Eureka 425: Why being weird is good business

0:15You're listening to Eureka on Monocle Radio, brought to you by the team behind the entrepreneurs, the show all about inspiring people, innovative companies and fresh ideas in global business. I'm Tom Edwards. John Rocha is the CEO of Raw Materials, a digital design agency that delivers innovative solutions by taking unconventional approaches. Prior to founding the company, John ran another successful agency, but grew somewhat disillusioned with the industry's focus on scaling and optimizing pre-existing ideas instead of nurturing originality. This frustration led him to create raw materials with the goal of challenging conformity and prioritizing creativity, not just for clients, but for society as a whole.

0:57But how do you implement such an unconventional business model in an industry that's often rather reluctant to think outside the box? I caught up with John to hear more about the start of the journey. He began by telling me about his unusual approach to design. So the word unusual is a special word for us, means a lot of things. But I mean, so we're a design company. And so our job in our capacity as an agency to clients, as a service provider to clients, our job at the end of the day is effectiveness. And that's our goal. We just believe that the thing that is the best is better than everything that exists, exists already, exists before, and what everyone else is thinking to do.

1:38And so therefore, it is unusual because usual is what everyone else is doing, especially more and more these days. And so looking for the unusual thing is just our strategy in finding the thing that's most effective. And then in order to do that, you have to open yourself up to taking unusual approaches to doing things that might include some of the practices that everyone else does, but certainly look outside of that and go and find things and ways of working that are different in order to create the thing that is so much more successful at whatever it is you're competing at or trying to do that it is unusual, in fact.

2:20yeah and i know that you're passionate about this idea that through constantly striving sort of optimized processes and constant iterative development of things that we're actually doing maybe the opposite of what the intention was and that we're stifling originality we're killing innovation not not to sort of fill in in gaps that aren't there but what led you to become so frustrated was that was it that you saw that in virtually every creative shop that you either talked to or were in or worked in, you began to see the danger, the damage of this conformity. What was flagging to you that that was becoming just, you know, such a prevalent way of thinking that it was stifling creativity?

3:00Well, I was feeling it firsthand and I was kind of a part of it. So before Raw Materials, I was working on an agency that I started back in 2011 that was successful by all means. It was called Handsome in a similar space, but a bit larger. And we had it's seen a lot of success, but I believe the reason why we were successful is that we were falling into the same traps or grooves that the industry at large was, which was that just, it's kind of the extractive nature of design in the last decade or so in taking ideas that existed already. And we had some amazing ideas that were born out of the internet, basically coming online for everyone and the information age and data and access and things like that.

3:46And those ideas were wonderful. But then we spent the next decade just trying to extract as much as we could out of those ideas. And so that's where almost the entire focus of design became one of implementing, but mostly scaling and optimizing. And we lost the emphasis on ideas, novel ideas that created new things of value, new ways to solve problems. And so my agency was kind of falling into that. And we had big clients asking for big projects, but those projects weren't really using creativity to create things that are great for people, great for business, different than what existed before.

4:27And so I said, hey, if this is what everyone's doing and what we're kind of being pulled into that gravity to, there's probably the greatest opportunity is to do something different. Yeah, it's so interesting. And I just wonder then in terms of on the client side, because does it become then a question of finding like-minded leaders in business and saying to them, oh, by the way, you know, I do this. Because I guess, especially at the beginning, right, when you set out to, I don't know, do credentials or pitch for business, if your whole foundational principle is forget everything you thought you knew or forget everything you thought you were going to hear, we know, especially big corporates, you know, they can be fairly tricky things to manoeuvre.

5:09And they're often rather small-c conservative, right, with their decision-making processes. Presumably, you and your colleagues at the outset, you must have had that conversation. What gave you the conviction that actually there were these businesses out there or did you already know who they were? I mean, that's a great point. And that's the crux of it. But really, at the end of the day, like I said, we are about effectiveness. And this isn't an unfounded theory. And so we look first, we communicate and meet clients where they are and speak the language that they need to be spoken with. And so that can mean effectiveness and rigor and proof and evidence.

5:47Our approach is, we call it rigor and romance. So it is as much about novel ideas and exploration and boldness and risk-taking, the romantic side of things, as it is about rigor, which is building data, building evidence, testing things, following a method that we can trust and then evaluate and things like that. So it's the combination of those things. And so depending on who we're working with, what stage of a project we're working in, this can all come across quite scientific and data driven. The point isn't to throw that out. The point is to marry that with a drive toward the thing that is going to be extraordinarily effective.

6:32Can I ask you a bit about creative tension or client agency tension as well, John? Because one of the cornerstones, I guess, is this idea of challenging these cultures of conformity within the sector. But what happens if you are working with big corporate that maybe is working at the cutting edge of innovation, but it's known perhaps or the suspicion maybe that it is, there may be a culture of internal conformity? Does that throw up tensions? I mean, I know you've done lots of work with some big, huge players, you know, on Peacock with NBC Universal or Meta, a couple of different projects. Business like Meta, people know that they have a Meta way of doing things, right?

7:12Does that throw up tensions? And actually, is there opportunity enmeshed within such moments of tension? Yeah, absolutely there are. And, you know, I think this reminds me of a project actually ongoing with Google. And so another very large company, very successful and largely driven by their culture and their way of doing things. And I mean, frankly, a culture of innovation. I mean, the ideas that founded Google and made it what it was were some of the most novel and groundbreaking and formative for not only the Internet, but our world. And so going into an organization like that. So there is a lot of inertia in a company like that.

7:51the thing is no one person has a desire to stay stagnant to be the problem to hold things up so it's not an individual it's it's the organization and the way things work and so what we do is we get to the people we kind of break down those things and we get there and just start working with individuals and and say hey yes we have to make something that works but we're going to do this by taking a more kind of natural and creative approach to this. But in the process of doing that, our goal is effectiveness. So let's talk about what's not going to work at the organizational and political level inside the company.

8:30And let's do the extra work to make that happen. And so I don't know, it's just at the end of the day, it's, I guess it's, it's, it's understanding that what you're doing is going to create a lot of tension to your point. And the best solution for us has always been work directly with people, bring people along, create a diverse team of people that represent different parts of the business and different potential issues, bring them along and get everyone focused on one thing, which is creating the best possible product. What does that look like? Because I guess, particularly when you do so much work that, you know, you're, I guess you're a designer, but you're sort of a technologist as well.

9:07So much of it is virtual, is digital. If you need that spark of unusual inspiration, Where does that come from? I kind of hope it's not from the doom scrolling. Is it about, I don't know, getting outside? Is it about food, travel, somebody, family? Where do you go when you just need to kind of escape from the quotidian and find the spark that's going to be the next great unusual idea you have? I do agree and believe that sometimes the best creative work or the quality of your ideas can be directly correlated to the quality of your inputs. So it's the quality of your inspiration. For me personally, I like to look outside.

9:52I like to look in the past. And I know it sounds counter to what I'm talking about, but I'm talking about a bit further back in the past, before the Internet, when people were designing products really for the first time, when we were using materials for the first time, we were using, you know, plastic or the ability to form wood in certain ways, kind of look at the attention and craft that went into those kinds of things. Look where people, you know, used a seemingly unnecessary amount of attention to craft and detail in the way things are built. And I find that very intriguing. This idea of, which is, you know, unusual is kind of stems from that, but an unnecessary amount of craft that went into something.

10:35And I think furniture is a great example of that. I think art and film, especially a lot of unappreciated or subconsciously appreciated decisions and craft that go into things like that. I think really trying to understand that well drives that. But, you know, I also, I do best when I clear my mind completely. So doing things that cleanse the mind of any kind of ideas or decisions, and that usually has to be some kind of exercise or outdoor activity in order to do that.

11:08That was John Rocha, the CEO and founder of Raw Materials. And you can learn more about his unconventional approach by heading to therawmaterials.com. And that's all for this episode of Eureka. We'll be back at the same time next week. Do look and listen out for The Entrepreneurs, available every Wednesday. Eureka was produced by Laura Kramer with audio editing by Jack Dewars. You can listen again and find out more about the show at monocle.com. And if you'd like to get in touch with the team, email Laura on lrk at monocle.com. I'm Tom Edwards. Goodbye, and thanks for listening to Eureka. I know I don't know.