 Good afternoon. We would like to welcome you to the driving forces behind a creative economy session We're excited to have you here. We're looking forward to a conversation with some very Creative people as well as with you about how do we construct a world? How do we construct an economy that is full of creativity and thrives and One of our assumptions here is that a creative economies are driven by creative people Individuals who are champions new champions people who change the world people who challenge the status quo and that kind of challenging often happens at the intersection of two very different ways of looking at the world and if I were to go into a room and put a pure artist on one side of the room and A pure business person on the other side of the room. I Would expect some creative conversations going on there or perhaps no conversations going on there But what we're trying to suggest is that by merging Artistic beauty beauty ways of looking at the world with a business way of looking at the world is actually the intersection of creative economies You know Steve Jobs was not alone in looking at creativity is something beautiful And we're going to try to do today is figure out how can Economic systems how can political systems? How can organizations? How can I perhaps even as a leader of a team? created an environment that fuels that kind of Conversation across different worlds perhaps artists and business people and those sorts of conversations deliver real economic Results and we'll talk a bit about that later I'm excited today to be with you with several new champions people who are making a difference people who have lived Innovatively people from the art side people from the business side and in between and so we're going to first hear from Sola Liu who was a composer vocalist and writer. She's the founder of Leo Sola Music studio. I said that wrong at the beginning. I apologize But she's an artist and great at what she does at combining tradition with the world we're living in Well, then here from Kenny Lowe who is a chief executive officer at City College and O-School in Singapore He's doing some very creative work with dance and other areas in terms of social entrepreneurship Then we'll hear from Peter Corbett who is the chief executive officer of iStrategy Labs and Essentially a global shaper trying to change things out there and then finally we'll hear from the ends Martin skibstead Who is the founding partner of skibstead ideation and? Basically is pushing hard at the global level trying to change policy to support Creatives in any economy, so we'll start with Sola I Said I'm going to speak in When we talk about the creative economy, I myself and an artist and I approach the issue from the perspective of creation And creativity To artists and other Everyone is an object of Country what is contemporary? What is modern to me? I think Traditional what is classical In my own view When we talk about the contemporary We need to be very very clear About what forms exist in the contemporary when we talk about the past or when we talk about The ancient or the classical What forms what classical forms are in play here and you'll find a lot of commonalities In the classic in the traditions you will find Enlightenment and inspiration Innovation So the transcendence The transformation from the classical to the modern Journey of inspiration And exploration We need to deeply understand The This transformation between the past and the contemporary and I emphasize transformation In in film or in literature and Many forms of art. We see the artist uses a twist Who uses this twist? You can turn the story around And the twist is the crux of the story And with this twist You can turn the story around The crucial element of any form From the ancient to the modern And the transformation from the classical to the contemporary For example, I use a twist from music So let me take an example from music When you hear a sound For example, classical Chinese music Ding Ding Da Da Da Ding Ding Da Da Da When you hear these notes Ding Ding Da Da Da This is a classical Chinese musical element It can come from the traditional Chinese instruments But then give it a twist Make it mine Own it Ha ha ha My own My own addition My own twist On this classical On this classical note For example Instantly becomes the modern A classical form That I have owned That I have embodied This is a classical form That I have embodied Here I am Here I am I'm knocking on a table I'm an artist I'm a musician Knocking on a table Now you might say What is this And now all of a sudden Knocking has become The music of my own That's another twist So these twists of sound For a musician Is a process of taking something external And making it one's own energy One's own creative energy Ding Ding Da Da Da Da These notes that I'm making Again, this is a classical And when you reinvent them You need to invest in them Your own creative energies And that time Investment That Ownership of Passage Ideas Is the contemporary twist No, let's say I have a Of course And more doesn't Singers focus They need to fully understand The transformation taking place In order for them to Appropriately put into play Their own creative energies And integrate them into a singularity The transformation is even a physical process The actual sound waves coming through your body And giving expression to them In your own unique way So my music group has ten vocalists I'm trying to play something Yes, please Please play the video Whoever's manipulating the machines Please play the video Please play the video, thank you You can see that each musician Has their creative energies Focused on their own instrument Each, for example, producing the Chinese zither Or the drummer behind them They're not simply a company It is an independent And equal performance By each artist You can see the pipa And the drum So I think even performing in a group One's individual energy One person's energy Can be more powerful than ten people's energy It's all about your individual expression Well done, thank you very much Hi everyone I'm going to share about my experience In the creative economy in Singapore I'd like to take the story back To my schooling years I grew up with the music of MC Hammer And Vanilla Ice I'm not sure if anyone... You can touch this and all the shuffling And all that So dance has been a part of my life I think through dance I built up my self-esteem And I learned how to express myself And that's quite important And rather rare among The mainstream education focus in Singapore So I began to appreciate the dances And six years ago I met this particular guy called Ryan Ryan is a professional dancer in Singapore He can jump up in the air and just split his legs And sometimes he can lift up his legs And kind of lick his knee and all that So I recognize that there are people That have special abilities It gives When they listen to music They can create just movements On the spot in their mind And straight away replicate them On the spot and remember them Which for me will take maybe five, six hours Or five months But the sad part is that There is no space in the economy In Singapore for such talents So many of them Their only jobs is just to dance on bar tops At the clubs And they'll just engage for some New year, year-end shows And the sad part is that In order to show off their talents to the world They have to adapt to a lifestyle Which they may not want to So Ryan will have to stay back in the club To drink with the bosses In order to get his next gig Because he needs to socialize So that's pretty sad So six years ago we took a radical step We set up the first street dance company In Singapore So I went around Singapore to scout For all the best street dancers Those that can spin on their heads very well They can move like robots and all that So we hired all of them Gave them a good basic salary So that just like the rest of Singaporeans They have what we call the CPA And able to afford public housing And we create a business model That's built around their talent So what is amazing is that This small little outfit Has grown to impact About 10,000 young people every year So every week we are seeing 1,500 young people coming To take dance classes So young people are actually supporting Young people to turn pro in their craft And what is encouraging is that We are seeing the private brands Commercial brands coming to us And then they say that We would like to sponsor your events Because we would like the young people To remember our logo when they grow up And then make sure they drink our drink And buy our computers And we have the government sector Coming to us Because through our events We are able to engage young people At a very high level They can all come together And somehow that Music and that movement on stage Kind of just resonate among the young people And when we talk to them They say things like Dance gave me courage Dance made me feel accepted I think it's a sense that They feel that they fit Like for that one minute on stage Together with that pounding bass And they do their Just feel that everything makes sense I know they are not judged And then they feel good about themselves So we are seeing a lot of Like social benefits And economic benefits In the area of performing arts And then on a bigger scale We are also noticing that The Singapore government is going to invest Quite a bit in the area of arts and culture In order to sustain our economic growth I think for the past 40 years We have invested a lot In the basic structures like roads And banking system and all that But now we have come to a stage Which lifestyle is important That we won't just want Singapore To just be a trade hub Or economic hub But a place where people call home So arts and culture has come To the centre of the play Because that's the point where We can find emotional connectedness And our government is also Trying to use the arts to Help the citizens to have Life after work To be able to enjoy the economic gains I think to be able to feed their soul So that they don't just walk around Feeling frustrated by the congested trains And learn how to smell the roses And also that's my perspective On driving the creative economy Thank you very much My turn So I'm Peter Corbett I'm the CEO of iStrategy Labs And I think my story is It's really about a move away From the individual craftsmen The focus on a specific discipline And maybe what some people will call A renaissance man or woman And I guess my story starts at about Nine years old is when I started programming I became a designer and my teens Really fell in love with graphic design And web design When I went to college I actually went to business school So think about that as the art of business In a way And started a concert production company So big physical events Bringing people together around music And art and fashion, et cetera And then after graduating from business school I became a TV producer So you can think about content production And animation, et cetera And then worked for a number of ad agencies And started iStrategy Labs five years ago In my apartment Which is really a combination of all those things Our tools, our media that we use Is essentially code and pixels So we do a lot of application development Web design, mobile design and development For Fortune 500 So I think the creative economy To me is really one that's incredibly lucrative And incredibly commercial The work that we do is not necessarily Just for the beauty of it It absolutely has an intention to drive sales To drive brand awareness To change behavior, all of those things And what I'm seeing is some of the most successful And some of the most interesting people That I come across Aren't just the best designer Or they're not just the best industrial designer For example They may be a programmer Who also happens to be an industrial designer Who instead of during their day job Goes home at night Builds a little three-dimensional version Of an iPhone case Puts it up on Kickstarter, gets it funded And all of a sudden they've got a quarter million dollars In sales in a new product that they're marketing Because they have enough of an understanding Of each of those disciplines to be effective at it That's not really something that When you're growing up is easy to understand As a possible career path at all And that was stressful for me to be honest As I was growing up as I mentioned I was a designer and a developer and all these things But I was never the best at any of those So while my friends were winning awards For being number one, whatever I wasn't And everyone was saying Peter, you're smart and creative and talented But I wasn't winning awards And I was really calling it out And it was just that my talent Is actually the combination of all of those disciplines And now as the CEO of a creative company It's about orchestrating the production Of really interesting things By other people who are really good At a number of things as well Now mind you, our design team is incredibly good At design and our engineering team is incredibly good At engineering and our strategist are incredible strategists But I think in this economy that we live in And specific to the creative economy We have to understand that the people Who are going to thrive and be successful And it may not just be the world's best painter Or the world's best dancer Or the world's best musician There's a whole field, hundreds of thousands of people That are really good at a combination of these things And because our distribution channels have changed Specifically the internet being predominant We now have an outlet for those strange combinations Of what we do Thank you So when I was 22 I took my girlfriend of the time down to Barcelona And we're supposed to have a nice holiday together And we saw these beautiful Motherless buildings by Calafac And Gaudi and Dominequi Montana And instead of spending most of the holiday With her, I started drawing bikes And I drew a lot of them And it kind of annoyed her And so I got this idea To make a special kind of bike And I tried to forget about it Because my background at that time was philosophy And it didn't make any sense I didn't manage to forget But just later I started that company And one of the reasons That I was able to start was because In Denmark one had set up a foundation That would help you with developing Technological innovations And we got quite substantial funding In the beginning Then it actually was a kind of a success And I thought now I would get The prizes that you didn't get, Peter So I wanted to send this The first bike we made was designed by A designer called Mark Neusen Who's Australian And I sent it into this Danish design prize And we could not get accepted Simply because this guy was Australian So I first realized that Politics matters for design-led companies So why do design matter for the world? Well, the rest of my journey I think can display a little bit of that Then the idea around these bikes Was to get the cars out of the city I had for some years been riding at riots Shouting with the thousands of people That the cars should go out of the city And basically what people got out of that Is there are some extremists So the extremist route didn't really have any effect So I thought another route Which would be about attracting people To something instead of scaring them away From something or regulating them away From something would be better So that's what we did And we used design, so aesthetics To achieve that And I think there is this kind of preconception That design is this kind of luxurious thing For rich people But design, as I see it Is more related to when a bird dances Around for half an hour to get a mate It's about expressing who you are Expressing your lifestyle And basically that is a much more fundamental Thing to you to get laid Or to pro-generate Or to make sure your family goes on Then if the world goes under or not I mean of course these bikes are set in place In order to reduce carbon gas emissions They're set in place to reduce pollution But people don't really care about that At least much less than they do About expressing who they are And therefore design and aesthetics International is an extremely powerful source That needs to be harnessed And I think it's weird that we have a world Where this incredibly strong motivator Is not anyhow regulated internationally So right now there are some local design policies Which basically is about out-competing each other China is also setting up a design policy these days And China is doing so So that they can out-compete other regions Denmark where I come from they also have that That they can out-compete other regions But this is not a thing that the world Necessarily will benefit from Unless we figure out how design can Help the world at large Thank you guys I hope you get... I had the luxury of visiting with each of them Much longer before we ever had this conversation Here today and they are new champions They are creatives, this is the work they do All four of them And so one of the questions I'd like to ask You can answer however you want to Or in what order But it's basically What are some of the biggest barriers That either in the beginning When you started down that creative path Or now that you've built something That is an incredibly creative organization That builds a vibrant creative economy What are one or two of the biggest barriers Either personally or organizationally You face trying to do your work well To make it hard I'll share one because it's sort of Foundational to who I am When I was growing up I was always starting businesses Whatever they may be And creative ones of some kind And all of my friends And thankfully not my parents But all of my friends would basically tell me That I was crazy And that word, I heard the word You're crazy, the phrase you're crazy Hundreds of times And to be able to Survive that is crucial For a creative person I think all creative people If you're actually doing something interesting People are going to say that you're crazy And if you can start to tune that out You'll block that noise It's something I learned early on If you can block that noise You'll really start to hear yourself And what you really want to do And what you're really passionate about And you won't let the outside world dilute that And if you do let the outside world dilute that You end up being pretty mediocre And what that has turned in for me Is a deep fear of mediocrity It's the thing that drives me every single day And no matter how beautiful The thing is that we might design And the hundreds of thousands If not millions of people That might be exposed to the campaigns that we do I still think, ah, man Was that really that good? Was it mediocre? And I hope in my later years Maybe I'll start to be satisfied But I doubt it So it's a process for me Living my life having been called crazy And now being in a state of fear of mediocrity That'll keep driving me to I think do better And a better job wherever I can Just a quick follow-up on that Are there people, experiences, things that Help you stay crazy? Yeah, absolutely I would say so I'd say I travel a tremendous amount And the exposure to brand new stimuli is crucial So I do almost 200,000 miles a year After this I'll go to Taipei and Shanghai And Moscow, Berlin, Tallinn, and Zagreb Many of those places I've never been And that will just change the way that My brain works to a certain degree And say, oh, what I thought was possible Are the way that we do things in the states Or Washington, D.C. It's not the way they do it in Tianjin It's not the way they do it in Taipei It's not the way they do it in Moscow And so when I come back to the states And apply that to my work I'll say, we don't have to do it The way that other people do it And oh, that little thing you saw In a market in Seoul How can that now be brought into a Consumer-facing marketing campaign For Volkswagen or Audi Or whomever else we may work with Sure Others? I think for us it's about The barrier to scale I think when we are small Nobody wants to talk to you Then suddenly when you can Have a lot of young people Watching your videos, going to your events And you start to have Different agencies coming to you To want to work with you And then when that happens Their agenda comes in So the challenge is How do we balance the artistic integrity With what the corporates want then At which point will we come to a point Which we actually cross the line And we actually kind of turn commercial And lose our original value and intention So there's always a balancing act Over there because Brands will want more presence Then they'll say Can your dancers wear our logos On their clothes, on the shoes At the background and all But if you have too much of that I mean dance is not like an F1 Formula 1 race with just engine All the stickers doesn't matter The costume with too much logos Would take away the artistic message So on one hand there is A great need for greater resource To bring the art form to the masses On the other hand there has to be a balance And a better understanding and negotiation With the potential stakeholders and funders So that's the challenge that we have And again a question that raises for me is As you try to balance between the demands of sponsors And the desires of the artists To dance the way they want to Without being a Formula 1 car Are the things that you do The tools or approaches that help you personally When you're in that negotiation space Balance things better? I think we show them that That they need to take a longer term position That the brands need to build a relationship With our audience That means to position themselves As somebody that supports the art form Rather than somebody that takes advantage Of the art form I think there's a big difference on that So the bigger brands They can see a longer term So they will respect our views And the boundaries of how much Their logos encroach I escaped the personal problem Because being a Chinese In my generation We all know that I've grown up In the country The time I've grown up There's completely no information About anything For us we have to go abroad To study what we want to know But after I come back So this is already There's lots of difficulty After I come back I start to do Events in China Now I find Not, you know For many young musicians What are they facing? The problem is we totally Lack of information We don't have enough information To educate young people To let them know What is really behind Contemporary art Modern music All kinds of different kinds of art Different kinds of music What is really going on What's behind that Young musicians Don't wait to really find out This is a real problem Not only musicians Or ordinary students No way to find out What's really going on With music Globally I think that's very important For Chinese young generation To have more information Also understanding What we have is Misunderstanding the world Because we don't have enough information That's why We always misunderstanding The message we get You know Some Chinese people see And they grab it Without really understanding Then sometimes We could mess up This very good opportunity For you to produce something But you could mess up Because you actually missed the message You don't know what's really behind Then also the world To China too When I was overseas as a musician To work overseas I find it's really hard To do the culture exchange Because Internationally we also get Misunderstood Because Also I think Internationally also lack of real Information about what's really You know Chinese and what is real Chinese culture Is very superficial Information in the world too So I think That's what I can talk about today Could you explain just a little bit more Between the difference For you as an artist And physically going some place And hearing different music Versus going online And just listening to it on the internet Just one approach That's a big difference You go online to listen What does it sound like Young kids sometimes cry You know what the trends is But that's not true You only know the trends That pop star what does she wear What is going on in England Or America You don't know the real life Of musicians life Being a musician So some people In China maybe lots of young people Go cry about Musicians in the western world Because of the media Because what they sell from television Or from commercials This is not real musicians life So I think What we really We need is the real information So to live like a musician To not really Philosophy Of being a musician That's many philosophy Yeah Well I really recognized What Peter said When I started Before I started that bike company Sitting in the canteen In the philosophy At the university And I was drawing bikes And my friends would come over And look at me a little bit sad Poor guy Now he's drawing these absurd bikes Instead of focusing on his studies And actually I was not disturbed by this And actually I use that a little bit Today as a criteria When people think This is a little bit too far out Then I'm okay Then I'm onto something Of course I could also be totally wrong But then I just Wait a while And if there are daresticks Then I'm pretty sure And the reason that I think That is because So one of my Projects right now Is to make an electric car For a specific Sub-Saharan Market And the people I speak to Mainly Indians that cater To that market But it's science fiction But that's my only chance Is that they think this is science fiction Because if they just went in there Full speed ahead I would have no chance Of being a corporate So actually It also gives you Some time And if you manage to break through that market You have an entire new market to yourself That's a really interesting point I'd like to elaborate on just quickly I think those of us who are deeply involved In the creative economy We're piercing that bubble of possibility Where the corporates are a little too afraid To go after And we're happy to break The blue ocean And exploit that And so that's our constant battle We're thinking where is it a blue ocean It's a red ocean over here And who's going to copy us Who's going to steal our work If we actually break through And find a thing that we can monetize Again I have to say that we're very focused On the commercialization of the Kind of work that we do It's because we're a for-profit And we're not necessarily an arts collective Is that people actually pay us A tremendous amount of money to bring our ideas to life And it'd be nice for us just To tinker and be craftsmen And I would love to do that But right now we have a lot of mouths to feed So to speak and we're growing And I think we have a lot of great work to do So having the structure we do is the right one Creative economies really are It's a balancing act between creatives People with very disruptive ideas Challenging the status quo Pushing the edge And those folks who literally excel At getting things done They're the go-to people When you have to get somewhere When you have to get something accomplished You know that they will accomplish it And often, more often than not They're different people But it sounds like, for example in your world Somehow you've learned to work together Yeah How do you do that? What helps you or any of you Because artists are on the other side Those two folks have to work together For the economy and creative Or it just becomes an economy Or it just becomes creative And one without the other just doesn't work well I think it's actually very simple We look for the marriage between What someone's passion is And what the opportunity is that we have And if we can match those two up You know, if we're working with Ford or Coca-Cola or whomever And someone says all I really want to do Is paint murals all day long And paint the most beautiful murals you've ever seen And they're going to be incredibly passionate about it Instead of forcing someone into something They might not really be that passionate about So that intersection of opportunity and passion Is where we see so much energy It's when you stay up for days at a time Producing work which others might Not have been able to do or thought was possible I need at least one point I'd like to say So therefore that because There's a lake of information So for me I think In China we need lots of Organizations to have Like all kinds of different kind of Forum That's why when you're asking me about Internet information I think that's Not enough to just like Listen to music for example I would like to, we have already Organized New music cross-bandaid Forum in Beijing Music festival In the central conservatory So that's what we're trying to do I think this kind of international Cross-bandaid forum discussions Like with many different artists Come to China A real person Real artist or scholar Like they come here Musicians come together To discuss Like a real discussion That would be really helpful for The Chinese I think in terms of Organization Right now the way a lot of Corporates they try to Deal with this is that they Take some of their managers Through a ton of Creative processes You know so they They sit there and brainstorm And have all sorts of techniques To get their managers more creative I personally don't believe In that technique I think the way to Have a successful creative Business is to emulate Successful creative businesses And you can just look at them And see what they do and you do the same So it's in fact fairly easy And so for instance the film industry You know they have You know globally a turnover That's significant How do they do it? Well they have A director who does that And you have What are they called? Ad agencies There you have an art director Who's a mediator between the two Kind of characters you're talking about The strictly corporate kind of guy And the creative kind of guy And that kind of mediator Between the creative And the strictly managerial They exist in all creative businesses And you just gotta make that Function work within your company And to be heard Martin while we could Replicate the frameworks And the structure Do you think culture could be transferred? Because design and creativity A lot of it is in the unseen It's in the culture, it's not just in the positions So companies You can't really emulate Cultures like For example in Singapore you have McDonald's and KFC Both selling fast food Very different culture all together I'd like to think that we could But I'm really I think a bit cynical On that front and we work with Big Fortune 500s and the idea that Our tiny group of people that might Work on a project will affect that Hulking global organization And change the way that they think is A bit ambitious, I wish that was the case The reality is that I spend a lot of my time Trying to protect our Creatives from being Changed by them So that's the role of An account manager, an account executive Person in an agency organization You want to make sure the art directors And the designers don't get They don't have their creativity crushed by What can be incredibly bureaucratic processes In big companies But I think there, I agree with what you say But I think there is a way to do it So instead, of course Creativity is like a virus If you put it in there It's not a threat But The way you do it If you don't want the whole Organisms to be contaminated What you do is you create a little subsidiary So if it's For instance some kind of product You want to make, well then you make A separate brand, a sub-brand or whatever For that and then you create A new culture within that And if it's a successful product It can grow and at some point It can overtake the mother company If it's really That significant, so there are strategies To handle these cultural Challenges I think the big companies are open To this kind of infection more than They ever have been before But I don't know if we've fully seen A wholesale change over In the Fortune 500 Has some company gone from being You know, dull and bureaucratic to Incredibly creative and innovative You've seen that coin flip. I'd love to see it And what would that look like? I don't know I know a couple of companies into it Started I think as a very creative Company and then it slipped For a variety of reasons and then Scott, the founder, re-came back Into the system, worked with a lot of people And it's now, from my observation Pulling them back up, but it took A creative founder coming back into the system To do it. Starbucks Arguably is a similar situation You know, they had a curve of Great success, then a very Downward pitch curve, and then You know, Schultz Schultz, he came back He came back a different person When he came to round two. What's interesting about both those examples Is their top down driven change From someone who's already had a lot of buy-in I would love to see Has the bottom up occurred? Have the 20-somethings who are just coming into the Corporate world been like this place Crazy, let's change it Let's control the power to do so And maybe we're going to start to see that Over the next decade or so And that remains to be seen Because if you see the truly creative Companies, they are run top down And they are often entrepreneurial led Because if you see the way Organizational structures are set up They are set up To Divide and rule, they are set up To disempower people So I'm sure they don't do crazy things Or take over power from you For creativity to be Truly effective You need to Dictate it Creativity is not a democratic action And so therefore you see Like a semi-dictator Like people like Steve Jobs That have super creative companies Whereas Microsoft that's Not in the same way top down But they don't That types of creativity or innovations They have not been as successful Which raises an interesting opportunity To move our conversation A bit more into your space Do you have examples In your countries, your regions Your own organization where Where it did change Where things did become more innovative How did that happen? Please We have a microphone right here There we go I'm an architect practicing for 35 years From India And I empathize And I live through all your Whatever you have said Because I do feel that Being creative You know, there are Many, many ways That your design can get sabotaged That's what I call them But I think It is beyond a point If you persevere I think you may not Be able to have Too many clients But you have Clients who matter And after a point If the clients designs are successful Or your buildings are successful I think the others will follow Since my My father is an architect And I don't wish the profession On anyone The lack of appreciation Especially in the western world For architecture is Abhorrent. We buy homes out of boxes In America It's disgusting And that discipline is It's the most important art form That I think we have We all live in a built structure Or many of us do So I don't know if we're going to see A return to the appreciation of architecture I hope that we do Yes, again Mr. Questions about how do we Support a creative economy How maybe in your own organization Do you create a creative economy Support creatives please I just wanted to make the observation That Creativity Takes courage as well Not just in the Evolution of ideas That's sort of the first half But somebody mentioned Steve Jobs before And there seems like there's still Realization of This courage to say no To kill amazing Ideas, brilliant ideas But not the right ones for now And it seems that when we talk about creativity Normally we're just talking about The brainstorming The first half But without the second half You actually don't get full innovation You just get lots of ideation And it's not quite the same thing I just was curious about your thoughts Of creativity I can say personally My Entire life is mainly about killing my own ideas Because you just can't make them Make them happen, you know So of course ideas without Implementation are worthless And you will find that Somehow People carry out Your thoughts if you don't do it yourself I've met so many creators That said, ah, that's fun, I thought of that So somehow we all get Roughly the same idea, roughly the same time And pyramids get built all over the world Roughly at the same time So killing is the main job Killing ideas, yeah I think it's a really great point When I first started the company It was only me, so it was hard to do all the execution And I tried to just do This strategy work and all the ideation work Because I always had great ideas And I really knew how to express them But I realized that the Ideation part was not really what people valued They really valued the execution component I would say that 95% of our revenue Is derived from making things Whether it's writing code Or pushing pixels around Or building a physical thing in the world And the ideation piece is really just the hook That's the like Get them really excited And now we're actually working on something I think it comes in stages I think for us Right at the start, we have to decide To do something, the shift needs to leave the dog But as we say, we realize That some of the calls we make were bad And then we have to shift, you know But of course when an organization Become very big when you have a lot of resources Then you have to chop off More ideas to retain Your particular focus So I think it's a stage of an organization My answer probably is Not very useful for you Because I'm an artist But for contemporary art Creation, I think You'll have to be careful to get too personal Because Like modern music Or contemporary music What we need is to build this Extremely individuality But not too personal One of the interesting tensions that's being raised here Is the issue of, you know People who are good at creativity And those who are good at getting things done And as I listen to this conversation And I hear Peter, for example Describing his attempts In a creative organization to protect His creators From the world out there that is contracting To do things with him It reminds me of a couple of words That when they happen in a relationship Incredible things Come to pass And the words are Honor and respect And Peter, I think You've got to protect your people Because those other people On the other side who are buying your services I don't think they really honor And respect what you do But it's also got to go the other way Which is, you know, your folks Have to honor and respect them And when there's that meaty mutual ground Of honor and respect around creative economies Happen when both parts Are vibrant When the folks who get things done Have that kind of value and respect And the folks who also Create the new ideas Have some honor in the system Then really interesting things Seem to have It's a really interesting point The root of that is actually ignorance It's not that the clients that might hire us Are bad people, and so they're not going to honor and respect us They just don't actually know What the process is Get created in the world And how they need to leave people alone sometimes And so any of us who works With clients in the creative industry You know how to do your job And once you have enough feedback from your client You know what the goal is They really should leave you alone But oftentimes this is like the first time They're doing something cool and creative And they want to get their hands in there And you're like, actually this is going to make it really awful So we have to balance that Every single day when we're managing our engagements We have to put our fingers in the dough a little bit Without destroying the eventual Bread that you're going to bake My metaphor is awful now, sorry And I think in terms of honor and respect Oh, sorry Okay, I just want to say You also got to respect yourself and your own heritage And now since we are here In China I've met many Chinese That want to kind of figure out So what kind of How should these products look like You also got to look To your own heritage And respect your own heritage If you take the first design product In the world was actually a Chinese Arrow Because for the army you needed standardized arrows If you have some of the big Danish classics Are actually inspired By By Chinese tradition So there's so much heritage Heritage to be had And now coincidentally We are in China, so I'm talking about China But this is true for any culture So that respect also needs to go Inwards and up Only towards Others Good point. One or two more questions Please I want to ask a question with Chinese I'm secretary general After Brand China Industry Union I've been a Designer for 10 years My question is How How do we Increase the value Of our clients When we're dealing with our clients How can we make them value us In China You design for your clients Don't pay you For the design When you are in an architecture area Or in a co-production area Design doesn't get you paid My firm used to be One of the biggest Design firms in China But still I was in pain Because the clients always Have a lot of questions about the design Sometimes their ideas are very Crazy and ridiculous A lot of the good designers Are no longer designers anymore Because they hate it If we didn't have good people in design It would be very bad for the economy My question is How do you Management your clients About managing your clients How can you raise a value Of the design How can you raise a value Of the design in the total value That's something we really need to explore Thank you I think the challenge is We can't really quantify The value of a design Because some designs may come One time it to cost It's just that it's very hard to quantify The value of a painting So it's not so much of whether we want to value it Or not, it is how do we put the right number on it And most of the time From the part of the world we came in We come from After sometimes it's about the branding of the company If the company has a certain brand They can put whatever figure they want As design consultancy And people will pay for it But let's say if you just graduated Really an idea You want to charge $10,000 for your design Most likely nobody is going to pay I think the challenge is We don't have a unifying value Yeah, I think it's our job As people in the creative economy To help our clients And customers understand the process A little bit more So that they can actually value it For us, we don't do anything Unless we're being paid That's it We do mock-ups and show me what it would be like And I say, yeah sure It's going to be $10,000 And it's going to take us two weeks And it's going to be three designers A project manager and we're going to spend 40 hours Going through this exact process In order to get you those mock-ups But they're just mock-ups You should just do them yourself then If you think they're just mock-ups And that takes some bravery That takes some courage And I'll tell you what it does Because the good ones actually understand the process And actually value What it is that you're going to do for them And are going to pay you You're going to have a great relationship Rather than working with the people That don't understand the process And aren't going to value it So it's up to, I think it's really up to us To be those educators And to be a little bit more courageous When we're dealing with clients I agree with that That's how it should be done Who's on the team Crafting the Chinese design policy And one of the things That he wants to have The design association here in China do And also the design association globally do Is to not accept Spec work So make sure that they don't say Hey, could you show us this and that And then you just give them something And then maybe you get some royalty Maybe you don't But there's also part of it where We can start to get organized As creatives And it's not a Chinese phenomena It is, there was just a list I think it was on The Wall Street Journal Where it became official That architect and designers are some Of the lowest paid workers In the US In Denmark I can say The average salary of a designer Is a third of the Average salary for any dain So this is a general Problem that people think that It's just creative stuff Just show me some stuff Imagine if you asked your lawyer Hey, just draft me a contract I'll see if I like it or not They would never accept that And they're also organized in a way So they don't do that So for those of you who are interested This is called the no spec movement And as much as I believe in it I'll get asked to pitch A big brand and maybe Five or six agencies that will do it And I'll say sorry we don't do spec work And I know three of the other ones being asked Are going to do it and they're some of the Biggest agencies in the world And they've got hundreds of designers They'll say yeah whatever and they'll throw Someone at it for a few days And they're going to show the work And we then can't compete Our industry is never going to get together To unionize or whatever it is In that instance I'd like to summarize a couple of things I think you can feel as well as I can Feel there's a tension here A creative tension Between systems, business Or organizations, governments That are wanting to have creative Economies or creative organizations And creatives who want to be Creative but feel like systems Are pressing on them And one of the interesting Ways of transcending that Conflict might May well be Having more people Who honor and respect creative Skills All of this at one point In our lives were four years old A long long time ago If we think back to when we were Four doesn't matter what culture Or country we came from We asked lots of questions We were good at making observations And we did this stuff We were creatives, all of us here And I suspect as we go forward Be it within our organizations Business, government Or the social sector One of the things we can do For the generation 10 Or 20 years from now Is imagine a world Where just maybe Adults like you and me If we were to Change our schools a little bit Behave a little bit differently In our families Have our approaches to how we Let kids grow up and raise them To where they actually had a Little more honor and respect And maybe even a little more creativity On average by the time they get Through school systems It just may be that in 10 or 20 years When the World Economic Forum Holds another one of these sessions About fueling the creative economy If we did that together And got the average up a little bit Of the average manager Being just a touch more creative That these conversations May not be as critical then Meanwhile We have work to do I think it's been a productive conversation Thank you all for your ideas today And insights, thank you For your attendance questions And input as well And now the burden's on us To go out of this room and do something Hopefully we'll do it even better Than when we walked in today. Thank you Thank you