A short bonus episode showcasing a few standout moments from this week's guest interview with Sam Mensah-Bonsu ~

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[00:00:00] Hey, welcome to another bonus episode of the Daring Creativity Podcast. As you can hear, my voice is just about being back to normal, and if you listen to the last week's episode, especially the bonus episode, I'm really sorry this seasonal cold got me, but I powered through. Anyway, I'm back to unpack some of the James from this week's conversation, putting out those moments that deserve a second look and dig deeper in what makes them special.

This week I was chatting to Samuel Mensah-Bonzu, a London based creative director and experience designer at Microsoft. In our conversation, we explored what it meant to be building career on curiosity and generosity, how giving back became the foundation of everything Sam does and why AI is our invitation to stop thinking small.

The episode published a few days ago was titled, dare to Speak Every Creative Language, and the features a beautiful snapshot of Sam's career to date. If you haven't checked out a full episode, let me share with you these four stand up moments,

Samuel: [00:01:00] I had to learn these things and becomes so equipped and so believable, like inefficient in it that they believe that I've always been this way, but I hadn't it's something that, that was learned and taught essentially, so when I find myself in these rooms one of my bosses at the time he made me realize that you're not here to fit in you are here to stand out purposefully, your power in a company like this isn't how you stand out, 'cause at the time I used to come to work wearing suits like everyone else basically. And it's and it felt good to wear a suit to work.

It was like, that's not You and you don't need to do that. And your power is not in that. Your power has been able to be who you are, but still communicate value and impact the way you can to these other folks that wear suits and ties every day. And when I began to understand that.

I felt a lot more comfortable in those rooms with the C-suite leaders. ' cause at the end of the day all we're communicating is value and impact and you can have all the suits, all the fancy numbers like in jargon an elaboration. 

So Sam's career, is a [00:02:00] beautifully linear, non-linear, experience of different companies, consultancy companies, I dunno of anybody else who used to work at McKinsey, that is now a designer. And in Sam's case, he, dressed for the career that he thought he had. This, this moment is beautiful becausehe got told to stop wearing suits to blend in and instead of lean in into being different.

I love this because is the word purposefully. That is what matters. And as you know, potentially from my written work and through this podcast, I'm very much the advocate of being the odd one out, standing out, like holding your space where you need to be because.

It's not about being contrarian or difficult, it's actually understanding that your difference is your value and that communicating that impact doesn't require conformity.

 many creatives shrink themselves to fit the room. They've worked so hard to get into. Whereas Sam's story is a reminder that a room invited you, not a version of you [00:03:00] that looks like everyone else.

Samuel: Even from the beginning my design philosophy like, oh, creative philosophy, has always been about homage. Paying back, giving back, inspiring others, 'cause end of the day it's an essence of, free energy and free inspiration essentially. So we take it and we make things and we give it back to the world, essentially. I don't know where it came from. That's a very good point to make. And I never really saw it like that, like until now, but, but absolutely.

Like even from the get go, I've always been. A case of giving back and an understanding that it's not for me to hold onto it's for me to make things where I can give back. And the goal is to try and inspire others. I can show people I can give it out there if it does amazing, but, but maybe sometimes it doesn't.

And even those times that's okay as well. But the goal is to always make something that aims to inspire the next person. It's like domino effect essentially. Yeah. 

Sam describes creativity as [00:04:00] a kind of circular system when you think about it. Something in the universe gives freely and something we are obliged to return. What's beautiful here is that how early they showed up for Sam.

I was really, really, curious about it right from the start thinking this is quite a responsible career. Because before Sam even had a career, before he had clients, He was already tracing dragon balls at so he could hand something back. That instinct never left. it shaped his movement.

Youth worldwide, his mentoring work, his presence at Microsoft, Some people think that generosity as something you earn the right to practice. Once you've made it, some just shows off that it's actually the engine that gets you there and it keeps you going once you arrive.

Samuel: And it may not always work, but at least now I'm on the road to making things, to producing things, to making action. That's the main thing that I feel like [00:05:00] AI has given us creative is that bridging the gap of action, of thought and action that gap being information and data.

That's what we have now. We have that information now so that bridge of thinking and action, is now being decreased or completely eradicated. Even now, we can go straight from thought to ai. It's a real action and therefore get a creative ideas out faster and easier. And that in turn allows us to think bigger, to think about more things that we can do with it as well.

'

 the gap that used to be filled with doubt, delay, and the paralysis of not knowing where to start. Now, 

What makes his perspective on AI so refreshing is that it doesn't come from hype. It comes from someone who has spent years watching creativity get stuck between the idea and the execution. And you could argue that at Some's role and, and Microsoft, the, uh. Design experience is to help people think bigger, move faster, and use AI [00:06:00] as a genuine creative partner rather than a shortcut.

and this take isn't that AI replaces the creativity. It finally gives the creative enough runway to ask the questions that actually matter. it's a meaningful distinction and a way of sitting with, I'm sure lots of people have a different view on creativity versus ai and how much of the process should be aided.

 it made me laugh the other day seeing someone on, LinkedIn complaining that Claude, cut off there. usage, like, oh, this is gonna be, you know, this is gonna be re reset later on today. And they were complaining that for $20 a, a, a month, that they haven't got sort of an unlimited supply of sort of supportive thinking.

And I'm thinking. Is that how far we've made it? That, we admit that we don't want to think, we admit that we want to help and we complain that we don't have enough of it. Because It wasn't that long ago when people were, anti ai and now we complaining it's not fast enough or not strong enough.

 Or there's no bandwidth so. [00:07:00] I think there's many different views, but I appreciate Sam's view on this because if you want something real quick, if you want to get there, you will get there. And the tools are here to use because they have been used by everybody else.

Samuel: Like my first taste of that was an A KQA and that's the reason why I also go back to that and say I can make it an influential poster like an influence a few thousand people, or I can make an influential app like an influence, a billion people. And that's, that was what again, just mainly me realize, okay, eventually I'm, I'll get to the point where I am doing something along these lines, designing for a co-pilot.

But but now that we are here, yeah. It's a real challenge to actually fit those shoes and actually take it on. I can do it right. There's a lot of. Morality thinking as well, is this the right thing to do? Is the right way to do it? And I think more than anything, I'm always just thinking about the user what they need in the current moment in [00:08:00] time, what makes their sort of experience as beneficial and useful as possible.

The whole conversation with Sam was about many, many pivots, and those pivots are very much at the heart of Sam's career. In the moment when he stopped thinking about craft and started thinking about reach, realized those two are not mutually exclusive.

When you think about it, it explains everything seemingly unexpected moves. And if you haven't listened to some, conversation just yet, his story goes. But he goes from a KQA to McKinsey, from McKinsey to Microsoft. There's, internships at B-F-B-F-I, uh, MTV. He's done really interesting run of micro pivots that got him to behe today.

And I think it's kind of the place where he's chasing the place where creativity could do the most. What really made me notice this moment and this Sam story, is that it challenges the question every creative person should ask themselves. 

I playing at the scale [00:09:00] my ambition actually deserves. 'cause not everyone needs to go to Microsoft. But everyone can ask themselves the question. Is it something I can do? Thank you for joining me on this bonus episode with Sam Bonzo. I hope I can encourage you to listen to the full, interview 'cause it's full of generosity and humility.

And I'll see you on the next episode.