Re: Building creative business

roscamabbing — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 19:03:58 -0000

Rik I agree with you that doing is much better than talking and that the creative industry should set examples and practise what they preach. As a matter of fact I know quite some industrial design firms that initiate product innovations and use their network to manufacture them and bring them to market. I know that for example NPK's turnover is based for a significant part on these ventures. see http://www.npk.nl/

I have also allways looked for ways to practise what I preach: you know our snowboard innovation, the yibb: http://www.youtube.com/watc... We managed to get a licence deal with Atomic but man, it cost us a lot of time, energy and money to get this thing on the road. Plus we had to sell a third of the venture to guys with sufficient focus to go out and make these kind of deals.

Because that's the problem: when you're a creative consultant like I am, my business model is that the more I focus on my customer and his challenges, the more succesful I am. That is completely opposed to the innovative entrepreneur's model where you sink your teeth in your idea and don't let go until it hits the market. The two are very hard to match.

Where the entrepreneurial model is succesful, like with NPK, it's because
a: they are large enough to allocate dedicated people to projects without messing up the consultancy stream.
b: they use what they already have: they leverage from their existing manufacturing and distribution network and partner up with existing clients
c: they are very pragmatic about it: they know what it takes to bring a product to the market, a to z.
You don't find these qualities at just any creative agency, this requires experience, entrepreneurship, knowledge, money, determination and lots of patience.

But there are some other models as well that are worth exploring like licencing out tools or methods developed for other clients (I am starting to make some money on this now). Since this is much closer to my business model this is where I'll be putting my money on in the near future. It helps me invest in clients and leverage from that investment.

To make a much too long story short (you know me): creative consultants should be very involved in what they advice, and they should be very business savvy, but I'm not sure entrepreneurship is the solution: to actually be an entrepreneur and bring a great invention to the market succesfully requires all the focus you have, which leaves nothing for your client.

Re: Design as a strategic resource

roscamabbing — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 17:56:42 -0000

hey Rik,

Thanks for posting this, and thanks for your comment on 'meaning in design'. It gave me something to chew on while doing some post x-mas chores around the house this afternoon ;-) . Here are the thoughts that bubbled up.....
Design is ALL about meaning. As a matter of fact, I sometimes define design as 'the process of creating meaningful interactions' (that'll shut people up for a while when you're in one of those eternal 'what is design?' discussions...;-) ). So where does meaning' go on slide 42? I think it goes in the middle! it's what evolves from connecting technology with art. Which in turn led me to think of updating the model by replacing technology vs art with the more generic rational vs emotional. That way -to me- it would make even more sense to put meaning in the middle, being the result of connecting the two.

What do you think? Again, thanks for bringing this up, and have a great last few days of the year!
cheers, Erik

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Re: Building creative business

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