We used to have teams of writers and art directors.
We’d throw them a brief to create a communications campaign. Depending on the importance and the budget (and if we were feeling bored), we might pit a handful of teams against each other.
Campaign ideas would be presented, shouted over, voted on, bribed out, messed with, hyped up, shot down. Somehow a final campaign would be approved and then the real work started.
The campaign would be evaluated, developed, refined. Other disciplined professionals would be called in to bring aspects of the campaign to life.
For the television commercial, it would involve animators and animatics, a production company with a producer, director and full crew (casting, make up, costume, production design, cinematographer, sound recorder, colorist, editor, musician, special effects and a lot of assistants).
Every other way the campaign was expressed required specialist to do the job. Lots of people in their boxes doing their thing in sequence.
Excellent idea and process for a sequential world except for one important fact. We don’t live in a sequential world any more. Everything is happening all at once.
We face challenges that are too complex for a single discipline to address. Taking a transdisciplinary approach allows us to embrace complexity and uncertainty by bringing together different experts from a variety of backgrounds and points of view to look at problems and challenges in new and exciting ways.
A flexible, open and non-traditional approach produces flexible, open and non-traditional ideas and solutions. It opens up a new world of communications.