Evolution or Revolution? Why Brand Innovation Isn’t Grounded in Chaos

When businesses face new challenges, it’s easy to feel the solutions must be equally unprecedented. Leaders assume they need a revolution. But this is a mistake. In his new book, Evolutionary Ideas, Sam Tatam, global head of behavioural science at Ogilvy, proves how behavioural science and evolutionary psychology can help business leaders solve tomorrow’s challenges. Just as evolution has crafted the wing and dorsal fin, thousands of engineers, designers, marketers and advertisers have toiled to solve many parallel problems facing brands today. Over time, through intent, design, social learning and sheer luck, solutions have been found – often in the most unexpected ways. The book goes on sale tomorrow, Wednesday May 11th. 

Sam Tatam is global head of behavioural science at Ogilvy, his passion is understanding human behaviour, his experience comes from a deep understanding of organisational industrial psychology and advertising strategy. From New York to Nairobi, Sam has led award-winning behaviour change projects across every category and every continent. Today, he leads a global team of talented psychologists and behavioural economists to develop interventions to shape the communications of some of the world's most influential brands and corporations.

Evolutionary Ideas proves with an enhanced ability to see patterns in human innovation, brands and businesses can systematically approach the creative process to develop more effective ideas at scale and speed. Japanese engineers reduced bullet train noise by studying the evolved biology of the owl and kingfisher, and Disney improved the queueing experience in the same way Houston airport made arrivals feel faster (while making people walk further). Sam Tatam shows how the chocolate at the bottom of a Cornetto ice cream can improve an Error 404 message, and what a bowl of M&Ms has in common with a canary in a coal mine. These are Evolutionary Ideas.

Exploring five of the most critical challenges brands and businesses face today, Sam Tatam demonstrates how to ‘breed’ more effective solutions from those that have survived. The result is a dynamic and exciting way of solving problems and supercharging creativity – for anyone in any endeavour.

“Innovation can be an evolutionary phenomenon. Adaptive advantages don’t always occur accidentally and incrementally, they can be identified rapidly, applied systematically and be totally transformational. Evolutionary Ideas will show business leaders how to breed from the best ideas and out-innovate their competition.” Sam Tatam

“Aided by Sam’s approach, I think that in the next 10 to 20 years advances in psychology may prove to be just as important to the improvement of the human condition as technology is today.” - Rory Sutherland, vice chairman, Ogilvy Group 

Buy your copy of Evolutionary Ideas here.

“The philosophy of biomimicry is simple. After billions of years, failures are fossils, and that which has remained is the secret for survival. Today, while fields like engineering, design, and architecture borrow heavily from evolved biological solutions to accelerate innovation, this approach is also relevant when exploring evolved psychological solutions. The more our ancestors made decisions that increased their chances of survival, the more likely it became for these underlying mechanisms to be passed on. While we might not appreciate it, evolution is all around us.” Sam Tatam