Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin by accident—or at least, that's the usual story. In reality, that serendipity was deliberately sought, by allowing some slides to become freely contaminated and then rigorously analyzing the consequences.

Creativity often works this way: it has an element of unpredictability that must be accepted, but it can be governed when it occurs within a process.

We discuss this with Erik Kessels, artist, curator, and designer, creative partner at the agency KesselsKramer, who last year entered the Hall of Legends of the Italian Art Directors Club.

This episode is produced in partnership with ADCI, the Italian Art Directors Club.

Sources:

• E. Kessels, Failed It! How to turn mistakes into ideas and other advice for successfully screwing up, Phaidon 2016.

• The story of Alexander Fleming is mainly taken from K. Lalchhandama, Reappraising Fleming’s Snot and Mould, Science Vision, Volume 20, issue 1, pages 29-42, 31 March 2020.

• Fleming's life in his country home is recounted in Alexander Fleming's Country Home, https://eafa.org.uk/work/?id=1043537.

• Charlan Nemeth's experiments are described in S. Johnson, Where Good Ideas Come From. The Natural History of Innovation, Riverhead 2011.

• Paul Dyson's article on multiplicative factors is Top 10 Drivers of Advertising Profitability, Admap 2014. The most updated data is in The Drivers of Profitability, Thinkbox 2023, https://www.thinkbox.tv/research/thinkbox-research/the-drivers-of-profitability.

• The analysis of System1 and Effie databases is in A. Tindall, The Creative Dividend. Advertising That Pays Back, 2026. A summary of criticisms of the book's methodological approach is in Daniel Gilbert's article, The "Most Important Advertising Thinking in 10 Years" is actually a Masterclass in How Not to do Marketing Research, https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/creative-dividend-masterclass-everything-wrong-research-gilbert-bkckc/.

• The most solid data on this topic are still those from Les Binet and Peter Field, starting with The Long and the Short of It, IPA 2013.