Last month during the first weeks of the FIFA World Cup one of Australia’s biggest media personalities admitted she had no idea it was even on. 

Once I had taken a hydration break to recover from the news, I realised it was not that much of a shock. 

Our streaming services, social media feeds and online shopping habits have become so hyper-personalised that we are burrowing further into our specific interests. Rather than discovering things, we are being delivered them, and our tastes are being reinforced rather than broadened.   

For most people this convenience sounds like the opposite of an issue.  

But if your career in marketing, PR or another creative industry involves producing original ideas, particularly amid the sea of homogenised AI-generated slop that’s now permeating both online and offline spaces, it’s a state of affairs worthy of a yellow card.

Narrow inputs create narrow ideas

There is a neuroscience concept called divergent thinking, which is the brain’s ability to link unrelated concepts and produce something genuinely new. 

A 2024 study found people generated more original ideas when they were less focused on what they already knew and were more open to unexpected concepts.  

If your intellectual diet is made up of podcasts, newsletters and LinkedIn posts about the same topic, your next great idea – as well as the five after that – is likely to be one-dimensional.  

The brain cannot connect dots it has never collected, and going over old ground is rarely the precursor to innovation.  

Leonardo da Vinci understood this, spending hours studying cloud formations, random stains and cracks in brickwork to inspire his art.  

You have probably seen it in a work scenario too. Someone in a brainstorm draws a parallel with theatre when everyone else is talking about retail, or borrows a lesson from urban planning to solve a customer experience problem, and suddenly the room has a new way in. 

Ideas like this come from giving your subconscious a broader foraging ground of experiences and reference points. 

As creative teams become leaner, that matters more than ever. With fewer people to bounce ideas off, fewer perspectives around the table and less time to sit around waiting for inspiration, the responsibility shifts to each of us to bring more diverse inputs into the process. 

The importance of engineering serendipity

Tech companies are now trying to code serendipity back into their platforms because endless personalisation eventually becomes repetitive.  

We can do the same thing on a much simpler level by unplugging from the algorithm, slowing down and embracing analogue ways of gathering information.  

On the weekends, I like to wander around the non-fiction section of my library to see what obscure book I can find on a topic I know nothing about. I also read the weekend newspapers from front to back instead of skipping straight to the sections I already like.  

My next goal is to make a habit of browsing the local noticeboard and reading the ‘What’s On’ section in my community paper to find random events or gatherings.  

My friends and I also enjoy going to university lectures, writers’ festival sessions or talks on topics we know little about.  

You can start out small by saying yes to invitations you would normally turn down. You do not have to become an expert or dedicate your life to a topic. The goal is exposure.  

In isolation, these actions may seem pointless. In practice, they gather inputs from a wider range of sources and open your mind to the possibility of unexpected connections.  

You don’t know which conversation, book or random observation will become the thing that unlocks an idea six months later. 

In a world where our algorithms are becoming increasingly good at showing us exactly what we already like, perhaps the most valuable thing we can do as creatives is look beyond our interests.  

You do, however, have my full encouragement to watch Australia’s victory over Türkiye as many times as you want. 

 

Publish date: 22 July 2026