Original Thought Requires Support

Like many businesses, we have embraced artificial intelligence where it genuinely improves the way we work. Used well, it can reduce complexity, improve accuracy and free people from repetitive administrative tasks.

Every week we coordinate cloth mills, button makers, shirt manufacturers, footwear workshops, courier companies and suppliers across multiple countries, languages and time zones. A single client order may involve several specialist makers, all working to different schedules and lead times. Guest collections create their own challenges, requiring extensive reporting, planning and analysis across multiple brands, deliveries and product categories.

Many of these suppliers still operate with surprisingly manual systems. Buttons are counted by hand. Cloth is inspected and measured by experienced eyes. A tailored jacket may involve dozens of individual processes and many hours of skilled handwork before it is finished.

Every product that arrives at Crane Brothers is personally handled by our team before it reaches a client. Garments are checked, prepared, pressed, fitted and, where necessary, adjusted. Technology may help us manage information, but the product itself still passes through human hands.

AI has helped us build procurement, reporting and communication systems that connect information across suppliers, systems and time zones. Similar efficiencies are appearing across inventory management, international payments and supplier transactions, reducing administrative complexity and allowing our team to focus more attention on judgement, service and decision-making.

As a business owner, I can clearly see the appeal of artificial intelligence. It is often faster, cheaper and more efficient. The temptation is obvious.

But I have also spent more than forty years working alongside creative people.

Photographers, designers, artists, architects, writers and makers have shaped not only our business, but my understanding of what gives value to the things we choose to keep, wear, inhabit and admire.

Experience has taught me that creativity rarely comes from efficiency alone.

Good ideas require judgement. They require curiosity, experimentation and occasionally the willingness to pursue something that may not work. The most memorable creative work is rarely the result of optimisation. More often it comes from instinct, experience and original thought.

That is why I remain cautious about applying AI to creative work.

Logistics, administration, reporting and communication are all areas where technology can make us more efficient. Photography, design, writing, art and creative thinking are not problems we are trying to solve.

I do not believe an AI-generated image, article or design is more valuable than commissioning a photographer, employing a designer, supporting a writer or collaborating with an artist.

Original thought requires support. Craft requires patronage. Creative careers require clients willing to commission the work.

Through the Crane Foundation, and through our own business activities, we have spent many years supporting artists, designers, photographers, writers, makers and creative organisations. Some have become collaborators, some have become clients and many have become friends.

Those commitments mean very little if we are not prepared to make the same choices within our own business.

As I write this on my iPhone from a café in Auckland, I am reminded of a quote often attributed to Steve Jobs:

Few people did more to shape the technology we use every day, yet even Jobs understood that technology is at its best when combined with creativity, design and judgement.

Technology will continue to evolve and we will continue to embrace it where it improves efficiency, accuracy and service.

But when it comes to creativity, originality and the things that make culture worth preserving, I believe we should continue to back people.

We cannot champion design with one hand and quietly replace designers with the other.