Design Intelligences
Global design, 6 continents, 2010–present
What makes creative projects succeed or fail? Not the quality of the ideas — but the conditions and thinking patterns surrounding them.
350 projects. 115 teams. Nearly 300 companies. 14 offices across 6 continents. We studied what creative professionals actually say about their best and worst work — and found 31 distinct thinking patterns that predict whether a project succeeds or fails, independently of client quality, team structure, or brief stability.
The interactive visualization maps these patterns as a radial wheel. Blue petals radiate outward for patterns found in success stories. Pink petals radiate inward for failure. Click any petal to explore what the pattern sounds like in practice, how common it is, and what typically comes next.
Some patterns are warning signs — like reactance (pushing back on constraints) and premature idea evaluation (killing ideas too early). Others signal healthy creative thinking — like the Ikea effect (pride in what you’ve built) and appeal to novelty. The difference between the two is the difference between projects that thrive and projects that collapse.