Adding Scientists to Your Advertising Staff?

Here's an interesting Human Resources experiment: Take an advertising agency. Add 12 people, with or without college degrees or work experience, from around the globe, from very different non-advertising disciplines (the arts, science, technology...). Give them six to nine months to work together on creative problem-solving for selected client accounts. See what happens.

No, it's not a new reality TV show. It's a project called Platform, by Wieden + Kennedy London. W+K is searching for curious, creative, adventuresome, and observant individuals from across disciplines to expand the agency's long-term talent pool. Participants are not guaranteed a job at the end of the program, but potential is there. After his involvement in W+Kside, an earlier, smaller version of Platform, one product designer received a job offer from W+K eighteen months later.

To apply for the project, which launches September 9, interested parties must submit (1) their solution to a problem that bothers them (with implementation documented via Flickr photos), and (2) a video bio, less than three minutes long, posted to YouTube.

I'm impressed with this bold and brave move toward cross-disciplinary integration on the part of Wieden + Kennedy. Collaborating across disciplines is a wise choice in nearly any field, I think. Consider the variety of expertise required to create something as "simple" as a good iPhone application, for example: you need graphic designers, computer programmers, information systems specialists, communications experts, product testers, writers, marketing researchers, marketing communications specialists, sound designers, and perhaps some physicists, depending on what you're creating.

Pulling in all of these people into one advertising agency is something new and different, though. It's risky. As Platform's recruiting website asks, "Are you ready to embrace failure?" But with great risk is the potential for great return. The people who will apply (and whom W+K will select) for the program are people who are creative, innovative, bold, risk-taking, problem-solvers - just the kind of people needed at an ad agency that wants to be excellent in innovation and service to clients and customers.

In the words of Jim Collins from his book Good to Great, W+K is looking to get the right people on the bus. Good for them. Maybe someday soon this will become the standard operating procedure for hiring at the top innovative companies of the world.