One early spring evening, Allen Gannett and I met up prior to a lecture on creativity at the GW School of Business (GWSB).
With a backpack, styled hair, jeans, and an untucked button down underneath a sweater, Gannett cuts the figure of a GW upperclassman, confident and comfortable in his surroundings. Together we entered Duquès Hall, and made our way upstairs to the lecture hall.
While he may look the part of the student, Gannett wasn’t there to listen to the presentation. He was there to deliver it.
At 27, Gannett, who completed his degree after only five semesters in the winter of 2011, has accomplished more than many his age. He has founded two companies, been featured on the “30 Under 30” lists for both Inc. and Forbes, was among the country’s youngest venture capitalists, and will soon release his first book, The Creative Curve: How to Develop the Right Idea at the Right Time.
“I got into startup life because I like the pace, and I like the ability to do new things every day,” Gannett, CCAS BA ‘12, explains.
Gannett’s entrepreneurial roots go deep. In fourth grade, he started a school newspaper, which evolved from a print to a digital publication. In high school, he did the same with a music magazine. So, it was not surprising that as a Colonial Gannett followed his enterprising instincts.
“I started my first company at GW,” Gannett recalls. “I was basically doing every night class, every independent study; you name the special program, I was doing it. I was doing the startup full-time for about a year at the same time I was a student. It was very tiring.”
The initial enterprise was eventually sold for a small amount, after which Gannett took a role as CMO of a local startup. Then he branched off to found TrackMaven, the marketing analytics software company where he now serves as CEO.
As a B2B-focused executive, Gannett would often hear about the importance of creativity and how some people were innately gifted with the ability to develop novel ideas, products, and campaigns.
Gannett developed a presentation that he would deliver at conferences and to potential customers to counteract the idea that creativity was somehow magical and did not involve hard work and study. He realized that creativity is actually a trait you can develop. This idea behind his initial presentation eventually evolved into The Creative Curve.
Gannett’s talk with GWSB students that spring night roughly mirrored the outline of the book. He briskly worked his way through 140-some slides, deftly sprinkling jokes into a presentation that touched on the stories of creative geniuses from Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (who, as we learn, was baptised Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart) to Benjamin Franklin to JK Rowling to Taylor Swift.
The book “debunks the inspiration theory of creativity,” as Gannett puts it, and explains how the right balance of familiarity and novelty is key to creativity and commercial success, and provides a template for individuals to enhance their creativity through consumption, imitation, creative communities, and iteration.
Gannett stresses that it is very difficult for anyone to have insights, or “aha moments,” about topics with which they are unfamiliar.
I ask Gannett to share his advice with students and alumni on a topic he knows well—entrepreneurship. Those who want to work at a startup or early-stage company, he says, should focus on the human connection.
“Approach the people running startups as human beings, with goals, and jobs, and dreams, and emotions, and aspirations,” Gannett recommends. “If you treat them with respect and humanity, you will be able to get really far, really fast.”
Sage advice from someone who has gone very far very fast and shows no signs of slowing down.
— Matt Lindsay, GWSB MBA ’07
The Creative Curve will be released on June 12 in the United States and Canada.
