Unlocking Innovation Through Constraints

In a world obsessed with technological advancement, Yusuf Chuku offers a refreshingly human-centered perspective on innovation. As Executive Strategy Director at New Gods, Chuku brings decades of hybrid strategy experience to an organization that defies traditional agency categorization. His approach to innovation isn't about starting from scratch, but about reconfiguring existing elements in novel ways. Chuku's philosophy emphasizes the value of security and space in the creative process, challenging organizations to foster environments where ideas can flourish without fear. His insights reveal how constraints—far from limiting creativity—can become powerful catalysts for innovation when approached with the right mindset.

1. Tell us your name and a little bit about your role at New Gods.

I'm Yusuf Chuku, the Executive Strategy Director at New Gods. My background is in strategy, but various flavors of it—I've been a creative strategist, done lots of brand strategy, and I often describe myself as a hybrid strategist. For a long time, a headhunter described my resume as being "all over the place," which slowly morphed into being "hybrid." I appreciate having worked in different places, with different practices and forms of strategy. I think that makes for a well-rounded strategist.

New Gods isn't what I'd describe as an agency—it's a company that makes everything from marketing communications through to documentaries and music. Pretty much everything.

2. What does innovation mean to you?

Innovation is coming up with a new idea, a new way of doing something, or just a new thing. But I have a very particular belief around it: I don't necessarily think innovation is an act of invention where we're creating something out of thin air. For me, innovation is often a combination of things that already exist—when you combine them in new ways, you're able to innovate.

Think about chemical elements as the building blocks of everything in this universe. There's a finite number of these elements, but you can configure them in a myriad of ways. Even something as simple as the alphabet—26 characters that can be reconfigured in an infinite number of ways. We've created countless ideas, books, and expressions just by playing with those same characters. Innovation is about taking existing things and reconfiguring them to create something new.

3. How does your team generate new ideas?

It comes down to two things: space and security.

Space is about having time to read, watch, and experience things. When I started in the industry at BMP DDB in London in the mid-'90s, creative teams would sometimes disappear for a day or a week. What they were doing was being out in the world—going to galleries, watching things, reading, just living and experiencing. That's how you "fill the well." You need to consume things so that you can later reconfigure them and bring them together in new ways to innovate. Without that space to experience the world, innovation doesn't happen.

Security is equally important—something I learned when I arrived in the US about 16 years ago. My job fundamentally changed from helping make ideas as big and impactful as possible to making clients comfortable enough to make a decision. I found an environment filled with fear. In London, my clients were never going to be fired if an ad campaign didn't work, so marketing communications became the thing that allowed them to get noticed and promoted. In New York, with at-will employment, if something went wrong, clients could lose their jobs. This created a fear of innovation.
My job became about post-rationalizing ideas and finding as much data as possible to make clients comfortable with taking risks. I realized that for people to innovate, it needs to come from a place of security and safety—we cannot leap from insecure ground. These two things—space and security—are massively important for teams to generate new ideas.

4. Do you have any specific rituals for resetting your team to be creative?

I encourage people to read and make time to immerse themselves in a subject, despite the constraints we face today. Years ago, when I ran a management strategy consultancy in London, clients would give us two to three months for consulting projects—things that in an ad agency we would have to do in two days. Instead of just doing a quick Google search, I could read an entire book about a topic or speak with experts I wouldn't normally have time to find.

Having that space to do deep reading and learn from experts is crucial. The other element is that you have to go out and experience things directly. We can be quite academic when creating ideas, doing it from a distance, but you need to roll up your sleeves and get involved. It's simple: you cannot innovate in the travel sector if you've never been on vacation. You need to exercise your empathy—put yourself in someone else's shoes, whether it's an end user or a consumer. That becomes easier if you've experienced it.

These aren't rituals per se, but they're practices I encourage people to make time and space for.

5. How are you leveraging AI in your innovation process? What are some unexpected benefits or challenges you've encountered with AI adoption?

I'm vehemently against using AI just for the sake of using it so we can say we used it. AI is ultimately a tool. My perspective on how best to use it is to apply it in ways it wasn't intended to be used. If you want to innovate using AI, you cannot use it in the way it was intended because you're not going to get to anything new.

I use the example of hip-hop producers. Innovations in music came from people using tools in ways they weren't intended. Early hip-hop producers in the late '80s through the '90s were using drum machines, samplers, and turntables in ways they weren't meant to be used—you weren't meant to scratch on a turntable. But all those things allowed them to innovate in music through creative misuse of technology.

The wah pedal is a similar example—it was originally for organs, but when applied to guitars, it created something new. With AI, I get really excited about people who are experimenting with it in ways that weren't intended. Put it into the hands of creative people who will misuse it—that's where we'll see real innovation.

I oscillate between tempering people's excitement and their fear about AI. I'm old enough to remember other technologies that people believed spelled the end of something. Often, "endism" makes a great headline, but what actually happens is things change and evolve. It's evolution rather than revolution. Inevitably, people's jobs will evolve and change, but it's not something to be feared—you just have to be flexible.

6. How do you identify trends? What resources does your team use to spot trends and consumer insights?

We use trend resources like Trend Hunter. I believe it's important to lean into people who are immersed in trending topics every day rather than trying to create everything from scratch. There's work to be done distinguishing between small, fast-moving things like TikTok dances and bigger, slow-moving shifts in culture. Understanding where things sit and, more importantly, the connection between the two is a crucial exercise. What are these small things you're seeing, and how are they connected to bigger shifts?

Beyond utilizing trend experts, the important piece for brands is understanding their place within culture. I'm a big believer in the importance of cultural relevance. When I started in the business, there was an implicit belief that brands lived in a vacuum—we spent all our time thinking about a consumer over here and a brand over there, with messaging traveling between the two in a vacuum. The reality is we don't live in a vacuum. There's a whole load of things going on that people care about, often more than the brand itself.

The response from brands is frequently to just shout louder and spend more money, thinking if they can shout above what they perceive as noise, they'll win. But you can't shout above it—you have to work with it. The only way to do that is to understand it and find your brand's place within it.

You need to understand your brand not just through its vision and attributes, but through its place in the real world and in culture—what it brings to the conversation. Having that clear understanding is essential, and it's very obvious when brands haven't done that work.

7. What is the biggest challenge you face when innovating?

The fear of being wrong. It's very human to fear being wrong—it's belittling and horrible. But being wrong is just part of innovating. You can't innovate without being wrong because you have to push certain boundaries and try certain things. Inevitably, failure becomes part of it.

I used to work with a very famous creative director who, up close, wasn't what you'd expect from a creative genius. In meetings, he would say things that were completely wrong or off the mark. Clients would dismiss his ideas. But once in every ten attempts, he would ask a question or make a suggestion that made everyone think, "Wow, we didn't consider that." Interestingly, that's the only thing people remembered. He got all the credit for unlocking the problem, and people forgot all the times he was completely wrong.

His strength wasn't that he came up with amazing ideas—it was his fearlessness in being wrong. He was unfiltered in his confidence to speak his mind, even if he was wrong most of the time. People forget the misses and remember the hits. I often encourage junior people to be more unfiltered. It's fine to get it wrong, and most of the time, people won't remember.

8. Has there ever been an instance where another industry has influenced an innovation at your company?

Years ago, my wife and I created something called a "misfit challenge" to drive innovation in deprived neighborhoods. We would work with people who weren't necessarily creative professionals, and we'd take disparate tools meant to solve very different problems and ask people to solve a specific problem using an unrelated tool.

For example, we'd ask: "How do we utilize local gangs to solve homelessness?" Initially, it doesn't make sense—gangs are often seen as a problem themselves. But this constraint forces you to think creatively, and you might develop solutions that address both homelessness and gang-related issues. Or we might ask, "How do we take teen moms and address food deserts?" You might create a solution that teaches teen moms about nutrition while having them volunteer in underserved areas.

There's a fantastic book called "A Beautiful Constraint" by Mark Barden that explores this idea—constraints drive innovation. If you have limited resources to solve a problem, you inevitably become creative in finding solutions. The misfit challenge was about forcing constraints to catalyze innovation.

9. What makes an innovative culture? How do you create a culture of innovation?

Being your authentic self is crucial, even if it sounds clichéd. We need the confidence to be ourselves and to get things wrong. People often mistake being a leader in innovation for being the source of innovation, but that's not it. A leader in innovation is someone who can spot good ideas and innovation, not necessarily the person who comes up with it.
To do that, you have to be really good at listening and asking questions, and then be able to champion ideas.

Sometimes our ego makes us think we have to be the ones who come up with the innovative idea, but leaders in innovation are able to spot innovation in others. I encourage people to look for innovation rather than thinking they have to create it themselves. This involves speaking to as many people as possible and looking under every rock.
When you find innovation, champion it hard. That's the difficult part—being the person who says, "This is great, and I'm going to fall on my sword to defend it if I have to." That's what makes a leader in innovation.

10. Looking to the future, how will you continue to be a leader in innovation?

I'll continue to focus on being authentic and having the confidence to be myself, even if that means getting things wrong sometimes. I believe every idea is born drowning—it's fragile in its early stages. To be a leader in innovation, you don't have to be the one who gives birth to the idea, but you need to be a great midwife—someone who helps nurture it and allows it to grow.

Innovation is about recognizing that constraints, far from limiting creativity, can be powerful catalysts when approached with the right mindset. By creating space for exploration, ensuring people feel secure enough to take risks, and championing promising ideas—regardless of their source—we can foster environments where innovation thrives.