It's all in the nose

How can one be creative when one is unable to give a name to one’s invention ? This is a serious problem in areas such as the perfume industry, where one’s sensory experience is not matched by one’s ability to describe the scents. For two years, Brigitte Romagné managed a team of ‘noses’ whose job was to develop perfumes for brand names. She noticed a gulf between the creative teams and the product managers, and this interfered with creativity. Even though the olfactory sense is subjective and the ‘noses’ have a special talent, it is still possible to describe the olfactory characteristics of plants in order to produce a catalogue. This is one of the ways that brand names improve the accuracy of their specifications, and to stimulate creativity in a world where marketing has acquired a great deal of importance.