Team Creativity - Earth Hour

The Story of Earth Hour

Earth Hour is a campaign that was developed and organized by World Wide Fund (WWF) under the climate change initiatives where individuals, businesses and governments turn their lights off for an hour showing their support to the growing concerns on climate change. It is a voluntary action by its participants around the world to take positive actions for the environment and showing the commitment to the planet by turning off their lights for one designated hour.

The Earth Hour team is a creative collaboration among individuals from WWF, Leo Burnett Australia, Fairfax Media and Sydney Lord Mayor, Clover Moore. According to our research, Earth Hour is considered to be one of the greatest innovative ideas in the 21st century that delivers the promise of something new or better to the world.

Amabile et al. (1996) stated "All innovation begins with creative ideas...we define innovation as the successful implementation of creative ideas within an organisation. In this view, creativity by individuals and teams is a starting point for innovation; the first is necessary but not sufficient condition for the second".

Earth Hour was born from a "think tank" initiative by Andy Ridley. The members involved included Liz Potter and Greg Bourne from WWF as well as creative individuals Nigel Marsh and Todd Sampson from advertising company Leo Burnett at the breakfast table in Hilton Hotel back in 2006. The purpose of the meeting was to brainstorm for ideas, to engage Australians on the issue of climate change. Initially, the idea started out with the project title named "The Big Flick". However, Leo Burnett later changed it and came up with an inspirational campaign named "Earth Hour" to broaden the focus from simple "lights out" to long term sustainable climate change program. With subsequent connectivity with Phil McLean from Fairfax Media and support from Sydney Lord Mayor, Clover Moore, the first Earth Hour event took place in Sydney in 2007. It garnered participation from more than 2 million people and 2 thousand businesses to turn off their lights for one hour on Saturday 31 March 2007 towards the climate change efforts. This became the start of a phenomenon global vision.

The co founders of Earth Hour forms a perfect example of a team (Katzenbach and Smith, 1993) defined as a small number of people with complementary skills who are committed to a common purpose, performance goals and approach which they hold themselves mutually accountable.

Creative Team Development Process

Teams do not come into existence fully formed (Buchanan and Huczynski, 2010). The Earth Hour team development process can be analysed using Tuckman's model (Tuckman and Jensen, 1997), which involves the five stages namely: forming, storming, norming, performing and adjourning.

Evidence of Forming Stage

This is the orientation stage, where members try to figure out what they are supposed to be doing (Andriopoulos and Dawson, 2009). Our findings indicated that Andy Ridley was the driver who initiated the team development process.

Andy Ridley joined WWF Australia as their Communications Director in 2002. With a passion for environmental conservation, Andy was frustrated by the 'mainstream public's lack of engagement in the fight against climate change (Hunter, 2011). The "think tank" meeting in 2006 is the phase which we are able to define Andy's first steps in the group's development. At this conceptual stage, Andy was building his resources to include an assortment of individuals, each with different interests, skills, and level of understanding to achieve a desired result.

One of the key resources that Andy had included in the 'think tank' came from his colleague Liz Potter, communications team from WWF Australia. Their creativity room was further strengthened by their superior, Greg Bourne, CEO of WWF. Greg joined WWF Australia in 2004. With a childhood spent enjoying the outdoors in country Western Australia and an upbringing that taught him 'want not, waste not', Greg has a passion for the environment. As Greg came from a very different background, perspective and network, his knowledge is something that proved to be very useful in launching the concept (Attard, 2007). Together, the three of them form the creative co-founders.

Evidence of Storming Stage

Andy and the forming team moved swiftly through the next phase, STORMING. At this stage, members accept the fact that there is a team for the first time, but they often experience tremendous conflict and can be in an uncomfortable period while they try to determine how they fit into the evolving power structure of the team, (Andriopoulos and Dawson, 2009).

The 'think tank' meeting was a creative process, whereby many ideas were thrown around, some discarded almost straight away and others parked for further consideration. However, WWF finally got behind the initiative as it took a discussion of the Thailand's government asking people to turn off their lights to save energy, where the concept of Earth Hour took shape. Whilst there were critics towards the idea, Andy felt that the idea was simple but powerful.

Nigel Marsh and Todd Sampson (Leo Burnett) were also members in the "think tank" meeting. Both of them wanted to do something original and enduring that would help with the serious issue of global warming. According to Todd Sampson, "Creativity has inspired me to think differently and how we work. It makes me think about the impact I can have as an individual." The name "Big Flick" was one of the major topics discussed in the subsequent "think tank" meetings as Leo Burnett found the name sounded like a crappy commercial radio station (Hunter, 2011). After numerous rounds of brainstorming sessions, the Leo Burnett team did away with the "Big Flick" title. According to Todd Sampson, one with the best creative mind presented the new name and logo. It was a simple and beautiful piece of Art-the planet as a sixty, representing sixty minutes. Call it "Earth Hour" (Hunter, 2011).

Andy recognized the power of creative collaboration in team development. He acted as an inspiration and a motivator, seeking to bring together people with different views and perspectives to achieve the creative goal. Hargrove (1998), creative collaboration is about working with other knowledgeable people together to achieve incredible results.

Evidence of

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