1: Road Vision

This is a decisive step in laying out the scale up process. The goal is to define the purpose of your company, along with a concise description of the idea that inspired it. By identifying your native audience (early adopters), you will be able to define your market opportunities. A SWOT analysis will help determine the project's strengths and weaknesses and set realistic future goals.

It is crucial to differentiate between a business idea and the planning needed to accelerate or scale up a company. Let us consider the starting point of people within the field of culture and creativity. We will find the experiences that attracted them to their activity: from an early introduction, the fondness for a particular artistic expression, an innate predisposition, or the cultivation and refinement of a technique, which leads to virtuosity, be it musicians, dancers, actors, artists, and artisans. However, we will consider this provision as an initial condition for professional orientation in the field.

To stay on track, you will need perseverance and road vision; this step has also been called strategic planning. Thus, management studies can benefit careers and companies in the arts & culture. We addressed professionals in the cultural and creative industries who have sustained over time to find out: How did they become aware of the need their service or product could provide?

Abelardo Vázquez is currently a music producer and was part of a band in his early career, which a recording company almost signed. Still, the experience allowed him to identify the kind of preparation and the elements that any musician must have ready to make the most out of such an opportunity.

Roughly speaking, we refer to the creation of songs that will be distributed in search of economic gain. Similarly, artists must develop skills and attitudes to sustain success and endure despite the ups and downs of an artistic career. Consequently, Abelardo focuses on musicians' creative direction and integral development under a mentoring scheme Incidentally, mentors can aid in developing this step. Similarly, it is worth noticing that most of the study participants mentioned that in their initial phases, they took on the task of studying, taking advice, and actively sought to connect with members of the local creative and cultural ecosystem (for different reasons).

It is recommended, as Abelardo does, to share criteria based on careful observation of cultural and creative ecosystems at the local, national and international levels. Subsequently, with this information, a SWOT analysis can be carried out that will help you diagnose your company's current situation and support making decisions based on the vision you have defined.

SWOT incorporates four key elements of the planning process: Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. The letters F and D represent internal variables of the organization upon which is possible to take action. At the same time, O and A are external or contextual, which needs consideration to achieve the strategic goals.

In additon to the SWOT analysis you can expand your research on cultural, creative, social and economic trends. To find examples of this type of companies in Latin America (LATAM), we recommend a book by Luzardo and Fundes (2019) published by the Inter-American Development Bank.

Interdisciplinary road vision and complementary aspects

A vital resource is the network of allies and sponsors that can strengthen your company and help you sustain the effort. Guillermo García, the cofounder of Erizo Media, created an agency to promote independent music by integrating the resources of artists and suppliers and constructing links with local and state governments. At the same time, keeping audiences connected is critical, achieved through digital platforms, virtual communities, and other media.

Guillermo says to start a company within independent culture: "you have to be a rocker or very audacious, but also professionalize the administrative and communication processes with customers and suppliers"

Due to the above, many creatives have chosen to prepare themselves in these complementary aspects. Others choose to integrate personnel with business skills, integrate collaborative teams, or seek mentors as they scale up their projects. The participants in this study stressed the relevance of giving due importance to these aspects since they allowed them to generate financially sustainable business plans. When they omitted this perspective, their results were not what they had projected. Therefore, you will need to learn and refine your business skills as you head towards scalability.

Accelerating with a defined direction is pivotal to ensure we reach the desired goal. We call this direction road vision.

2: Connect with your audience

Understanding the needs, your consumers seek to satisfy and what they hope to achieve through your products and services is essential. Therefore, collecting feedback to improve your company’s design or value proposition is recommended.

Entrepreneurs in the CCI implement strategies in response to their audience or market. For example, the Escobedo Sisters, which operate Conservatorio de Danza México, had to adapt an educational program in response to generational differences among the dance students. As expressed in their own words: “in our time, dedication to artistic preparation was total, while today’s students seek a balance between their personal life and rehearsal (which is fine, and of course, we are concerned about the well-being of our students); we have also observed a tendency to immediacy. In the entertainment industry, it was said that the show must go on, while now, the function must sometimes stop; a result of balancing professional duties and personal life”. In this case, developing empathy with student needs helped them to consolidate an academic and business model suited for today’s world.

Obtaining valuable information is critical to validate or correcting a business idea. For this, you must listen to the audience. The goal is to capture the client’s point of view. To avoid biasing the interview with our preconceptions, prepare open questions. You can start by asking about a particular product or service. How has it been helpful to you? What do they usually do with it? Try being specific with time. For example, When do you prefer to use it? If it is an event, you can say, When was the last time you attended? What day or time is it easier to be there? You can even ask for suggestions for improvements, such as: What don’t you like about the service or product? What would you change about a particular experience? How much are you willing to pay? With this information, you will inform a detailed vision from the point of view of your audience or consumers.

Benito del Águila, the founder of the Rosarito Art Fest, started his project with online sales utilizing a ubiquitous platform: “At that time in eBay you could find collectors of anything, from baseball cards, PEZ cartridges, Star Wars figures and within all of that, there was a niche for Mexican folk art.”

He realized the opportunity for this type of product, so he traveled and met artisans in Mexico to upload their work to the internet or commission pieces based on printed catalogs and consumer trends. The platform allowed him to generate a database of customers to whom he could send promotional emails for new products or place orders. Most e-commerce applications facilitate communication with the final consumer, generally, a natural person, known as B2C (Business to Consumer), but also between companies or B2B (Business to Business). Do maintain fluid, constant and respectful communication with your audience will yield better decisions. Additionally, mobile applications generate information on consumer behavior, generating inputs that can be contrasted with the data from the interviews.

This step demands the direct involvement of the entrepreneur. However, you can collaborate with other experts, such as marketing consultants, or depending on the case, sociologists, anthropologists, web developers, and cultural managers who can help you better understand your audience and establish meaningful connections for the sustainability of your business.

3: Cultural and creative scale-up concept

In this step, you will learn to define the scale-up concept. You’ll also prepare a positioning statement to describe your business from a customer’s perspective. Lastly, you will analyze your competitors and create a differentiation matrix.

People are busy in their daily lives while constantly swamped with advertisements and hardly pay attention to new products or services that are irrelevant to them. To catch their attention, your scale-up concept must be notable and remarkable, something worth talking about within your circle of influence.

Author Seth Godin, who wrote Purple Cow, states in his TED talk: “Since competition is fierce, you must create something remarkable to succeed. We tend to talk about products that are remarkable that are worth appreciating and recommending. These would be new concepts, that are exciting, or exceptional"

You must ask yourself a question: What does make my concept remarka

For example:

Pinterest - The catalog of things you love Behance - Get free exposure for your designs

Spotify - All the music in the world at your fingertips

To help you craft your scale-up concept, utilize these guiding questions and build a strategy to pin out these elements.

1. What is unique about your product?

2. How do users describe your product?

3. What are you helping people achieve through your product?

4. What feature or functionality of your product catches people’s attention the most?

Finally, we recommend that you keep up to date with current developments, work in a differentiation matrix, and identify your competitive advantage over your competitors. Get inspiration from Rachitsky’s article (2022a), and check out examples of today’s most successful companies like Pinterest, Netflix, Tinder, Dropbox, DoorDash, Robinhood, Amazon, and WhatsApp.

4: Innovation design

The innovation design framework offers different strategies you can explore and implement. These tools will help you rate your current innovation or create new ones. To a certain extent, it facilitates the detection of omissions the dimensions, which will need to be reinforced to scale-up your concept.

Many companies only focus on improving their existing products without considering possible innovations in other areas that are seldom explored. Regarding these aspects open a key to design innovations.

The innovation design framework is structured in three main categories: configuration, offer, and experience, and within these, different innovation modalities are possible. Ahead you will find a brief description of these concepts.

Innovation within the configuration of the company

This type of innovation regards the configuration of the company. It can target organizational methods, business structures, and business models or enhance collaborative networks, to add to the value proposition or strengthen the processes behind the products or services you offer.

ttInnovation in the company’s offer

It is related to the product or service, including traditional product innovations. It represents the opportunity to offer new products and services that captivates and delights customers. Its mission is to create something new, at the same time, contribute to the market ecosystem with integrated production systems.

Innovation from the customer experience

Everything related to how value is delivered to customers; includes a combination of brand, value proposition, and innovation in service delivery. Consider what experiences and channels enable you to engage with your audience.

There are different methodologies to help determine which areas of innovation to target. Implement strategies that suit your purpose; these can be: Design Thinking, Scamper, and others.

For example, some companies organize hackathons to find possible solutions to their identified challenges. Sometimes, organizations invite children to aid them in finding new solutions, often with surprising results.

There are specialized university and graduate programs in the Tijuana and San Diego region for entrepreneurs looking for academic alternatives to develop their innovation skills.