You can’t eat soup with a fork. You shouldn’t hammer in a screw. And those who bring a knife to a gunfight find themselves at a severe disadvantage. Selecting the wrong tool for the job usually delivers poor results. It’s perilous too. There’s a section on the subject to be found in a safety handbook produced by the US Navy. It cautions against things like using a chair where a ladder is necessary, or a knife when you need a screwdriver. There’s more jeopardy associated with these things at sea – but this sort of thing is still cavalier on land.

The physical examples are absurd. But in the digital sphere, we’re a lot more lenient when it comes to selecting the incorrect tackle. The worst offenders are those who obsess over the power of data – specifically, its ability to predict and measure things that were unmeasurable before. Research and evidence are fundamentally important, but we’re so enchanted with the capabilities of data that it’s started to feel like we can’t come to a decision without the reassurance of a stat. This is a problem – an emphasis on what’s been prevent the imagining of what might be.

Data never invented anything

Amidst all the talk of data-driven businesses, the greatest commercial achievements of recent decades have had surprisingly little to do with it. Consider the most successful product from the (until recently) biggest company in the world – Apple’s iPhone. The story of its conception involved a handful of envelope-pushing tech executives drawing on their knowledge of the consumer, and the creative capacity of their development teams. Data took a back seat to human insight. This is the case with almost every brilliant product that we deem indispensable in 2024. James Dyson’s bagless vacuum cleaner, Elon Musk’s car company, Bill Bowerman’s running shoe. These contributions to our civilisation came from imagination.

Data informs, creativity inspires

The same is true in marketing and brand-building. Data becomes useful to businesses when it exposes a truth. As I’ve often said, when an idea possesses that quality, it becomes powerful. Uncovering a fact might spark the creative engine, but that isn’t enough. It takes empathy, intuition and perseverance to bring off a campaign around it. The great brand campaigns of the last twenty years are all built around truth, whether that authenticity is drawn from a data point or not matters less than most digital zealots would have us believe.

A debate is raging when it comes to how AI will impact creativity and business. More tools don’t always result in better outcomes, but as they proliferate the best entrepreneurs – like the best carpenters – will know which ones to pick up, and which ones to leave on the bench.