Hey, friends!
If you’ve ever attended an Issue Space event, there’s a good chance you’ve run into Joshua Murphy, creative impact strategist extraordinaire.
Impact work decision-makers love Josh because of his keen sense of where culture meets opportunities for impact — did I mention he’s the creator of Gucci’s long-running Changemakers program for inclusion in the fashion industry?
I love Josh because he’s as humble, kind-hearted, and good-natured as he is brilliant and committed to positive work.
Recently, Josh told me everything about his new venture, Oliver, a digital companion designed to help creative dreamers and doers get 👏🏾 things 👏🏾 done.👏🏾 I found his insights about Oliver to be a refreshing account of what tech looks like when it’s designed around bringing out our best.
Read my chat with Josh below, and don’t miss his pearls of wisdom, from one humanitarian creative soul to another.
“A creative process to actually get something done.”
(Cat Addo) Josh! This is so exciting. First, give us the intro — how do you describe yourself as a purpose-driven professional?
(Joshua Murphy) I would describe myself as a creative impact strategist. Most of my career has been spent in philanthropy with the Rockefeller Foundation and leading the design and execution of Gucci’s North America impact work, Gucci Changemakers.
I've built initiatives from scratch, designed leading communications platforms, and used the power of culture and art to shift systems and empower grassroots communities. It's work that feels deeply important to me, especially during this time as we have to lean on the community more and more to sustain ourselves and dream of a better future than what we see and experience around us right now.
What — or who — is Oliver, and what inspired you to start it?
Oliver is a creative companion who helps guide anyone in their everyday creative endeavors. Oliver helps frame your goals, navigate roadblocks, and guide you as you go back and forth between strategy and execution. Most importantly, he does this based on your creative fingerprint.
This vision started almost five years ago with a simple idea of how I could help ordinary people start and finish a creative project, even when they get stuck or fall off the track.
I'm definitely a brainstormer — meaning I constantly have lots of ideas and notes about ideas everywhere, and I found that I couldn't always stay on track or complete a lot of my ideas, so I wondered if there was a creative process that humans follow to actually get something done, even in the hardest of times.
“I truly believe creativity is innate.”
You're a creative strategist, and Oliver is devoted to helping people understand and, for lack of a better word, optimize their creativity. Why did it feel important to measure and support creativity specifically?
This felt important to me because I truly believe creativity is innate — everyone has creative talent, even if it's unrealized. Most people think of creativity as something only artistic people have — for example, someone who paints or designs — but in reality, we are all creative. Creativity is very much part of how we go about our day-to-day lives. It's researching and writing a paper, or brainstorming ideas at work or with friends, or planning your birthday party. It's about having a vision for something, mapping out goals and outcomes, then setting out to do it.
And that was the question or challenge that has guided this work — not only how do we measure creativity, but what is the creative process that we all go through in any given project? And we define the creative process as 7 stages: brainstorm, exploration, visualization, prototyping, reevaluation, review, and share. Each person has a dominant creative trait, but in reality, we all cycle through all of them, often not sequentially.
What does your own creative process look like?
Oh my, my creative process is quite messy. I usually start with key questions I'm trying to answer, do a lot of brainstorming, and then conduct initial research to help me frame the core challenges.
Eventually, I do love to visualize my ideas, which, for me, isn't an artistic exercise by any means, but more like sketching or finding images that align with my thoughts. Sometimes that means hiring someone to create some prototypes. I'm definitely someone who goes through many iterations, and I find that when I'm stuck, it's best to step away a bit to clear my mind and reevaluate.
And, of course, I do have some friends I love to share my ideas with once they're ready. That is always the scariest part for me in the creative process, because you don't know how the finished project will be received, so it's kind of nerve-racking, but it's so important to get that idea out in the universe.
“The most important advantage of creative impact: being able to imagine.”
What do you think is the significance of having – or lacking – a strong creative practice in social impact or purpose-driven business?
It's so important to see creativity as a multidisciplinary strategy. Creativity is about asking the right questions; using the power of culture and diversity to shape initiatives; using storytelling to engage different communities; and, yes, using art and design to shape solutions to unique challenges.
Everyone has a role to play in using creativity to innovate and solve problems. Creativity is simply about putting ideas into practice. Companies and organizations that use this framing are more innovative and can see new opportunities that didn't exist before. And that might be the most important advantage of creative impact: being able to imagine a future that doesn't yet exist, but should.
Last Fall, you came to our Solopreneur Supper, where we talked to founders and other independent workers about what it's like to try to build an offering or career on your own. (The answer to which is probably best summed up by this series of emojis: 🙃🫨😭🥴😮💨.) What was the solo-, or I guess, duo-preneurial experience of building Oliver, and how did you get through it?
Honestly, it has been great having a collaborator. I met my co-founder, Dat, at a leadership weekend that a mutual friend hosted high in the Denver mountains. There were probably 8 or so of us in this beautiful home, cooking and talking about life and leadership (and drinking some whiskey), and we all stayed connected months later. And I remember Dat and I really connected over our ideas on a range of things, with creativity being one of them. We went through so many phases of this work — hiring researchers to help us understand all of the data and research on creativity, helping us design surveys and models to test, including engaging with The Institute for Creativity and Innovation (InCIAM) at Aix-Marseille University, which really helped us nail down our core creative processes.
We also went through a period when we both stepped away from the work. We had invested so many resources in the early days, and each time we got a prototype, it just didn't feel right. That was extremely frustrating, but in the end, even when we failed, we learned so much. That, to me, is one of the key lessons of entrepreneurship: you will definitely fail, probably more than once. And it's important not to let those moments go to waste. Capture those lessons learned. Take some time to digest it all. And get back to work.
And most importantly, don't do it alone. Find someone who provides a different perspective to help bring your ideas to life.
One of the key lessons of entrepreneurship: you will definitely fail, probably more than once. And it's important not to let those moments go to waste. Capture those lessons learned. Take some time to digest it all. And get back to work. And most importantly, don't do it alone.
“We want to know whether Oliver can help people put their ideas into practice.”
What is the impact you are hoping Oliver will make in the world? What will success feel like to you?
I truly hope that ordinary people can use Oliver to discover and follow their own creative journey. To start a project on the app and actually finish it. Eventually, we would like to add a social connection aspect to Oliver as well, where you can meet the right creative collaborator.
And success for us is finding an amazing organization or even a college course that is willing to use Oliver for a specific project over a period of time, so we can measure its true value. Obviously, we'd love to have a million users, but in the short term, we want to know whether Oliver can help people put their ideas into practice, and in the longer term, we want to study its real impact on driving innovation forward.
What's one Oliver hack for the Issue Space community?
When you're starting a project on Oliver, the immediate inclination is to label it as a name, like “Book Project” or “Plan New Outreach Strategy”. But you can also label it as a question or a feeling. For example, if you're stuck on what to name a project, you can actually tag it as “Unresolved naming exercise” or “Color keeps nagging me”. It allows you and Oliver to focus on the problem or challenge rather than the whole project.
We've learned that most people have plenty of ideas, they just don't always know where to start or how to deal with a roadblock, so start there!
Wow. That’s so — there’s no other word for it — creative! 💡💡💡
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Friends, we can help Josh and his co-Founder, Dat, make the most out of Oliver’s launch. Download Oliver in the app store, give it a try, and make your feedback known!
⬇️ Download Oliver for free here
💭 Learn more & explore: https://meetoliver.app/
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