Please come and join us on 9^th September to celebrate the launch of Bracket’s new agency www.bracketcreative.co.uk

Bracket Creative: launch party!
Date: 9th September 2010
Time: 7pm
Venue: Lati Ri, Rivington Place, Rivington Street, Shoreditch, London EC2A 3BE
RSVP: alison@bracketprojects.co.uk

About Bracket Creative:
We run a network of talented creative people, with all the skills needed to create a project from start to finish. When a client commissions us – whether it’s a marketing campaign, a new service or product or just help working out a problem creatively – we source a team from our network to meet the exact needs of the project.”
www.bracketcreative.co.uk

Digital Brand Creative are a Digital Agency specialising in Website Development, Branding and Creative Consultancy.

Empower Your Pixels

Tel: +44(0)20 3397 0735 | Web: www.dbcuk.com
Email: ben@dbcuk.com | Twitter: Follow | Linkedin: Connect

As part of our partnership with Consurgo, THECUBE will be doing a portfolio night for fine artists on Wednesday 24th  March 18:00-20:00.

The panel will consist of industry experts, gallery owners, and a pr agency. The evening will start with a Q&A with the panel followed by a ten minute portfolio review and advice session with each artist.

The event will take place in our boardroom meeting space downstairs.

To RSVP please email info@thecubelondon.com

THECUBE has partnered with Glimpse Online to help young designers create successful enterprises. There will be series of events, workshops, and special offers on both sides.

For more information on Glimpse Online, please visit their website www.glimpseonline.com

Although the words are used so often together – I go to a business & enterprise school; I’m on a business & enterprise programme; I teach business & enterprise – they couldn’t be further apart in terms of meaning, both everyday and literal.

Enterprise comes from French entreprendre, meaning “to take in hand”. An abstract meaning of the word is a “readiness to undertake challenges” or “spirit of daring”. Business comes from Old English bisigness, meaning “care, anxiety, occupation”. Recorded definition in 1727 is a sense of “trade, commercial engagement”.

Yet so often the differences are overlooked. So much so that they are now almost inextricably lumped together; not necessarily a bad thing, but it is crucially important to note the differences.

It’s an age old dispute, really. To properly figure out which is which, the most simple trial is to put an organistion under a spotlight. You ask about their ultimate goals, the ends to which their means are being hauled. Simplified, it’s a question of whether an organisation is entirely profits-based, like banks or loan companies – businesses, or if the focus is more on innovation, a common quality of successful enterprises. It is this innovation that really sets the two apart.

A businesses, more often than not, sets out to grow and expand. These can be seen as empires. The most ambitious aim to fill international-sized shoes, colonising the world in pockets, eventually ensuring as a result, strength in numbers and power in its profits. An example of this pseudo-imperial kind of gain is the goliath of fast-food, McDonalds. It’s obvious, but it makes things clear cut: though perhaps classed as innovative 50 years ago, it is now so widespread and profitable that any kind of straying from the road of consistent growth is to come up with a new burger.

The approach is linear, the goals are relatively straightforward: grow from a worth of one sum of money to a greater sum of money. Banks are a good example because they deal exclusively with money. Their service is managing money, and they expand monetarily as a result. When innovation arrives within such a company, it is nominal and self-serving, like a method to improve sales or how to engage customers. Even so – this kind of thinking does require a little creativity.

An enterprise is also creative. But, an enterprise sets out to make things different. Entrepreneurs may start businesses, but entrepreneurs don’t necessarily run businesses. An enterprise, on the other hand, is started up and run by entrepreneurs: always progressively innovating and creating. Google is one of the most successful enterprises in the world. They recognised a problem with the internet early: the challenge of finding useful information, products, and services online. To make money, they pioneered internet advertising.

They are always innovating. Email service, web browser, social networking, mobile phones – continuing to seize opportunities where they can envisage something better.

It’s these two mindsets that set the two ‘types’ of organisation apart from each other. We have on one side business minds who focus on the corporate process of making money – tweaking an already existing system, that of making money, to be better. And on the other side we have enterprises who don’t look inside the company but outside, spotting what can be done to improve things in the real world – providing useful products and services which are creative visions of making things better. One is corporate, one is creative.

It isn’t a case of good guy vs. bad guy, either. Whichever way you look at it, there is merit in being money savvy – there is merit to having good ideas. However, this is a call for more enterprises. There are so many people just making money, albeit cleverly, without necessarily providing something truly innovative. If there is to be any progression made we need to think more progressively. Innovation, therefore, is the key.

IDEO, a global design consultancy, is constantly asking questions about the future; they analyse what already exists, and propose what would work better in its place. Tim Brown, CEO of the “innovation and design” firm, spoke at TEDGlobal 2009, calling for a shift in design from nifty and fashionable to “local, collaborative, participatory ‘design thinking’.” From the unnecessary to the useful. Creative people solve problems.

Where does this leave the corporate business? Is it really just trade and commercial engagement? Well, to external voyeurs, it may seem that their skill is in moving money around for their best advantage – managing money. Their jurisdiction is finance and nothing more. Right?

Wrong. For a businesses to develop fast, all systems have to be streamlined and made more efficient. Industrial engineering is concerned with this at all stages: development, improvement, implementation, and evaluation of various sectors of business (information, financial, management, to name a few). Businesses do look to improve themselves, working internally to solve problems within their organisation. Improvement is high on the task list of enterprise. This is the similarity. The difference: business innovates internally – enterprise innovates externally.

These are the two methods of thinking that permeate both ‘opposing’ sides. Linear against non-linear, systematic against opportunistic, corporate against creative. But they shouldn’t necessarily be ‘against’ each other. As I began this, I mentioned that Business & Enterprise are “lumped together” everywhere, as schemes, lessons, schools, degree courses. What I didn’t mention is why they work well together. Why? It’s simple, really.

Both transfer their skills to the other. You cannot live off an enterprise – nor can you propel it forwards with good intentions; you need money to live and you need money to run companies. This is where an astute business mind comes into play. Not only this, but often an idea may arise that is a great one, but the person who that idea came from, its ‘thinker’, may not know exactly where to go with it.

Enter the industrial engineers. This time they aren’t evaluating systems, they are evaluating ideas. These need managing as much as anything else – an idea, no matter how well-meaning or genuinely useful it may be, will not go anywhere if it isn’t implemented properly. Thinkers may not always be able to dissect their own ideas, their own creations, as efficiently and as accurately as someone who takes things apart as a living. To this end, ideas can progress, be bought into existence, and make money.

Entrepreneurial skills can help businesses in a similar way. In fact, just one skill can help: creativity. Banks can brainstorm how to genuinely make banking easier for its customers. McDonalds, in fact, recently boasted a new design in its restaurants, which is probably the brainchild of creative minds. Whole empires of business could look at opportunities to make the whole sector in which they work better for everybody. The combining of business and enterprise, or enterprise and business, isn’t just for educational purposes at degree level and lower. It is an idea in itself – the pairing of these two very different methods of working, for themselves and for other people, could produce powerhouses of industry.

Look at it this way: the two make up the character of an inventor. Enterprise makes up the eyes and ears to spot and hear opportunity when it knocks, the brain to recognise problems and come up with solutions; business is the body, the dextrous hands to pull things together in construction, the legs to carry the invention to the market, and the mouth to sell it.

by Russell Thomas

- – - – - - - – -
Russell is writing intern at THECUBE
He also runs, edits, and writes for Creative Boom London

John Wyles is the founder of LJ Creative, which  is a London based web developing company, specialising in the design and build wordpress-driven sites.  I also provide graphic design services to my clients including design for print and logo/branding creation.  Since I began designing sites in 2007 I have worked for a range of charities and small businesses.  I am also working on a site which will provide jobseekers in the humanitarian sector with (hopefully!) useful careers advice and information – watch this space…
If you need it then my portfolio is at www.lj-creative.co.uk  – it’s still a bit of a work-in-progress though so please excuse the rough edges!

LJ Creative joined our coworking space,  THECUBE in January 2010.

Alison Coward started Bracket with the ambition to give creatives the skills and tools to work collaboratively. She joined our THECUBE’s coworking space in November 2009.

Bracket works with creative practitioners (e.g. self-employed designers, artists, illustrators etc) to help them develop and deliver collaborative projects effectively, supported by the use of online tools.

Collaboration offers many benefits for the creative individual – enabling them to work on larger projects, access new opportunities, share resources and learn new skills.  Now, the availability of various social media for new ways of communication brings with it the chance for the creative industries to become even more productive and effective in initiating and delivering collaborative projects.

 Creativity in business is a tricky business to fathom. On one hand, we have highly successful moguls of the business world, and on the other we have mega-rich artists, but between them both there is a common ground of innovation and entrepreneurialism. Creativity has no business in business, and business has no business in creativity.

Creative people have their heads in the sky, thinking of nothing real, living below the poverty-line and believing egotistically only in their ‘art’. Business people are sharks without a conscience, thinking only of their next prey and the easiest way to catch them. However, sometimes the two sides merge. Enter Russell Simmons.

Beginning as a concert promoter and artist manager, mainly of rap/hip-hop acts, he met Rick Rubin at a club who explained that he needed help getting his new record label off the ground. Russell saw an opportunity for the fledgling label, which would cater mainly to hip-hop, and it was in Rick Rubin’s dorm room at New York University, in 1984, that the Def Jam record label was founded. The first record they released was LL Cool J’s “I Need A Beat”. They went on to find and sign more hip-hop acts around New York, notably Public Enemy and Beastie Boys. The big break, arguably, was with Run-D.M.C (which included in its line-up Russell’s brother, Joseph “Run” Simmons). Hip-hop emerged not only as a culture, but as a brand; Russell Simmons pioneered the music and the style that came with it.

Now Def Jam is but one pie in the bakery of Russell’s corporation, Rush Communications, which also encompasses clothing company Phat Farm, television shows like Def Comedy Jam, and an advertising agency. His net-worth is estimated at $340 million. Yet he is seen as “father of hip-hop” rather than, “shrewd businessman”, because popular culture skips the business side of things.

Similarly, Warren Buffett is a businessman who is not recognised for his creativity, because the business world has no real outlet that recognises creativity. Buffett was ranked the second richest man in the world in 2009, with a net-worth of $37 billion. His origins were humble enough, though he capitalised at an early age, monopolising on pinball machines at highschool. He studied at Columbia University, under the tutelage of Benjamin Graham; Graham’s ideas of intelligent investment influenced Buffett to view stocks as a business, and to use fluctuations in the market to his advantage – Buffett himself said, “A hundred years from now those ideas will still be the cornerstones of investing.”

He taught night classes in “Investment Principles” at the University of Nebraska before accepting a job at Benjamin Graham’s partnership in 1953, starting on $12,000 a year ($97,000 modern-day). After Graham retired in 1956, he started Buffett Partnership Ltd., an investment partnership. He still lives in the same house he bought in 1957. A secret to his success may be his frugal nature: in 1962 he became a millionaire, yet lived solely on his annual salary ($50,000). It is clear that he is, even now, sensitive to oppurtunities that others may overlook: he recently acquired BNSF Railway, seeing the the economic and environmental oppurtunity of transporting goods by rail rather than by air, which is very expensive with a huge carbon footprint.

He is a pioneer and he thinks ‘outside the box’, but because he is in business he is a “shrewd businessman”, not “the father of investment”, and certainly not a creative genius: he is an example of invisible creativity, that which more often than not goes unnoticed, but produces huge and significant financial and influential gain. Both he and Russell Simmons should be equally known for their creative genius, but  Buffett is relatively unknown and regarded as mad by his contemporaries, whereas Simmons is just ‘cool’.

Although not all creativity is business-orientated, nor all business creatively driven, the examples that have been mentioned are but a tiny percentage of those individuals who inhabit both sides of the coin. People do not want to hear that Beyoncé is intelligently promoting herself as a brand, just about her fabulous lifestyle as a seemingly vacuous singer, whilst people in another walk of life will not look past creativity’s association over the centuries with insane artists.

The two obviously thrive together, but it is people in both sides that speak and think ill of the other. What is needed is a little more openness and a little less loyalty to one side or another, ending in admittance that there are no sides, just one coin with two slightly different faces.

 by Russell Thomas

russell.tomasz@googlemail.com

As many of you know, we are the people behind Creative Boom London – a regional online magazine that aims to support, inspire and celebrate the creative industries in and around London.

The reason why we took this on board was because of the benefits it would bring to not just ourselves and all of our members, but the wider creative community as a whole.

Creative Boom London is one of 20 regional e-zines throughout the UK, all part of its parent and national magazine, Creative Boom.

We’re really proud to be part of this growing online community and the reason we’re telling you all this is because , if you haven’t heard of it yet – check it out! You can have your work featured on there which will help you to raise your profile and hopefully secure more business.

So don’t delay – have a look at the site and then get in touch. On Creative Boom London, we also have a free directory, somewhere that lists London’s wealth of creative talent. Just let us know your details and we’ll add you on there.

Co-working is the next big thing and THECUBE in London are at the forefront of this emerging trend – something that is deemed as a new pattern for working.

Many work-at-home professionals, freelancers or people who travel around a lot tend to work in relative isolation.

‘Co-working’ is a social gathering of a group of people, who are still working independently, but who share the same values and who are ‘interested in the synergy that can happen from working with talented people in the same space’.

Of course, the term ‘Co-working’ was first coined by Bernie DeKoven in 1999 and was later described as a ‘physical space’ by Brad Neuberg in 2005. Neuberg started up his own co-working site called the “Hat Factory” in San Francisco.

Now, five years later, co-working spaces are opening up across the globe, offering hot-desking space for people who want to get away from that feeling of isolation and any distractions that freelancers and small businesses might face while working from home.

THECUBE on Commercial Street, East London is one such co-working environment that goes above and beyond simple hot-desking or ‘rent-a-desk’ space. It provides a whole range of benefits and added extras to really help its members. It also offers a diverse community that individuals can tap into whenever they see fit, sharing ideas and supporting each other to grow and become a success.

Co-working is an exciting development and something that we expect to become huge over the next 10 years. If you’d like to see how ‘Co-working’ can work for you, simply pop in for a chat or give us a call on 0207 377 9279.