The great creative treasure hunt – how to think about breakthrough thinking

(this post is a part of my "Understanding Creative Strategy" series. Previous chapters here. But also, there's the impact of AI is built into the second half...)

I often imagine the search for creative solutions like a treasure hunt story...

You start by spreading out and studying the best map you can get despite any knowledge gaps, which all maps have. Frequently, you'll be drawing parts or correcting previous ones, and you'll definitely seek to understand the bigger picture and its boundaries.

Then (because life's more complicated than stories, and there's rarely a clear X-mark on our map), you try to identify the areas of the map where there might be treasure.

Then, to get to the promised lands of those opportunity spaces, you devise a strategy that uses your resources (including your best team, which is likely a loveable ragtag bunch of misfits) against a tricky environment that conspires against you and which may or may not include ruthless competitive pirates (direct competition), ninjas (indirect competition), and aliens (category disruptors). That strategy allows you to draw a dotted line through the terrain (on the map, Duh), which is the plan (Yay! We just solved the confusion between a strategy and a plan before even wetting our feet).

You then try to execute the plan while dealing with whatever surprises meet you on your journey. Often, you will have to adapt your strategy (What? You mean you don't/won't? When was the last time you found any decent treasure?), or gradually replace it (and often the rest of your ship, bit by bit, Theseus style with an emergent strategy informed by the story so far. Hopefully, you've identified the opportunity space well enough to reach there relatively unharmed, ahead of the competition and with a bit of time and energy to spare. You and whoever survived of your team can now throw yourself giddily into the nuanced art of digging around for treasure.

In our line of business, most of the problems we face require breakthroughs, and the role of creative strategy is to point teams toward the right opportunity spaces where said breakthroughs may happen. One of the oldest ideas of strategy (beautifully observed by Richard Rumelt ) is the idea of strong against weak. Strength applied to the most promising opportunity.? The right questions guide us toward new opportunity spaces and prevent us from digging overmined areas where overdone, increasingly ineffective marketing has stripped the land bare.

?This analogy builds on David Perkins’ Klondike analogy for breakthrough thinking from his highly recommended and myth-busting book The Eureka Effect: The Art and Logic of Breakthrough Thinking.

Perkins outlines four traps that stand in the way of digging for breakthrough ideas:?

1. The wilderness of possibilities?– Too many options, no clear way to prioritise. No idea where to dig. Anywhere looks like it may have gold underneath the ground when we know very well it won't.

2. The clueless plateau – No useful clues or signposts, making it impossible even to begin the search, let alone know where to dig.

3. The narrow canyon of exploration – You’re progressing, but in a direction that limits your possibilities, and more often than not — the wrong one.

4. The oasis of false promise – A shiny but deceptive idea or approach appears to be “the answer,” leading to wasted digging efforts in the wrong place.? Or, in our world, a tiny amount of treasure (or turds rolled in glitter).

It's a brilliant little model and richer than it looks (for example, the first two traps are often early-stage traps while the other two are later-stage traps. Or, for another fun exercise, think of how traps are experienced differently depending on experience levels). Honestly, that book, which blends science with fun puzzle games, deserves wider recognition.

And here’s where it gets urgent and timely: GenAI supercharges all four traps.

?? The canyon trap, with more and deeper canyons – The gravitational pull of statistical homogeneity means AI-generated ideas follow the grooves of what's already out there. If you're not careful, you’ll be led into well-worn paths that seem right but actually trap you in the wrong creative corridors or the same ones as everyone else. At best: you'll end up digging where there's no treasure left.

?? False oases everywhere – AI’s polish and confidence make almost any output seem plausible. But just because it looks good doesn’t mean it’s right—or useful. Beguiling wrong is still wrong; articulate boring is still boring.

?? A wilderness of AI slop that is also a clueless plateau – GenAI produces mountains of content, often pushing us in all the wrong directions while offering very few true clues toward where to actually dig (when you ask AI for a sharp view on most complex subjects you discover just how firmly it is glued to the fence it's sitting on). It points you in multiple directions and mostly into over-excavated territory. It doesn’t find the gold—it buries it under an avalanche of verbosity and pattern-matching mediocrity.

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This is why our countermeasures—home, roam, branch, and question—have never been more important yet harder to pull off.

??? Home – Find ways to home in on the solution. Define clear filters and qualifiers. Don’t let AI-generated content dictate your criteria.

??? Roam – Seek real-world insights. Forever expand your exploration modes and modalities. AI pulls from existing patterns; true breakthroughs often happen outside the matrix (especially if it's a 2X2 matrix).

??? Branch – Escape the canyon. If it feels predictable, change direction. Challenge constraints, reframe the problem, and look beyond AI’s recommendations. Back out of that promising garden path, and look for multiple alternatives. Explore as many as you can.

?? Question – Push deeper. If an answer seems too easy, it probably is. Interrogate every promising idea before committing resources to it. Put it on the back burner and seek better. You can always come back to it.

GenAI is an incredible tool, but without careful navigation, it risks making marketing even more homogenous, ineffective, and bland than it already is (most of the time, there's still great work out there!). If we want to lead to breakthroughs, we must actively work against these traps.

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?? There's still "gold in them that hills". But we need better maps, sharper tools, and the courage to explore new directions.

Some of my other thoughts: About AI, About creative strategy

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