Your “Unique” Creative Team Is Costing You $2M a Year
“Unique” Creative Team
Last month, I told a creative director to fire her most talented designer.
He was brilliant. Award-winning portfolio. Genuinely original thinking. Clients loved meeting him. And he was destroying her business.
Every project took 3x longer than estimated. Every brief spawned 6 directions instead of 2. Every deliverable needed “just one more iteration” to match his vision. Meanwhile, her junior designers using Midjourney were shipping on time, on budget, and clients were just as happy.
She fired him. Revenue jumped 40% in Q4.
This is the conversation nobody wants to have about AI and creativity.
The Expensive Lie
Creative diversity is a luxury belief. It makes you feel sophisticated. It impresses other creatives at conferences. It does not make you money.
University College London tested 293 writers. AI-assisted work scored higher. Human-only work showed “more diversity.” Everyone clutched their pearls about collective creativity.
Nobody asked: what percentage of that diversity was profitable?
Wharton found the same pattern. Teams using ChatGPT produced “less diverse but higher quality solutions.” The researchers called it a problem. I call it exactly what clients pay for.
Your clients don’t want diversity. They want their problem solved consistently, on time, at the agreed price. The “diverse” approach that takes 6 weeks and misses half the brief? That’s not creativity. That’s unprofessionalism.
The Math Everyone Ignores
Calculate your creative team’s actual output:
Brilliant creative who ships 4 projects/year at 95% quality = 3.8 quality-adjusted projects
Solid creative using AI who ships 12 projects/year at 80% quality = 9.6 quality-adjusted projects
The “less creative” person delivers 2.5x the value. But we worship the first person because they win awards and make us feel like artists instead of vendors.
This is ego masquerading as strategy.
When Diversity Actually Matters (Rarely)
Three situations where you should burn money on creative diversity:
1. You’re creating a new category – Not “we have a new product.” Actual category creation. If you have competitors, you’re not creating a category.
2. Your only competitive advantage is brand – Identical product, pricing, distribution as competitors. Brand voice is the only moat. This is 8% of companies.
3. You’re capital-rich and bored – Google, Apple, Netflix. You can afford failed experiments because success is already guaranteed. This is you? You’re not reading this.
Everyone else: your creative team should be optimized for throughput, not uniqueness.
What Winners Do
The companies making money:
Standardized on one AI tool (usually ChatGPT). Removed “creative exploration” from roadmaps. Measured output velocity, not creative diversity. Fired the creatives who couldn’t adapt. Promoted the ones who could ship.
Their creative teams hated it. Their clients didn’t notice. Their revenue proved who was right.
One e-commerce brand I worked with: creative team revolted when they standardized on AI workflows. 3 designers quit. The 4 who stayed produced more work in Q3 2025 than the previous full team did in Q1. Conversion rates were identical.
The designers who quit are still looking for roles that “value creativity.” The ones who stayed got raises.
The Real Question
Stop asking “how do we preserve creative diversity with AI?”
Start asking: “what percentage of our revenue depends on being creatively different versus executing well?”
If it’s under 30%, you’re wasting money on diversity. Embrace the homogenization. Your creative team’s feelings are not a business metric.
If it’s over 70%, AI is the wrong tool. Hire expensive weirdos and give them unlimited time.
If it’s 30-70%, split your team. Fast execution team using AI. Small exploration team with no tools. Measure ruthlessly. Kill the exploration team when it stops delivering ROI.
The Thing You Won’t Say Out Loud
You already know your “creative diversity” is mostly waste. You see the designer who takes 3 weeks on a 1-week project because they’re “exploring directions.” You watch the writer rewrite the same email 8 times because they want it to be “fresh.”
You don’t fire them because firing creative people feels like you’re killing art.
You’re not killing art. You’re running a business. Art is what they do on weekends.
The creative industry is facing economic pressure. The professionals who survive will be the ones who understand they’re vendors, not artists. The ones who think creativity is its own reward will discover the market disagrees.
AI didn’t create this dynamic. It just made it visible.
Your move.
Sources
- Doshi, A. R., & Hauser, O. P. (2024). Generative AI enhances individual creativity but reduces the collective diversity of novel content. Science Advances, 10(28), eadn5290. Full text
- Meincke, L., Terwiesch, C., & Nave, G. (2025). Does AI limit our creativity? Wharton School research. Analysis
- CISAC. (2024). The economic impact of generative AI on the music and audiovisual sectors. Full report
Target Audience
Creative professionals, business strategists, academic researchers, technology executives, content creators, designers, and decision-makers evaluating AI integration in creative workflows who value nuanced analysis over categorical claims.
