Fill is about filling up with a range of customer-centric stimulus. Fill thinking is about about your ability to deeply connect with other people, new ideas and fresh perspectives.
Being creative is all about making connections, often in directions that are non-linear, or connecting 'items' that may be far apart in the plotted map of our thinking and feeling. Because of this, empathy is critical for creative innovation in business - this is where connections are created with other people and other points of view.
Through Fill, the connections we make are with colleagues across the business - who work in different functions, are closer or further away from customers, who we need to collaborate with to deliver - with customers, potential customers, competitors and with trends and changes that are happening across the consumer space. We use a range of techniques to ensure that in Fill interviewing, we are always going deeper – examining issues from the rational and emotional perspective.
It isn't enough to monitor customers at arm’s length, to have an idea of what they might want, an analysed 'average' of apparent customer needs. To make these deep creative connections, vital for really successful innovation, we need to get as close as we can to thinking and feeling as our customers do, being exposed to the experiences they have and being influenced by the wider market trends.
In his study of discovery, psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi identifies 'expertise' (or hard work) as one of the hidden aspects of creative flow. Pioneers in thinking, original creatives, master their domain in order to create an internal environment in which connections can form. They immerse themselves in it. They live it and breathe it.
In innovation, that domain is the customer. And through Fill, empathy is the means to master the customer domain.