In Praise of the Unreasonable

There is a curious asymmetry in business, as Rory Sutherland had often observed: creative people are expected to justify their ideas to rational, analytical managers, yet the reverse almost never happens. You rarely see an accountant wander into a creative department and ask for a wildly unconventional idea. Creativity, it seems, is the only guest expected to show its passport at the door. Why?

© Aziza Kadyri "A Borrowed Hand"

The University of Economics taught us to trust facts. The first years in business reinforced the lesson. Data, evidence, efficiency, and predictability became the language of credibility. It was only by moving more to the creative side, from leading an in-house design studio to working with and within agencies, that our perspective shifted. Today, we find ourselves somewhere in between, balancing strategy, facts and spreadsheets with challenging ideas, unconventional solutions and artistic intelligence. We have become convinced that this imbalance is costing businesses more than it realises!

When every idea must be rationally justified before it is allowed to breathe, innovation is quietly strangled. Non-linear, high-upside breakthroughs rarely arrive with a business case or market research analysis attached. Spreadsheet thinking also encourages organisations to optimise what is immediately measurable: costs, processes, efficiency. In doing so, they risk eroding the less tangible qualities that create lasting value, such as psychological relevance, desirability, experience and meaning.

Then comes defensive mediocrity. Conventional failure is often forgiven, however, unconventional failure is remembered. Hence, managers choose the safe, the familiar and the remarkably similiar. The result is an endless parade of brands that have optimised themselves into indistinguishability.

Something also disappears along the way: critical thinking. If we stop challenging established norms and questioning the status quo, we do not merely become less creative but less capable of imagining a different future.

Even human expression suffers. Life is gloriously multifaceted, contradictory, and irrational. Yet the more we reduce experience to data points and metrics, the more streamlined our expression becomes. Inevitably, so dies our experience of the world.

Business needs what organisational theorists call ambidextrous leadership, i. e., the ability to exploit what works while exploring what might work next. Too many organisations spend almost all their energy and time on exploitation, efficiency and execution, leaving exploration, experimentation and risk-taking as the neglected younger (step-)sibling.

This is precisely why real creativity matters.

(If you are wondering what we are talking about, please refer here.)

We are human beings who are driven by what Rory Sutherland calls psycho-logic: irrational, emotional and psychological forces that often outweigh rational calculation. Value is subjective, and perception can be transformed without rebuilding the world from scratch. Creativity allows us to imagine new contexts beyond what existing data can predict. It helps us reframe constraints as opportunities and contradictions as competitive advantages. In an age of automated code, algorithms and infinite optimisation, the ability to think differently may become one of the few truly durable advantages left.

So, no, we are not suggesting that you throw away your spreadsheets. We are simply suggesting that you stop asking them to do the work of imagination. We are here to colour up your business life!

Yours truly,

Margot

MDA sidenote: London-based, Uzbek artist Aziza Kadyri (b. 1994 Moscow, Russia) works across textiles, sculpture, installation, performance and creative technologies. Her practice explores migration, displacement, decolonisation and identity, particularly through the experiences of women in Central Asia and its diaspora, blending cultural heritage with AI, extended reality and speculative storytelling.