Taxi's Paul Lavoie speaks in Creativity

Excerpts:

"I believe that creativity is a business tool, I don't think it's a self indulgent exercise. Creativity is about making new opportunities for our clients. I think it's important to be able to clearly express that to them."

"Jay Chiat asked the question 'How big do you get before you get bad?' I have the answer. It's 150. There's an African tribe that does that-- builds up to about 150 and then sends off the senior couple to start another tribe. The American military does the same thing. And of course, based on my experience working at larger agencies, you get to a point where things get out of sync."

"Therefore, there are no lines in our company between account people and creative people. We only have creative people. Creative people are about thinking and innovating, not about the science of writing and art directing, it's about purely thinking, first and foremost. That's why we called our agency Taxi. Because instead of departments, we wanted to create small braintrusts--about the same number of people you can fit in a cab--that can really be empowered and make decisions."

"The way I define good work is when you solve the business problem and you innovate somewhere along the chain. Strategically there's a new spark, creatively there's a new way of expressing the brand, or from the media point of view, there's a new way of delivering the message. You solve the business problem and you innovate. When you do that, it's like a narcotic. I think it's gotten everybody excited doing that, and doing that consistenlty."

"Doubt is the foundation our whole company was built on. Our mantra is 'Doubt the conventional, create the exceptional.' It's about getting people to start to think before they execute. That just simply ensures that they won't assume that there's a pattern or go by an automatic response."