Sid Lee's very own kind of A.I.
I grew up an anglophone in Quebec, one of the only places in North America where French is the first language. I juggle both every day. In most of my meetings here at Sid Lee we speak a strange mix of sentences that start in English and end en français.
Balancing the codes and concepts of two languages can be dizzying at times, but it often allows me to look at the world with different perspectives. Dichotomies – French vs. English, creative vs. analytical, right brain vs. left brain – and finding ways to navigate them have honed my ability to make sense of the chaos. It comes in really handy during brainstorming sessions.
This kind of push-and-pull dynamic has been one of Sid Lee’s main drivers since our foundation in 1993. Everyone here does their own kind of balancing act. Over the years, we’ve surrounded ourselves with makers and thinkers from all walks of life – a pharmaceutical Ph.D. turned strategist, two architects instilling their thought process in our creative methods, and even a former clown. We’re a bit of a circus in that way: we bring misfits and outcasts into one big touring act.
Many agencies have embraced multidisciplinarity, but while others were talking about IQ or Emotional Intelligence, we developed what we call Atypical Intelligence – our very own kind of A.I. – to find creative solutions to our clients’ problems. This goes beyond cross-discipline collaboration. It’s about embracing the shock of neurodiversity, subcultural cues, emotional acumen and, of course, plain old diversity – of gender, of backgrounds and, yes, of expertise – to create as one collective.
Many agencies have embraced multidisciplinarity, but while others were talking about IQ or Emotional Intelligence, we developed what we call Atypical Intelligence – our very own kind of A.I. – to find creative solutions to our clients’ problems.
In A Whole New Mind, Daniel H. Pink, a New York Times best-selling author and former Al Gore speechwriter, talks about “symphonic thinking,” which he describes as the ability “to see relationships between seemingly unrelated fields; [...] to invent something new by combining elements nobody else thought to pair” and the capacity to be concerned “not with the bassoon player or the first violinist but with the entire orchestra.”
I like to think that Sid Lee was born like a symphony; we’re conductors who create meaning amidst chaos. Our atypical intelligence will help us counter the steamroller of our industry’s best practices and boring self-referentialism, for which we’ve also been guilty, and the economy’s push for conservative creative output. Especially now that AI, the Sam Altman kind, is here to stay.
When atypicality can read as weird, we at Sid are embracing it. For our 30th anniversary, we’re launching a series of chats with atypical creatives and experts – people from our network, people we’ve collaborated with in the past three decades and people we love.
Every few weeks, we’ll slide into your inbox with a conversation about how to stay offbeat in the face of adversity, how this creates value for businesses and how to harness the power of a collective. Below we asked Daniel H. Pink, whose book I just quoted, to kick things off with 3 rapid-fire questions. You’ll quickly understand why his answers are music to my ears
— By Kristian Manchester, Chief Creative Officer, Sid Lee
