risky.

In organizations where the pillars are all in place, Accenture Song says employees are more likely to embrace creative approaches beyond traditional creative silos like marketing and design—reaching into growth and strategy, technology, talent management, and even risk and compliance.

Those companies also appear better prepared for an AI-enabled workplace. Accenture Song reports that they were 37% more likely to strongly agree that investing in creative leadership will outperform in an AI-enabled world. They were 27% more likely to strongly agree that leaders who can guide teams through uncertainty and rapid change will stand out. and 25% more likely to strongly agree that they are building a culture where human creativity and AI complement each other.

And again. the outcomes line up with the “golden 16%.” Companies that very frequently turn creative ideas into growth initiatives are reported to be 53% more likely to significantly outperform peers on revenue growth. 54% more likely to outperform on employee engagement. and 58% more likely to outperform on brand equity.

Droga ends with a longer ambition: using this research to change what companies recruit and what colleges teach. “My dream state would be that we can actually create something that changes the dynamics of who’s recruited and what’s taught in colleges. ” he said. “Whatever we can do to make creativity be seen as a valuable resource and a necessity in businesses—not just a nice-to-have.”.

AI era creativity applied creativity design thinking Accenture Song Nick Law Ndidi Oteh David Droga Sam Altman Mustafa Suleyman Andrew Anagnost Lego Ikea HSBC Rivian VSCO