Six in ten FTSE350 employers reckon they need more creative thinkers, yet almost none are training for it.
A Universities UK survey found 61% of senior leaders say creative thinkers are essential to getting the most from AI. Another 63% believe businesses must work more closely with training providers to build the skills they need. The gap between what boards know they require and what they’re actually doing is striking.
But here’s what’s often missed: this isn’t just about innovation theatre. Creative thinking is the missing link in AI adoption.
Why creative thinking matters for AI
When most organisations approach AI, they follow the obvious path: buy the tool, plug it in and train people on features. It works. Sort of. But it leaves massive value on the table.
The problem is conventional thinking. Your team learns the software. They use it the way the vendor designed it. And they get the results the vendor designed it for, which might be 40% of what’s actually possible in your context.
Creative thinkers do something different. They ask: what if we approached this problem differently? What if we combined AI with our existing workflows in ways nobody’s tried? What if we used this tool to solve something we didn’t know we could solve?
That’s where the real ROI lives.
Three ways creative thinking accelerates AI success
- Problem redefinition during setup: Most AI implementations fail because organisations are trying to solve the wrong problem with the wrong tool. Creative thinkers challenge the brief. They ask uncomfortable questions. They spot that what you thought was a process efficiency issue is actually a data quality issue, or a skills gap, or a misaligned incentive. They save months and millions by forcing clarity upfront.
- Adoption that actually sticks: Resistance to AI usually isn’t about the technology. It’s about people unable to imagine themselves in the new way of working. Creative thinkers help teams visualise the transition. They generate multiple pathways through the change, not just one imposed solution. They make adoption feel possible instead of threatening.
- Novel use cases nobody planned for: Six months after go-live, your creative thinkers will find applications for AI that weren’t in the business case. That’s not an accident. That’s what happens when you’ve trained people to think laterally, to challenge assumptions, to see beyond the obvious.
The cost of waiting
Your competition probably hasn’t started. They’re still buying tools and hoping. That’s your window to competitive advantage.
Why? Because upskilling creative thinking isn’t treated as urgent. It gets crowded out by immediate operational demands and the perception that you can’t really teach for it, that creativity’s something people either have or don’t. Both assumptions are wrong.
Creative thinking is a learnable discipline. Six Thinking Hats® and Lateral Thinking are structured methodologies that help teams challenge assumptions, explore problems from multiple angles and unlock solutions buried under conventional thinking. Exactly what your workforce needs as AI reshapes what work looks like.
The businesses pulling ahead aren’t hoping their people will naturally think differently. They’re actively training them to. They’ve realised that in an AI-augmented world, human creativity becomes the scarcest resource and scarcity means it’s worth investing in.
Start here
If you’re serious about building a workforce ready for AI and capable of extracting genuine value from it, start with training in creative thinking. Not after implementation. Before. Or alongside it.
- Six Thinking Hats® stops decision-making paralysis. Your teams stop arguing and start solving together, cutting meeting time and accelerating project delivery. Critical when you’re navigating AI choices fast.
- Lateral Thinking kills groupthink fast, generating novel solutions to the problems your conventional approaches can’t crack, the ones keeping your organisation stuck and keeping you awake at night! Essential when you need to reimagine how AI fits into your business.
Both programmes deliver measurable impact on your team’s competitiveness. Both are weapons against the status quo, not soft skills add-ons.
The question isn’t whether you need more creative thinkers. It’s whether you’ll train them before your competitors and whether you’ll do it before or after you’ve already made costly AI mistakes.
Ready to build creative capacity in your team?
Six Thinking Hats® stops decision paralysis, cuts meeting time, accelerates delivery – Explore Six Thinking Hats®
Lateral Thinking kills groupthink, cracks unsolvable problems, breaks organisational gridlock – Explore Lateral Thinking
Indigo is the official UK distributor for Edward de Bono Limited. Contact us to discuss your challenges.
