Interbrand Australia and Unyoked, a nature company offering remote cabin stays, have unveiled a report called The Nature of Creativity, that seeks to answer the question: Can spending time in nature and disconnecting from the normal ways of working have an impact on our originality and creative output?
To put the question to test and to explore the impact of nature on commercial creativity, employees from Interbrand’s design, writing, and strategy departments made solo trips to various Unyoked sites across NSW, where they worked on a variety of client briefs. The participants documented their thoughts and feelings about the creative process and output before, during, and after their respective stays.
Once back at the office, participants had their work reviewed by their managers
and Interbrand Australia’s CEO, Nathan Birch. Their output was evaluated based on strategic alignment and creative bravery, and was measured against originality, craft, quantity, quality and commerciality.
Across the board, participants reported improvements in the areas of wellbeing, originality, and quality of their creative outcomes.
The material from the participants was synthesised and analysed, with four key findings emerging:
Less pressure leads to more flow
“Instead of solutions being the priority, they could enter a state of deep concentration that would lead them to accomplish more anyway.”
Constraints spark creativity
“By adapting to ‘Cabin Mode’, our people got a little more primal and a little less conventional.”
Focused solitude builds confidence
“Without a team surrounding them, our people were challenged to listen to the only voice there—their own.”
Embrace nature for heightened experiences
“Nature had a way of putting things in perspective. It reminded them to look at the bigger picture and broadened their scope beyond just the problems on the page.”
“Beyond the break from routine, the focus and clarity that came from a meeting-free day was a true luxury. Removing the usual distractions gave me the space to be more intentional with my time,” said one participant, Interbrand associate creative director, Megan Schierhout.
“But the most impressive thing to come from the study was the confidence our younger creatives found. With complete autonomy came a new level of bravery in their decision making”.
Throughout the year, the project will roll out globally—with creatives from the UK and NZ being invited to test the findings and share their own experiences of working and creating in nature.
“The world of work continues to change for creatives, and not necessarily for the better. Long hours have led to staleness. Economic pressures mean a need to do more with less. Tech has people questioning their processes and validity. Maybe things need to change a bit, starting with the environment in which people create. This was the seed of our idea to test how and where creativity flourishes,” Birch said.
Scientific studies have found that spending time immersed in a natural environment and disconnecting from technology enhances creativity and improves problem-solving skills by up to 50%.
“The creative benefits of time outdoors is something which, while not fully understood by most of us, can be a superpower if you know how to use it,” said Cam Grant, CEO and founder, Unyoked.
“Having used nature to come up with a lot of the ideas that have grown our business, we couldn’t be more stoked to work on this report with Interbrand and hopefully help a few other creatives to find nature and build it into their routines”.
Based on the learnings, Interbrand and Unyoked will co-design a Work In Nature (WIN) policy that can be adopted and adapted by any business that applies creative thinking.
“We found not only clear wellbeing and cultural benefits from the team working in nature, but from a commercial perspective, we saw more originality and more authentic thinking, writing, and creative output compared to the usual ways of working,” said Birch.
“As a creative business, experimenting, testing, learning, and iterating is something we do as a business, not just what we expect from our people – we support experimentation with experimentation”.
