Screens, PowerPoint, Excel and smartphones are only good for productivity. Which sounds counter-intuitive. But tech is BETA. All about getting the job done. Great for source material but terrible for originality of thought. Pinterest cannot and will not have the idea for you. And if it does then it isn’t original.

As an industry we are obsessed by jargon-laced ‘points of difference’. Pretending that complicated slogans, catchphrases and promises are some sort of magic bullet that nobody else has ever found. Even the trade press and pitch intermediaries keep asking for a ‘point of difference’ as if agencies are alchemists with the formula to turn lead into creative bullion.

Every creative business, anywhere, recognises the simple fact that survival depends on being able to generate new ideas that create impact. So, how does the creative brain work?

So, you want to unlock your inner Speculator. You are keeping an open mind, hoovering up tidbits of information left and right. You have found out everything there is to know about your particular challenge.

Where do ideas come from? Do they appear out of nowhere in a puff of smoke? Or are they something that sits in the back of our minds waiting to be tapped into?

Dan Plotkin joined Electric this September as Creative Director to work alongside Neame Ingram. The pair first teamed-up at Table 19 where they hit it off instantly.