Under the advice of an old colleague, I shamelessly stole inspiration for this article from someone I admire—Rishad Tobaccowala’s brilliant newsletter, The Future Does Not Fit In The Containers Of The Past. His goal is to help people see, think and feel differently about how to grow, which I connect with personally and professionally. It is also one reason I connect with the intention behind VOS as a platform for San Antonio. 

While I don’t know Rishad personally, we were both a part of the global ad agency network, Publicis Groupe, for a large part of our careers. And I feel pretty confident that he would agree with me on this, my strong opinion, loosely held, that: 

The common thread across humanity and history is that communication is understatedly hard, but critically important. 

Does the challenge with communication actually span humanity and history?

Yes! Communication challenges famously run all the way back to the Biblical stories in Genesis. The Tower of Babel is the quintessential example of how our inability to communicate can keep us from making progress. Today, we have more tools to connect us, and yet effective communication is actually harder than ever before.

So, what makes communication so hard?

I think a key reason communication is so hard is because we struggle to open ourselves to difference. We seek and find connection and comfort through sameness. If we need a job done, we want the person or the company that’s already done it before. We tend to look for tried and true expertise instead of fresh perspectives, which by definition means we want something that’s already been done, something familiar – instead of considering the potential of something new and different.

The words we use matter.

Part of San Antonio’s charm is its simplicity. We don’t pretend to be something we’re not – but we don’t always recognize all that we are – or communicate it well. Consider this: how many times have you heard someone say in response to something impressive or new that happened in San Antonio – “Wow, in little ol’ San Antonio?” Why do we consider ourselves less than? The way we talk about ourselves as a city sometimes teeters too close to the edge between humility and self-degradation. It’s time to step out of the shadows of other great cities. With a growing world-class creative economy, San Antonio contains all we need to shine. We just have to believe it and then get creative about how we communicate it. 

Our creative economy.

San Antonio is ripe for an incredible creative economy. Globally, it’s a $985 billion industry that depends on people and organizations using their creativity to drive jobs, revenue, resources and cultural engagement. The United Nations identifies a “Creative Economy” as the industries defined by the cycles of creation, production and distribution of goods and services that use creativity and intellectual capital as primary inputs. Examples are advertising, architecture, arts, design, fashion, film, video, photography, music, performing arts, publishing, research and development, software, computer games, electronic publishing and TV/radio. It’s time for San Antonio to lean in and nurture our creative economy to propel us into the future. 

Pioneers of Perspective.

To quote Rishad again, he uses the term Pioneers and says, “they do not let their roots tie them down but rather use roots to feed their wings to fly to the future.”  For me, the creative economy presents the greatest opportunity to tell San Antonio’s story. We have to embrace a pioneering spirit to reach our full potential as a world-class, modern city by letting our creative roots guide us toward building our future.

The future is now.

Let’s be ambitious. Let’s be aspirational. Let’s pioneer our own perspective. Let’s lean into our creative economy. Because at the end of the day, we are what we’re perceived to be. And yes, communicating all that we can become will be hard, but I have no doubt San Antonio is ready to pioneer a truly creative perspective.