INTELLIGENT NAIVETY

INTELLIGENT naivety Commercial Opportunities for Museums & Culture Institutions SIMON CRONSHAW & PETER TULLIN WITH A FOREWORD BY MARCEL KNOBIL, FOUNDER OF SUPERBRANDS a production in partnership with

FOReword: Commerce has borrowed so much from culture. But has culture borrowed enough from commerce?

Where would Citroen be without Picasso, L’Oréal without De Stijl, Hovis without Dvorak, etc? Product design and its promotion frequently exploit a feast of cultural inspiration. But has the ‘Culture Vulture’ delivered much in return?

It certainly isn’t a one-way relationship, but it’s not a marriage of equal partners.

For cultural endeavour to flourish, as it deserves to do so, it needs to capitalise upon entrepreneurial talent and approaches.

This isn’t compromise it’s enterprise.

Not only does ‘Intelligent Naivety’ recognise that there can be a fruitful marriage between culture and commerce but it provides excellent marriage guidance.

As culture and business increasingly become interwoven there will obviously be some critical challenges ahead.

They include the complex navigation of capitalising upon the skills of commerciality whilst maintaining cultural integrity.

It’s demanding; it provides ample opportunity; it’s frightening; it’s the art of the possible.

I have no doubt that many relish the ride on the cultural brand wagon.

Marcel Knobil

Founder of Superbrands and Creative & Commercial

‘Entrepreneurship’... have you ever heard such a colourless word for describing such an electrifying activity? Where has its sense of liberation and immediacy gone?

The spirit of ‘entre’: to undertake, to do, to act, to create. No forms to fill in, no waiting for permission, no dilution, no excuses, no boundaries... Just knowing your customers, spotting a great idea you know they’ll love, and getting on with doing it.

HELLO

Words aside, where better to get on and do great ideas than the space where culture and consumers meet? A space ripe for new, original thinking as mainstream consumers demand more and better interactions with cultural content, experiences and brands.

As entrepreneurship is all about supplying that consumer demand, it provides the bridge that directly fuses culture institution with consumer.

Entrepreneurship and cultural creativity are perfect bedfellows. Customer-focussed by nature, commercial activity in a museum or culture institution lives to identify and systematically understand consumer wants and desires, and enhance or add new layers to the quality of the customer experience. All of this whilst bringing in a wad of fresh cash – to ultimately create new and improved cultural content.

Yet, as complex and demanding beasts, consumers represent an ongoing challenge for even the savviest of consumer brands.

How can over-stretched museums and culture institutions recognise consumer needs, exceed consumer desires, and leverage a sustainable source of income without wrecking the very special relationship they’ve created with their audiences?

In this book, we’ve attempted to introduce some of our thinking. Our snippets are intended to be used as diving boards for your own thoughts and responses, rather than fully-formed answers. They are woven around seven areas that we believe are critical to get right in order for entrepreneurship to flourish within a museum or culture institution. We hope that you’ll use them to stimulate debate and ask questions, to review established norms and to explore new perspectives.

At its heart, entrepreneurship is one big balancing act – hence ‘intelligent naivety’: the rational and the instinctive representing just two ingredients essential for the mix.

For museums and culture institutions, devising a healthy strategy to balance the cultural and the commercial makes the difference between a strained marriage of convenience and a mutual love-in with remarkable babies.

We’re looking forward to seeing where you take it.

Simon Cronshaw & Peter Tullin Book authors and founders of CultureLabel.com

simon.cronshaw@culturelabel.com peter.tullin@culturelabel.com

CONTENTS Culture meets consumer culture

1. INTRO Something from nothing Consumer culture Mainstreamed culture Dirty, dirty money Shakespeare, wheeler-dealer Totally immersed Seismic Shifts Made and born

5. RESOURCED 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19

2. CONSUMER INSIGHT Power source Interference Closer We have incoming Under observation Cross-fertilisation In the swim Lessons in life

22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29

3. CULTURE ASSETS Business school Content without walls Flexi-space Seesaw structures Brand values Ties and bonds

32 33 34 35 36 37

4. OPPORTUNITIES KNOCK Trend creators, trend catchers Currency of ideas Back catalogue Generators and doers

40 41 42 43

Mutuality Core and periphery Deal clinching Joint ventures Owner-worker Brand collusion Brand co-creation Aggregated institutions Network mapping Funding... what funding?

Owning the bottom line Owning the decision Space and time Investing time

46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59

6. STAFF Visionaires Deep dive Internal flows A flat new world Back office Work and/or play Trusty steeds Forgiveness beats permission Just rewards Trade-offs I believe

62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72

7. SUPPLYING CONSUMER DEMAND Brand-land Boutique hotels Niche clusters Consuming producers

76 77 78 79

1. INTRO Start building the ‘new’

Consumer culture

Starbucks came from the simple idea of selling ready-made coffee as well as beans...

Sony started by visualising a non-military use for the new transistor invention... Google began by stringing together a bunch of low-end PC’s... Anyone can spend £50million and create something, but where’s the skill, the excitement, the endeavour? Creating something from practically nothing; pulling together the right ingredients in order to start building the ‘new’; the skilful ability to negotiate your way from a low bargaining position to a position of strength. Now that’s where things get interesting. That’s the space where entrepreneurs are to be found.

What about the audience that doesn’t want to be developed? Those blighters that have fixed views about what they want? There’s bound to be a limit to how many people we can get through our doors, so why not look to the much larger consumer masses; the Mr and Mrs Bloggs busily getting on with their cheerfully commercial lives, happily windowshopping for their next purchase? Take a leaf out of the London Transport Museum – profile your existence, expertise and collection through chic ‘Ultimate Travel’ suits in Ted Baker stores. Understand consumer lifestyles as they are, and find convincing, seamless ways to insert cultural offerings. If the horse won’t go to water, take the water to the horse we say!

Brands are even using consumers to help them create their advertising platforms – see This Is Now (thisisnow.eu), a European collaborative arts project by Ford asking consumers to define ‘now’.

1. INTRO // 13

SOMETHING FROM NOTHING

1. INTRO // 15

Mainstreamed culture The UK ushered in the era of the über museum in 2000 when Wolf Ollins bagged the Tate contract. More people were in Tate Modern for the last day of Olafur Eliasson’s Weather Project than were in Bluewater – Europe’s largest shopping centre. SuperBrands 2008 placed the Tate brand ahead of Manchester United, Arsenal and even Vodafone. The British Museum has overtaken Blackpool Pleasure Beach as the UK’s most popular visitor attraction with 6.04million visitors – it even

had to shut its doors for the first time as over 35,000 tried to cram in for the Chinese New Year! The O2, meanwhile, welcomed more than a million paying visitors to Tutankhamen. Culture is infiltrating the high street and beyond: from the Natural History Museum’s T-Rex pyjamas in M&S, via John Lewis’ V&A secateurs, to the Science Museum’s educational toys. With well over 40million visits to museums and galleries in England last year, culture has never been more in demand.

During the economic gloom and doom, free admission should encourage even more people to turn to culture – whether for a bargain day out, or in the search for deeper meaning.

Dirty, dirty money A blank canvas providing inspiration for a new imagined reality... A perfect sense of timing, requiring split-second coordination as the work builds in speed and complexity...

A need for outward fluency and grace, underpinned by a ruthlessly-honed technical skill... A mastery of leadership, enabling a 10or 100-strong cast to fly effortlessly together across the stage...

Who says commerce has no common ground with culture? In a world where consumers are too discerning to accept the naff or the stereotyped ‘dumbing down’, only the most creative leaders can ever hope to surpass consumer expectations.

1. INTRO // 17

Shakespeare, wheeler-dealer Whether courting the Court of Queen Elizabeth, or relocating to save the finances of his co-investors, Shakespeare’s entrepreneurial skill and nose for the market were as good as his writings.

The roll-call of artists adept at negotiating and managing investment steers from Chrétien de Troyes and Michelangelo through to Ben Jonson and Mozart.

Every cultural object of beauty requires an appreciative audience; when there is no dealer to stand between the two, the cultural institution must represent and promote itself to the market. In this act, we’re standing on the shoulders of some truly giant cultural entrepreneurs.

Madame Marie Tussaud’s talent for the newly fashionable art of wax modelling dominated the grisly postRevolution niche of creating wax death masks. Spotting their macabre appeal, she took the huge risk of going on tour with them overseas to England. After 25 successful years on the road, she established a permanent Baker Street Bazaar, and today eight attractions across the globe bear her name.

Totally immersed The car maker Toyota implements one million new creative ideas each year (2,500 per day!), achieving market leadership and encouraging a relentless pursuit of perfection. How? They make innovation part of everyone’s job description. Every staff member continually asks themselves the simple question “Is there a better way?”

As masters of their own domains, the status quo is never good enough. From these many small steps emerges a highly sustainable culture of innovation, meshed into the entire organisation rather than being reliant on a pigeonhole marked ‘Entrepreneurship Department’.

1. INTRO // 19

SEISMIC SHIFTS In the spirit of wild but true generalisations, the people of our nations are getting older, more multicultural and increasingly pressed for time. This in turn provides a plethora of challenges for culture institutions, and a wealth of opportunities for entrepreneurial types... What do we have in the pipeline for the baby boomers, especially when they hit

Made and born retirement and suddenly have time to spare?

How do we create and position bite-size portions of our content for the time-poor multitaskers? How can our cultural attitudes and outputs keep pace with the global nature of our economic and political bonds? A perfect time to step forward, ye innovators.

The bad news is that some management gurus think all entrepreneurs are simply born that way. But before you get HR to reach for more psychometric tests, the good news is that many more disagree, claiming attempts at profiling the ‘perfect’ entrepreneur are inherently futile. But then the right innovative environment, whilst essential, does not

guarantee that you’ll have a bunch of Bannatynes on your hands. It takes both: the right people with the right structures and socio-politics behind them. But get these two elements right, and you’ll be well on your way to making many more ‘somethings’ from ‘nothings’. This makes entrepreneurship an option that is available to all.

2. CONSUMER INSIGHT Observe and understand - then respond

Information that better helps an institution to understand the consumer is invaluable.

POWER SOURCE Information is the lifeblood of any entrepreneurial institution. It is where incoming data and information meets with people’s skills, ideas, motivations and knowledge. It encompasses creative thinking and ideas, the analysis of data and competing options, the practical knowledge of getting the job done.

The skill is in the handling: how it is acquired, captured, shared, managed, utilised, protected. Information that better helps an institution to understand the consumer is invaluable. It provides a starting point for identifying new entrepreneurial activities, and helps prioritise the co-ordination of scarce resources.

Recruiting staff from unlikely sources...

Shaking up team structures... Injecting external opinions on a systematic basis...

Creative disruption is often a natural accomplice to innovation. One means to provide alternative perspectives on familiar challenges is to import talent with experience from outside the sector. Employing outsiders equally helps to challenge the status quo when developing new strategies. Moreover, frequent reorganisation of staff structures may seem traumatic, but placing people into a new structure often stimulates them to rethink what they’re doing on a day-to-day basis.

“Get them to focus not on the inconveniences of restructuring but on the satisfaction of setting high goals and then knocking down the barriers to achieving them,” advises Lieutenant General Ronald T. Kadis of the U.S. Missile Defence Agency.

James Dyson uses the ‘musical chair’ theory to frequently move staff from one team to another: “Somebody can literally slot in and take someone else’s place and often add a new perspective.

People aren’t always fond of doing it… but two or three days later they have grins all over their faces and are enjoying the new thing they’re doing.

It’s not something that comes naturally, but if you do it everybody benefits.”

2. CONSUMER INSIGHT // 23

Interference

WE HAVE INCOMING

Position matters when it comes to entrepreneurship. Power is often directly related to your distance from the consumer in the supply chain, so culture institutions at the interface with consumers instantly have an advantage: a consumer-facing platform.

Other agents in the supply chain, from caterers to sponsors, probably need to filter themselves through you. Why does this matter? Because, as Van de Ven suggests, direct personal confrontations with problem sources creates enough concern and appreciation for motivating people to act. By being in close proximity to the consumer and listening hard, you’re best placed to build, maintain and protect a consumer offer that meets their needs.

Consumer data lies at the centre of effective relationship management and scanning for new opportunities. Yet, with people’s natural reluctance to hand over personal information, capturing the data in the first place is an art form in itself. The maxim ‘collect only what you need, use all that you collect’ rings true for data capture strategies; a staged approach to capturing their personal lifestyle details across multiple touchpoints, online and off, is the order of the day. As consumer intelligence escalates in importance for the sector, expect to see a huge growth in the sophistication of data-driven marketing and demographic profiling.

Some artists are bypassing galleries and heading straight to consumers.

Toy2R offers artists the chance to design 3D products as well as 2D prints. Recognisable and emerging artists have sold millions of units in both mass and limited edition markets. Technology and collapsing costs of marketing and distribution are enabling the development of a whole new range of platforms.

How can you engage the bedroom DJs, time-poor dreamers and the urban arts eclectic of the Arts Council England’s audience segmentation?

Map this against other consumer segments like ‘progressive middles’ for impressive insights.

2. CONSUMER INSIGHT // 25

Closer

As traditional clipboard market research continues to incite sophisticated avoidance techniques, 24-style observation methods may provide some of the answers. The goal is to inconspicuously monitor and document consumers in their natural behaviours: what they do, how they interact, what they say...

It provides an easy insight into what really matters to them, how they behave, and how they currently interact with your institution behind closed doors. A great start for spotting areas for development, and an open door for helping to understand the complexity of your consumer decision-making processes.

While so-called ‘lifestyle renegades’ consciously reject marketing, the rest of us are bombarded daily by between 1,000 and 2,000 commercial messages so have become adept at avoidance techniques.

Cross-fertilisation A near inexhaustible supply of new inspiration can be harnessed by becoming a ‘connecting node’. Take the lessons and successes of one group, and apply them to a completely different context... Encourage and control the exchange of concepts and ideas; between individuals, between businesses,

between industries, between countries, between institutions, between sectors...

For culture institutions, with such a wide range of interesting contacts and connections, this should be easy. Put your network to use, accumulating power and influence for yourself in the process.

Is the Information Age is giving way to the Connected Age? Knowledge workers create and manage information, whereas new breeds of workers manage relationships across knowledge goods, hardware and people.

2. CONSUMER INSIGHT // 27

Under observation

Trust your instinct. You know what’s creatively strong and ‘cutting edge’ simply from the conversations you immerse yourself in on a daily basis. Every informal conversation, every email, every daily interaction, every magazine, every term Googled... it’s all research.

Make a conscious decision to be in a heightened state of sensory awareness, a Gladwell ‘Maven’, ferociously hoarding interesting snippets from the wider world.

If you’re outward-focussed as a leader, like any good hound your institution will begin to resemble its master.

The web provides a whole new source of creative inspiration: see www.askten.co.uk for ten new things you didn’t know last week, or Brian Eno’s Creative Block at www.spaceforideas.uk.com

A US survey revealed that successful entrepreneurs have an average of 3.5 business failures.

Lessons in life Our memories as individuals mean that we often avoid repeating the same old mistakes.

But as institutions, how can we be sure to learn the lessons of experience? Previous experience makes decisions seem less risky; success does seemingly breed success.

Equally, reasons for failure are important

to process and collectively remember.

How can we get a good balance between this intelligence from experience and the deliberately naive, wide-eyed sense of adventure so essential to innovation?

It’s a continuous learning cycle for the institution, and one that requires effective knowledge systems.

A US survey revealed that successful entrepreneurs have an average of 3.5 business failures. Many entrepreneurs argue that you cannot succeed until you experience failure.

2. CONSUMER INSIGHT // 29

In the swim

3. CULTURE ASSETS Awaken the latent potential

3. CULTURE ASSETS // 33

Business school It’s not just about culture institutions getting advice from businesses anymore. Now it’s all about turning it on its head: great cultural managers teaching business leaders just how to cope with constant change, adhoc and flexible teams, personal expression, creative people, emotional intelligence, distributive leadership models... the list goes on. And long gone are the days of simplistic team-building workshops for businesses. Whether it’s Lego collaborating with Birmingham’s Thinktank on interactive learning and ‘serious play’, the rise of savvy facilitators such as Menagerie and Trade Secrets, or brands taking the ‘theatre of retail’ concept to its logical conclusion, techniques from the culture sector are rapidly spilling over into the world beyond.

“To understand the process of creative genius, it is valid for business people to look at the model of the artist.

The business of the artist is to create, navigate opportunity, explore possibility, and master creative breakthrough. We need to restore art, the creation of opportunity, to business.” - Brandweek

Content without walls Galleries, museums, demolish those walls!

The ever-spiralling ability of technology to transform distribution channels provides great opportunities for entrepreneurial uses of digitised cultural content. Changes in consumer demand provide new opportunities for hybrid culture spaces both on- and offline.

The business model for culture institutions is evolving to that of distributor as well as

creator, creating new questions: do we prefer mass, selective or exclusive outlets for our assets? Who are the agents, distributors and other intermediaries in the chain to market?

Where is value added (and by whom?) along this chain? Single channel or multi-channel?

Vertical or Horizontal Marketing Systems for strategic partners? It’s all about getting content out to where it is demanded.

O2 reports that nearly 80% of iPhone users surf the web on their mobile.

With the unveiling of a new range of smartphones such as Google’s G1, the age of truly mobile platforms for cultural content may finally be dawning... The world’s knowledge: location-responsive, interconnected and in your hand.

3. CULTURE ASSETS // 35

Flexi-space At GSK Contemporary at the Royal Academy you can pop into the pop-up art restaurant and enjoy lunch at the capital’s most talkedabout eatery. Once you’re done, buy your plate; a Wedgwood collaboration with Will Broome. All of this takes place in a temporary installation that somehow feels integral to the exhibition, an extension of the experience rather than an unwelcome incumbent. The art takes centre stage, but new pieces are added and arranged to create a perfect jigsaw. Mixing and matching spaces: exhibits with retail, performances with workspaces, catering with events, pop-up with permanent...

The Conran-operated Skylon restaurant at the newly refurbished £111million Southbank Centre demonstrates how iconic design has transcended the cultural spaces into the rest of the venue.

Seesaw structures Culture institutions know a thing or two about balance. Balancing curation and consumption, intellect and accessibility, heritage and modernity, today’s market and tomorrow’s study, preparation and performance, intrinsic and instrumental, public and private, commercial and creative, perfection and

delivery. The structures that enable this delicate balancing act bestow a greater whole than the sum of individual parts: the holy grail of many a manager. But do we understand exactly how and why this works (or doesn’t) in our own institution?

Nearly three-quarters of visitors visit the website before travelling. The awardwinning GrandPalais.fr website sets the standard for pre-visits with an awesome 3D fly-through.

3. CULTURE ASSETS // 37

Brand values Art and culture challenges the status quo, the mundane, the everyday, the ordinary.

It elevates people to a higher ideal, a commonality of history or social bonds, or it dares to question the accepted norms of today. It means something just as the mainstream is increasingly demanding more meaning. If handled well, the brands of culture institutions – the guardians of this valuable resource – make powerful antidotes to the often hollow brands of commerce.

The difficult management task is to leverage this value without damaging the very integrity that makes it special.

The growth of ‘un-branding’ opens new possibilities for institutions, as traditional advertising loses its impact. Eurostar co-financed the award winning Shane Meadows film, Somers Town, without any overt branding. From the same Mother stable came Pot Noodle: The Musical, a critically-acclaimed Hamletinspired stageshow, marking a transition for brands to producers of quality content.

Ties and bonds Culture institutions are Malcolm Gladwell’s Connectors, positioned at the intersect where a myriad of visitors, partners, friends, staff, suppliers, consumers and supporters converge. To put it simply, is there anyone better placed to spread info, create interesting introductions, fertilise new thinking, or connect common souls?

Who else is in such a position of trust to do this? Through an expanse of associations, institutions inhabit such a unique blend of worlds, subcultures and niches, the network of ‘weak ties’ is immense. And converting a latent network into a profitable exchange hub is but one small step away...

4. OPPORTUNITIES KNOCK Spot when the time is right

Currency of ideas

Matthews and Wacker charted a path from ‘Fringe’ to ‘Social convention’ via ‘Edge’, ‘Realm of cool’, and ‘Next big thing’. ‘Trend creators’ are found in the fringe, constantly developing new ideas and creating a market for them. They may be successful and take the innovation to the mainstream themselves; or they may find larger firms imitating and ultimately overtaking them. ‘Trend catchers’, meanwhile, identify and profit from future trends they spot and then ride. Preparation is critical: as Storey says, you not only need to locate the boat in the fast flowing rivers but must anticipate the next wave of opportunity and prepare the crew to take advantage of it as it passes.

Like the £2 coin in your pocket, ideas represent value that is only realised when you actually spend it. There is not a simple model where ideas are created, considered and then either implemented or exterminated. Rather, lots and lots of ideas swim around, they disappear, they resurface. Multiple ideas are formed over time, and each one goes through peaks and troughs in levels of interest or activity. At any point in time, there are multiple ideas on the go. For ideas to be successfully implemented, the time needs to be right. Only when the right factors are lined up can the institution ‘spend’ the idea and implement it.

Trend-scouts are not just the highly paid, cool hunters at the edgy commercial brand. Look closer to home ... the people known as ‘file-givers’ that send you the ‘latest’ YouTube clips or MP3.

“You cannot make soup without water.

But a bowl of water is not a bowl of soup. It is what you add to the water that gives the ‘value’ of soup.”

– Edward de Bono

4. OPPORTUNITIES KNOCK // 41

Trend creators, trend catchers

How do we make sure ideas don’t leave the institution as staff come and go...

Back catalogue If the time is not right for implementation, institutions must find ways to store their ideas for possible future use; creating their own ‘back catalogue’ of ideas. How do we make sure ideas don’t leave the institution as staff come and go, especially if they are transient staff in project-focussed teams?

Codification converts knowledge into accessible formats – taking it from the head to the record. It doesn’t require a multimillion pound database system; it could be as simple as an ‘ideas book’ or trend book for staff, providing a useful catalogue of inspiration whilst preserving a collective memory of ideas.

As more and more agencies see the value of combining client account management with creative, we don’t want to retread their mistakes and split the ‘artistic’ from the ‘entrepreneurial’ in culture institutions.

However, those that have the ideas may not be best-placed to implement them.

It therefore makes sense to have an ideacatching ‘net’ in the institution, whereby anyone can offer ideas without necessarily being expected to implement them. The job of co-ordinating implementation falls upon the appointed ‘ideas champion’, who has the power to gather together the appropriate people and resources as required. Then all that remains is taking both originator and champion out for a well-deserved thank you drink.

4. OPPORTUNITIES KNOCK // 43

Generators and doers

5. RESOURCED Not just for the big guys

Cultural and creative businesses lead the market on understanding and leveraging the value of collaboration with others.

One business or institution alone has a finite supply of resources to allocate to the highest bidder. A poor position to be in, if your pockets aren’t that deep. When you collaborate, there is no obvious finite supply of resources; you enter into a marketplace in which you can buy, sell and share resources without limits – there is always another ‘stallholder’ available around the corner.

Your success depends on your ability to continually identify and negotiate with collaborators, and then relentlessly leverage the assets you collectively bring to the table.

CORE AND PERIPHERY It is now commonplace to split staff into core and periphery workers – the former are full-time, the latter are specialists, to whom work is outsourced. We could increasingly see culture institutions fulfilling the periphery role for other organisations. Smaller institutions, for example, would form symbiotic relationships with larger institutions as a survival strategy, ensuring a continual flow of resources. Institutions of all sizes, meanwhile, could perform specialist services for other sectors. Back in the workplace, meanwhile, and Charles Handy’s doughnut principle challenges organisations to better unlock the latent creativity under our noses.

The secret is simple: treat ‘insiders’ like ‘outsiders’.

Deal with employees as if they are external suppliers, negotiating payments to teams rather than individuals, giving more freedom for different work styles and providing incentives to be creative and improve productivity.

“Trust is more easily given to those whom one knows well over time.

It should, therefore, be easier to trust insiders rather than outsiders. Yet, perversely, we give a freer rein to outside contractors than we do to our own workforce.” – Charles Handy

5. RESOURCED // 47

Mutuality

Getting through the door equals the hard part? Perhaps, but making a marriage out of a loose conversation requires some finely honed social skills. According to Baron and Markman, perception, impression management, persuasiveness, social influence and adaptability are critical to the making of entrepreneurs. Sensing the moment to close the deal, ask for the money or form an alliance is both instinctive and often something we need to force ourselves to do. Equally, don’t be scared to accept your own limitations. Smart people hire smarter people. Where does this skill-set sit?

Who are your most effective salespeople and negotiators?

Joint ventures Charles Saatchi memorably hired a cast of actors to create a sense of scale at his fledgling ad agency in order to clinch the British Airways account.

The rest is history…

The Royal Institute of Great Britain has recently opened its Time & Space bar and restaurant as part of its £22million redevelopment. This will act as the front door to the Mayfair venue drawing visitors to the new galleries beyond.

Rather than going it alone, or shouldering the risk of hiring suppliers, joint ventures can provide a rapid injection of specialist skills and resources, and can incentivise success for both partners. In food, cultural institutions are also not immune from the cult of the branded restaurant and celebrity chef, whether in the form of Thierry Costes at Centre Pompidou in Paris or Gabriel Kreuther at MoMA in New York. The Jackfield Tile Museum in the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Ironbridge Gorge hosts a Craven Dunnill factory to bring tile production and retailing to life. Over at the Royal Academy, Flash (a combination of art and food) is created by London restaurateurs’, Bistrotheque. Food, retail, customer experience... where next will our ventures take us?

5. RESOURCED // 49

Deal clinching

Who owns my great idea? The answer is not normally the employee in the public sector, but this is starting to change as commercial spin-outs and joint-venture models become more commonplace. The UK private equity and venture capital industry is by far the largest in Europe, accounting for some 52% of the whole market (Library House). Many fail of course, so choosing how and when to take this option is essential. The success of University technology spin-outs, for example those that have helped power the Cambridge

BRAND COLLUSION phenomenon creating the Silicon Fens, could be one model to import into the culture sector. The investment of the culture institution (be it monetary or conceptual) needs to be recognised both in retained value and for identifying the transfer of the opportunity beyond its walls.

Commercial success can be imported as well as released. Take the purchase of Opus Arte by the Royal Opera House – bringing its means of distribution in-house.

The UK private equity and venture capital industry is by far the largest in Europe, accounting for some 52% of the whole market.

Cultural branding has gone global with the deal between Abu Dhabi and France for a new branch of the Louvre in the cultural district on Saadiyat Island worth nearly $1.3billion USD. The Guggenheim is almost inevitably an obligatory presence also.

Sponsorship is dead. The days of lolly for logos are nearing an end as corporate brands recognise the commercial value of culture.

The next new gallery is now as likely to be opened by a brand such as Prada, a property developer like St James Homes, or collectors like Charles Saatchi. Temporary galleries like Kinetica, a museum of moving art (financed

by Ballymore Properties) spring up and disappear at a moment’s notice in mixed-use commercial and leisure developments such as Spitalfields Market... In Beijing, Nike 100 is a new art/product gallery space, increasingly seen as a way of extending shelf life for their remixed trainers... LVMH’s pop-up store in MOCA sells handbags designed by the artist Takashi Murakami, sitting in a retrospective of an artist that fuses art, retail and product: a valid extension of the exhibition... Culture is now starting to be regarded as core to business differentiation – not a folly on the margins.

5. RESOURCED // 51

Owner-worker

Sony is one brand to go as far as creating its own culture content through a process of co-creation. The PlayStation Series (facilitated by Shine Communications) broke new ground by developing the content in a collaboration between Sony and partners that included the V&A, ENO, bfi, Baltic and Manchester International Festival. Meanwhile, the Serpentine and Puma recent collaborated on the creation of the Reality Bag, sold in selected Puma outlets and stockists worldwide - blurring the lines between sponsorship, R&D and retail.

Savvy culture institutions are repackaging brands for clearly targeted demographics.

Aggregated institutions Savvy culture institutions are working together to repackage their brands for clearly targeted demographics. First, the success of Friday Night Lates at the V&A and other out-of-hours cultural experiences caught the imagination of time poor consumers. So, spotting this trend, the Lates.org platform aggregated the programmes of all of the galleries offering something for the night owl, creating the

dawn (or moon-lit carnival?) of a burgeoning new cultural scene. This in turn has attracted specific demographics of interest to brands such as Pimms, Apple and Sony (not your classic art sponsors). Similarly, our own CultureLabel.com is aggregating the retail offer of culture partners worldwide to target unique gift hunters. Where next for the power of targeted, aggregated platforms?

Christmas in Birmingham, and the Ikon Gallery, the Barber Institute of Fine Art and the RBSA keep their doors open late – with an ArtBus shuttling happy shoppers between them.

5. RESOURCED // 53

Brand co-creation

Network mapping Emotional mapping is a consumer research tool just as important as the physical mapping of potential collaborative partners. New York may perhaps lend itself more naturally to emotional bonds than some other cities, but ‘Get Lost’ by New Museum invited 21 artists to create a personal view of the city and draw it as a map, “bringing together fictional landscapes, utopian visions, private memories, and obsessive instructions to explore Manhattan, its past, present and future”.

Why? To better understand the emotional influences upon users, to meet their needs.

Second, to place the institution as one component in a complex web of overlapping emotional connections, thereby providing more chances to identify entrepreneurial opportunities, and the right connecting spaces for these.

Is money really the primary source of power over whether or not your idea gets realised?

Not if you place a premium on the creative over the expensive. Remember ‘making something out of practically nothing’ (see the intro)? Remove cash from the equation: scale your implementation (one £2k website will tell you whether the £20k one would be worth it); skilfully utilise the resources of collaborators; go slow (build it one step at a time, and make this part of your public narrative); and leverage all public funding (every public pound should be converted into multiple private or commercial pounds). Lesson the power of money, leaving more time to concentrate on the things that matter most.

5. RESOURCED // 55

Funding... what funding?

If entrepreneurship is about building something from practically nothing, it’s important to be able to measure and own that ‘nothing’ and ‘something’. The skill of an entrepreneurial institution lies in leveraging available resources. Think of it as a virtuous circle: scarce resources are capitalised effectively, creating more resources to leverage and in turn create more resources.

But, if those resources are disappearing into a black hole marked ‘central pot’, or if the additional resources cannot be reinvested to build even more, the whole system falls short. Entrepreneurship gets quashed.

Injecting this level of autonomy directly creates ownership – an essential ingredient for entrepreneurial behaviour...

Owning the decision As well as owning the bottom line, accountability requires a clear ownership of decisions. At management level for most culture institutions, this means the CEO being accountable to an independent and active Board, who are in turn accountable to any funding agencies. Decisions that directly affect the customer offer should be taken by the CEO and Board, providing an ownership

of the decision and outcomes. Cascading this further, teams within the institution can each be responsible for budget allocation and decision-making – accountable but not micro-managed by the CEO. Injecting this level of autonomy directly creates ownership – an essential ingredient for entrepreneurial behaviour, and a yardstick for managing and improving performance.

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Owning the bottom line

Investing time

Very rarely do we jump straight into ideas.

The best ones seem to simmer for a while, as you look into it, research it, see if it’s viable. This could take three weeks, it could take ten years. Space and time provides the opportunity to inwardly mature the idea, whilst simultaneously lining up the resources necessary for successful implementation.

‘Slow development’, coined by George Fergusson, removes the need to spend large amounts upfront and get it correct the first time. It advocates ongoing learning and much smaller investments: “You might take a few steps forward and one step back. But I think you get a much healthier result than you do by doing the one ‘big bang’ solution.” Get something into the market, sooner rather than later, and then refine and build from there.

The BETA stage isn’t just for webmasters.

Time is arguably more important than money, yet where are all of our time-budget documents? Why do we not even blink when we invest too much of this scarce resource in Twitter excursions? Balancing a portfolio of demanding roles, and balancing short and long term needs, can prove difficult. It’s high risk choosing how time is spent, especially when you’re drawing attention away from the core business to play around with something.

Budgeting time doesn’t seem natural, but it’s essential. At Historic Royal Palaces, 10% of staff time must be spent on training other staff, and a further 10% on developing new external relationships... again building innovation into everyone’s job description.

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Space and time

6. STAFF Fail often to succeed sooner

6. STAFF // 63

Visionaires Without wanting to wander into the David Brent school of management (a wonderland of ‘Teamwork’ posters featuring happy dolphins), a common vision is the sign of good leadership.

We’re not talking generalised buzzwords revolving around ‘community’ and ‘worldclass’: who on earth would get out of bed for “To satisfy our customers’ desires for personal entertainment and information through total customer satisfaction”? Rather, we’re talking about uniting people at an emotional level – belonging to a team that together is working to create... whatever. Here, general rules must stop, and a clear understanding of your own purpose must take over, mixed with visionary images of the future. It requires tough decisions about what you stand for. Think Google’s ‘Organise the world’s knowledge’ – stunningly simple, sets the boundaries, deeply motivating.

‘deep dive’ encourages a mass brainstorm session – no judging other people’s ideas at this point, no objections...

Deep dive Ten creative and divergent minds coming together, unlimited capacity for great new ideas... how do we manage the process and the fallout? As one the world’s most innovative product design companies, IDEO have perfected the process as much as the product. Their ‘deep dive’ encourages a mass brainstorm session around the problem – no

judging other people’s ideas at this point, no objections allowed, everyone equal.

Participants are invited to judge from these hundreds of ideas, allowing the ‘wisdom of the crowd’ to identify areas worth investigating.

Then, it’s down to rapid prototyping – quickly developing basic versions of the product to test in situ. In their words, fail often to succeed sooner.

Internal flows Gone are the days where chatting equals wasted time. Performance requires exceptional internal communications between individuals and departments, especially when team members are dispersed across multiple sites and networks. From creating, sharing and understanding a common vision, through cross-fertilising new ideas, through to sharing relevant information with the right people... setting resource aside for internal comms up, down and across structures is a must. A Work Foundation survey found low-tech trumps hightech: 91% of managers view email as the least effective means of communication, despite its prevalence. The age-old simplicity of getting people together has much more impact.

For every 2.4 laptop family, there are others already suffering from social network fatigue. This ‘de-connecting’ leads them to search for ‘real’ connections.

Can institutions tap into this desire?

“ Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become.

Everything else is secondary.”

- Steve Jobs, Apple

‘Here comes everybody’ by Clay Shirky is a commentary on the power of organising without organisations. This phenomenon is driven by emerging communications and collaborative tools such as social networks.

Our social and technological networks are overlapping – creating entirely new behaviours in certain groupings and adaptations in others – as our evolving use of technology is removing barriers to sharing information and crossdepartmental working. Shirky suggests that the collapsing cost of technology will defeat the hierarchy, and subsequent bureaucracy and inefficiencies, as these structures become irrelevant. No longer will we need layers of management to organise labour and facilitate communication as trends and opinions are formed in radically different ways.

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A flat new world

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Back office Pixar’s animators live in sheds… Google employees in Zurich move around by sliding down a pole and meet in cable cars…

A bell sounds at Mother to signal it’s time for communal lunch and even the CEO has to come. These are just some of the techniques employed by companies famed for innovation.

Whilst we are not suggesting you go out and build a Googleplex (a sort of campus

style HQ in California that helps prevent Google ever becoming a grown-up corporate behemoth) or jump on a slide like Redbull, you might want to remember: it is healthy to force change and re-creation in order to learn, adapt and remain flexible, open and responsive to a constantly changing operating environment.

“Every act of creation is first of all an act of destruction.” - Pablo Picasso

Work and/ or play Stay in the swim – blur where work ends and leisure starts! It’s easier for individual entrepreneurs, used to understanding the market and picking up new opportunities for work over evening drinks. But staff in culture institutions could also benefit from the abolition of the 9-5 dogma. Whether it’s the camaraderie of sharing risk, that extra head or two to help make a difficult decision, the back-and-forth volley of ideas generation, the mutual interest leading to a new collaboration, or the good-cop-bad-cop sales pitch – the better bonded the team is, the easier it is to implement new ideas.

Continuous learning means experiencing continuous failures as well as successes.

Unfortunately, fear of failure is a particularly unhelpful British entrepreneurial trait. How many of us feel mortified and even ashamed if our big idea doesn’t work? Yet, as mother always says, it’s better to love and lose than never to love at all. Thinking of tombstones helps... ‘he had a go’ easily beats ‘he thought about having a go’. A staff culture that encourages people to ‘have a go’ and creates space for failure breeds innovation.

After all, an entrepreneur with a failed project is often the one to watch going forward.

“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” – Thomas Edison, inventor and scientist

Trusty steeds In cultural and creative business, trust is your protection against risk and is a vital ‘lubricant’ for knowledge creation. But, according to Leadbeater, it is in short supply as traditional sources contract. Therefore, developing genuine personal relationships are critical to the success of innovations – treating people ‘as humans’, in the office as well as the bar.

Which basically means that informal, social networking should be as rated as highly as formal, professional opportunities. Bring on the 5-a-side, the alcohol, the trips to gallery openings...

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Forgiveness beats permission

As an innovator inside a culture institution there are some advantages over your entrepreneur cousins; a desk, heating and monthly pay slip are three that spring to mind. But it’s not all umbrella brands and secretarial support: intrapreneurship requires giving up some entrepreneurial givens.

For one, intrapreneurs must put the institution’s needs ahead of their own. You can’t have the security of employment without accepting that the bozo that stood in your way may get some of the credit when your idea is vindicated.

Second, if you’re successful, your idea will be mainstreamed and you have to hand it over.

You won’t be the free-wheeling skunk works forever. You must integrate into the system.

Google allows engineers to spend up to 20% of their time on their own projects.

Essential for a company that spreadbets on innovation, openly accepting that many inventions will not succeed.

Just rewards It’s not always about the money. You do have to make the reward worth the risk if you want to nurture entrepreneurship and develop a culture that accepts failure as well as success. Entrepreneurs are rarely just in it for the dough; even when they are, this is often a route to autonomy and empowerment. Understanding their real motivations is therefore essential to creating appropriate rewards that don’t necessarily involve money. According to Dan Ariely, mention of payment turns a relationship into

a market transaction, whereas gifts and other forms of recognition keep people within a social exchange. It therefore follows that if we can frame business interactions as a real social exchange, complete with all their complex emotions and connections, we can incentivise and reward innovation without always resorting to cash. Social contracts in the workplace offer an intriguing way forward: a two-way agreement around a sense of purpose, mission and pride, drawing on instinctive motivations.

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Trade-offs

6. STAFF // 73

...every business is about selling something, and people have to believe in you, and you have to believe in yourself before others can believe in you.

I believe Research among target audiences may provide some forms of approval for your new idea. Inevitably, however, every business is about selling something, and people have to believe in you, and you have to believe in yourself before others can believe in you.

Ultimately, confidence is a major ingredient of decision-making. Market research as much as you like, but you’ve got to make

some decisions at the end of the day, and have the guts to do it. Encouraging self-belief, nurturing it through both feast and famine periods, is deeply motivating. It also creates a challenging tide of expectation for any manager to handle.

“Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.” – Steve Jobs

7. SUPPLYING CONSUMER DEMAND Got it? Good. So shout about it.

We’re surrounded by brands, but are they any more than just pretty (or not so pretty) decor? Well, according to blind taste tests, most people prefer the taste of Pepsi, and yet the majority still buy Coke. Experiments at the Baylor College of Medicine prove that experiences of the Coke brand influence their preferences. Who, after all, can resist a brand that our lovable, rosy-cheeked Santa drinks!

With this power, developments in applying fMRI, and consumers becoming as integral to creating the brand as the marketing manager, expect to see the culture sector import many more specialised brand strategies.

Do you want a straightforward business stay, a weekend of indulgence for the newlyweds, or a week of white knuckle excursions for the thrill-seeker? The boutique hotel industry has got it all covered: thousands of enticing options guaranteed for their quality… all deeply authentic, local and independent, yet bound together and offered to the customer en mass in order to match to their exact needs (see for example TabletHotels.com). Enter one of the hotel websites, and enter into a niche paradise. Enter another, and a whole different version of paradise unfolds. What if museums or small theatres were like boutique hotels?

A niche of rich, authentic experience and information, bound together with other niche providers to create a vivid smorgasbord for matching up to any requirement. What if…?

Don’t think small when you think niche: The Cool Hunter blog has 600,000 visitors a month, whilst DeZeen, an online architecture magazine has 650,000. The demise of traditional media channels means the ‘next big thing’ could soon give way to the ‘next little thing’

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Brand-land

Boutique hotels

Institutional members of niche communities are best placed to create an offer that truly ‘gets’ their target market. If, as an institution, it makes your figurative hair stand on end, it’s bound to do the same to your target market. Such is the beauty of chasing consumers in the Long Tail age: out there, somewhere, are consumers just like us.

The mass market is now becoming a million mini-markets (see the way micro networks are emerging from the social networking phenomenon). The secret is in knowing which niche(s) we’re an authoritative institutional member of, and finding the space where that community resides.

Niche clusters As the wonder of digital makes distance no object, every niche is now finding its devoted audience from the global melting pot. Smaller culture institutions in particular can thrive alongside their bigger cousins by adopting a specialised niche strategy. Before the 90’s, if consumers didn’t come within a certain radius of the culture institution, chances are they’d not be worth the marketing pounds.

Now they’re part of a niche – a potential new friend and customer, wherever they are.

Derive clear differentiation either through the product (think Transport Museum), or through the consumer segment you’re targeting (think families at Bestival or local residents at a village museum). Better still, as Chris Bilton suggests, institutions aren’t limited to the one niche – fill several niches at once, and project yourself as clusters of interconnecting brands appealing to different niche markets.

This, in turn, makes light work of being highly adaptive to consumer needs.

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Consuming producers

THE �TO DO� LIST Straight to the point. What now?

CONSUMER INSIGHT

RESOURCED CONT...

Develop knowledge management systems  Inject external opinions on a systematic basis  Use observational research  Develop a staged approach to gathering 

Invite contacts to create a personal 

consumer data Become an exchange hub for concepts  and ideas Hoard snippets from the outside world 

CULTURE ASSETS Mix and match spaces  Define your strategy as a content distributor  Create opportunities to swap notes with 

business leaders

your brand value

exchange hub

Explore why your structures enable balance  Develop a strategy to leverage  Convert your latent network into an active 

OPPORTUNITIES KNOCK Prepare for catching trends  Create a catalogue of inspiration  Create a process for catching ideas 

RESOURCED Continually identify and negotiate 

with collaborators Try treating employees as contractors  Develop a strategy for joint ventures  Define your policy on ownership  of new ventures Explore opportunities for  aggregated working

map of your area

Develop strategies to remove cash 

from the equation

Negotiate ownership of your bottom line  Negotiate ownership of key decisions  Embrace BETA launches  Trial time budgets 

STAFF Formulate a clear vision  Incorporate ‘deep dives’ into your processes  Make time to get people together regularly  Revisit your organisational structure  Revisit your office layout and environment  Build team bonding into the schedule  Promote social, informal networking  Create space for failure  Research motivations and develop 

corresponding rewards

of intrapreneurship

Inform staff of the pros and cons  Encourage self-belief 

SUPPLYING CONSUMER DEMAND Research specialised consumer 

brand strategies

and marketing strategy

niche community

incorporate your niche positioning

Develop your niche positioning  Identify the key territories for your  Revisit marketing collateral, and 

We would like to offer our sincere thanks to the following people for their inspiration, support and dedication in creating this book:

Trend research Florian Wupperfeld, CultureLabel.com

The Entrepreneurial Museum’ Steering Group Carl Franklin, MLA Council Jon Finch, MLA Council Rita McLean, Renaissance West Midlands Nigel Singh, Audiences Central Steve Miller, Ironbridge Gorge Museums Trust Jo Smith, Birmingham City Council Gavin Buckley, Arts & Business Midlands

Midlands Panel Katie Dawson, Pinsent Masons LLP Phil Hacket, Shakespeare Country Gary Hall, Coventry Transport Museum Sharon Lea, Birmingham City Council Corinne Miller, Wolverhampton Arts & Museums Andrea Whitworth, GOWM Nick Winterbotham, Thinktank

Expert Witnesses Adam Clyne, Kindred Richard Evans & Tony Harmer, The Works Matt Fagg, mattfagg.com George Fergusson, Tobacco Factory Jem Noble, Blackout Arts Dick Penny, Watershed Alan Shooter & Matt Bagnall, The District

Academic Chris Bilton, University of Warwick Gareth Roberts, Regather

Design & Illustration Ben Allder & Nichole Hourigan 22%morechicken.com