For years, AB InBev followed a formula that read like it was written by bankers—mergers and acquisitions, economies of scale, and finding cost efficiencies. It was all about process, informed by Six Sigma techniques and zero-based budgeting. For decades, that playbook worked. AB InBev became the world’s largest brewer.

But our growth hit a ceiling. There was no one big left to buy, and our biggest brands were stagnating at time when we were being challenged by upstarts and the emergence of new categories of drinks. Studies from McKinsey and other leading consultancies make clear that unleashing creativity has a real impact on bottom-line growth—but our creativity was lacking. In 2017, WARC ranked AB InBev 42nd on its list of the world’s most creative advertisers.

Securing the future of our business required us to reimagine it. We had to build a brand-new growth engine with creativity at its core, and then embed the changes across our entire business—a global network of colleagues that is 160,000-strong—in order to fuel creativity and innovation. And so, a new creative ecosystem was born, and the CreativeX platform was at its center.