James Taylor (00:08)
16 years ago, I was standing backstage at London's historic music venue, the Royal Albert Hall. The lights went up, 5,000 people were on their feet, the crowd was roaring. By this point, I'd actually spent more than decade managing high-profile rock stars, and from the outside, it kind of looked like magic what was happening on the stage. But what changed my life that night wasn't what was happening on the stage. It was what I saw backstage.
When you stand in the wings, you see something that the audience doesn't usually see. You kind of look and you can see the lighting crew, the musicians, the technicians, the advisors, the managers. Sometimes this is over hundred people working in perfect coordination to create what kind of looks like effortless brilliance. That night, I realized something really fundamental that would shape the next chapter of my life.
I realized that creativity is not a solo act. It's collaborative. Creativity is a team sport. And that insight set me on a completely different path. I actually stepped away from managing rock stars and music artists to dedicate my work to helping leaders and teams unlock their creative potential.
Now fast forward to today, I deliver between 50 to 100 keynotes around the world every single year to some of the Fortune 500 companies. And we are living through an extraordinary age. Artificial intelligence, robotics, exponential technologies are reshaping entire industries. And here's the paradox. Just as creativity becomes more valuable than ever, fewer people believe they possess it.
Global studies show that creativity is one of the most in-demand skills in the world today. It's actually going to increase. Yet when I ask audiences how many of them consider themselves to be creative or good creative thinkers, about a third of the room will raise their hands. That gap is what I call the creativity crisis. And it's why I actually wrote this new book. Over the past eight years, speaking on conference stages around the world, I kind of noticed a pattern.
The people thriving in this new age weren't necessarily the smartest. They weren't always the most technical, but they were the most collaborative. They knew how to amplify their creativity by working with others and increasingly though, by working with machines. And that's where the idea of this book of super creativity was born. So super creativity is the augmentation of your human creative abilities
through collaboration with other humans and with machines. So it's not humans versus machines, it's human plus machine. This book is not really about becoming more artistic, it's actually about becoming more capable in whatever work that you do today. It's about becoming more relevant, more imaginative in how you solve problems. And inside the book, I lay out this framework that's built around these three dimensions.
Human creativity, which is about how we develop the creativity in ourselves. Human plus human creativity, or building highly creative teams ⁓ in organizations. And then finally, human plus machine creativity. Because the future doesn't belong to the lone genius. It belongs to those who collaborate deeply with other people, with our teams, but also with intelligent systems like AI. And I wrote this book for leaders that are having to navigate uncertainty just now.
for professionals who sense the world is shifting beneath their feet. For anyone who's ever thought, I'm not that creative, but knows that they wanted to contribute more. See, you don't need to be a musician or an artist to be creative. If you solve problems, if you lead teams, if you build products, if you design systems, if you shape ideas, then this book is for you. Because we're entering this entirely new era. Creativity is no longer optional.
It is the engine of innovation. And in this super creative age, your advantage won't be just how much you know. It will be how well you collaborate, imagine and design what comes next. You see, the future is not written, it's designed. And this book is my field gap to help you design it. Now you can pick up your copy of my new book, Super Creativity.
accelerating innovation in the age of artificial intelligence by going to jamestaylor.me forward slash super creativity or by ordering it from your favorite bookstore. My name is James Taylor. Thanks for watching.
