“If you follow conventional thinking,

all you’ll ever be is conventional.”

The first Yotel was launched in 2007 in Gatwick, a revolutionary mould-breaking concept that adopted a modular capsule style approach, “straight out of science fiction”, as one critic put it.

YO! Sushi founder, Simon Woodroffe brought in hotel expert Gerard Greene and a skunkworks team of creatives, headed up by Creative Orchestra’s founder Chris Arnold.

While Gerard had a lot of conventional experience, the creative team’s task was to challenge that. The slogan “If you follow conventional thinking, all you’ll ever be is conventional” was painted in 1 foot high letters on the wall of the ideas room.

Over 6 weeks the team challenged every aspect of hotel thinking – disruptive innovation at its best – and created many mould-breaking ideas, many of which were used.

Arnold’s team, which also comprised Creative Orchestra’s co-founder Victoria Gallardo, worked on a number of other secret projects for Woodroffe.