Post industrial age movers and shakers

It was 2005 and I was packing my bags to make my first trip to Canada (Toronto). I was heading to a conference entitled Creativs Places + Spaces : Risk Revolution (organized by Toronto Artscape).  I had found out about it through networking, researching and asking tons of questions. It turned out to be one of the most forward thinking and creative conferences I had ever been to! It was through a newsletter distributed by this organization that I found out about the book Rise of the Creative Class by Richard Florida.  It was this book that pushed me to launch my company and this blog. I then began trying to find and read anything and everything about the concepts of the creative class, the creative economy and creatives.

Below is a post from my good friend and fellow creative Neil Takemoto (see my links on the brink: Cooltown Studios) who summarizes these ideas below.

Who are the creatives?

Many of you in the know have heard about the Creative Class, the Cultural Creatives, and now, the Renaissance Generation. What is the difference between these groups, and if there is, how are they interrelated.  

Cultural Creatives - 50 million in the U.S., aka the New Progressives, introduced by author Paul Ray in his book, The Cultural Creatives: How 50 Million People Are Changing the World. These are the people who care, and specifically care about the bigger picture, from sustainability to authenticity to humanity.

Creative Class - 38 million in the U.S. representing the creative industry workforce in science, engineering, architecture, design, education, arts, music and entertainment. Based on research by Richard Florida, author of Rise of the Creative Class and Flight of the Creative Class, their presence is directly tied to economic prosperity.

Renaissance Generation (RenGen) - Take the Cultural Creatives and the Creative Class and apply them to a defined movement and time period rather than a demographic or psychographic group, the result of which is literally a second renaissance. There will always be a creative class and cultural creatives, but it is only here at the beginning of the 21st Century, a time of unprecedented need and opportunity, will we have a RenGen.                                            ---------------------------

Creatives aren't confined to any age group or demographic. They aren't confined to Babyboomers, or Gen X-ers, or just Millenials.  They consist of those whose personal and professional outlook in life (thinking about new transformative concepts, being creative, living authentically) converge and can often be one in the same. It's these individuals who are now generating unique ideas, creating new business models, and producing change that will help individuals, organizations and businesses navigate and manage the upheavals we are now experiencing. 

Are you a mover and shaker?  Are you a creative?  If not you may want want to consider this:

The first rule of business is the first rule of life - adapt or die.

        Photo courtesy of festivalcupside.com

Industrial age "bubble"

As we take a look at today's business climate it is only apparent that the market is in a state of serious flux. My previous post discussed how one corner of the world (the music industry) is under reconstruction and about how business is no longer "usual".

The world of print media is also being forced to look at the way it does business because of bloggers, social media and online news. Additionally, how we receive our entertainment is being transformed by the likes of YouTube, Hulu, and Vimeo to name just a small handful of examples.

Environmental impact is now a real consideration as new products and services such as the Ford Fusion, Nuride, and the Ecomangination initiative looks to give companies serious competitive advantage in the marketplace.

So why all this change?

The industrial age bubble.

Let me explain.

In the article “The Next Industrial Imperative” published in strategy+business (issue 51, Summer 2008) written by Peter Senge, Bryan Smith & Nina Kruschwitz (reprint number 08205) they state that in financial terms a bubble is a phenomenon in which the prices of assets (i.e. shares of stock, real estate holdings, or other forms of capital) outpace the asset's fundamental value. Point in case - the current housing market collapse. People were buying houses for more money than what the houses were actually worth - the bubble popped and the housing market crashed. Same issue with the dot-com bubble of the late '90s. VC's, investors, and entrepreneurs were putting more money into internet businesses than what the businesses were actually worth. The bubble popped and many dot-com businesses went down the tubes.

This is what is happening now with the industrial age economy. The money and resources we are putting into how this system operates is outpacing the value we are actually getting in return. The housing and dot-com bubble each lasted a number of years, but the industrial age bubble has gone on for about 200 years. So as we look at the marketplace now, the old system is crashing - the industrial age bubble is now bursting. Traditional advertising strategies no longer work like they use to. Traditional business models are no longer yielding the benefits they once did. New mediums are impacting the old and changing the market rules and how products, services and people engage with each other.

The old ways simply won't cut it anymore.

The ability to have a unique understanding of emerging trends, creativity in developing leading edge strategies and innovative ways of connecting the "new" dots will determine your relevance in today's marketplace.

So remember when you were a kid and you use to looove blowing bubbles? Well its that time for some new soap and water. . .

. . . and time to see what kind of new bubbles we can make.

Nine Inch Nails Theory of Entrepreneurship

 In April of last year one of my posts, entitled Sex, Drugs and Rock & (what's next?), discussed the way the internet was changing the rules of the game between the record labels, artists and the marketplace.

So when I came across the article below by Nathaniel Whittemore on Change.org, I had to post it. Love the way he connected the dots. Enjoy!

The Nine Inch Nails Theory of Entrepreneurship

by Nathaniel Whittemore

Mashable has a great post today about how Nine Inch Nails continues to be on the cutting edge in the way it treats its fans in the new digital area. For those of you unfamiliar with the industrial rockers, Nine Inch Nails is one of the groups that in the last few years has experimented with alternative music pricing schemes.

In March, they skipped the major labels and self-released a 36-track instrumental album called "Ghosts I-IV" for free under a Creative Commons license. In addition to file sharing networks like BitTorrent, the MP3 album was also available for $5 on Amazon. Last week, Amazon announced that despite the fact that it was available for free elsewhere, Ghosts I-IV was their top-selling MP3 album of the year. And just yesterday, NIN frontman Trent Reznor announced on their official blog that some brigands had managed to capture more than 400 GB of illegal HD footage from the most recent NIN tour. Instead of threatening legal action, he posted a link to the site where fans could download it.

Reznor's conversion to a totally different model of music business was the product of his utter revulsion with the way the industry treated fans. Last year, he wrote on his blog:

As the climate grows more and more desperate for record labels, their answer to their mostly self-inflicted wounds seems to be to screw the consumer over even more. [An example] that quickly come[s] to mind:

* The ABSURD retail pricing of Year Zero (a NIN album) in Australia. Shame on you, UMG. Year Zero is selling for $34.99 Australian dollars ($29.10 US). No wonder people steal music. Avril Lavigne's record in the same store was $21.99 ($18.21 US). By the way, when I asked a label rep about this his response was: "It's because we know you have a real core audience that will pay whatever it costs when you put something out - you know, true fans. It's the pop stuff we have to discount to get people to buy."

So... I guess as a reward for being a "true fan" you get ripped off.

I think this warrants the coining of the "Nine Inch Nails Theory of Entrepreneurship":

1.  Love your clients/customers/stakeholders - The first and most important lesson in the NIN Theory of Entrepreneurship is to love your clients, customers, or stakeholders. For NIN, this love means treating their most devoted fans with respect, trust and transparency when it comes to pricing. For other types of enterprise, this respect, trust and transparency will mean different things, but will be essential everywhere.

2.  Find business models that accurately captures the value you're trying to create that people respond to with joy - The value an organization or a business creates is not static. In the music world, the way value is priced (the cost of music) has stayed largely static, despite the costs involved in reproduction and distribution dropping to almost nothing. This has (clearly) produced a back lash. What NIN and others are experimenting with is new ways to capture value that feel legitimate. Fans are still happy to pay for concerts, live DVDs, and even the convenience of smartly-priced digital audio files. They don't like antagonism and exploitation.

3.  Turn possible threats to opportunities to amplify brand love - Brands matter. People like doing things, buying things, and being a part of things that make them feel good and that make them feel connected. The NIN brand has become even more attractive to fans because of the way that Reznor treats them. The high quality live footage could be percieved as a financial threat to NIN (in that it has the potential to undercut sales of the next live DVD), but instead, Reznor's playful link to the footage and suggestion that a talented fan edit it just increases the pleasant emotional aftertaste of your NIN experience. He gets it, and I'll betcha the long-term financial payoff is significant.

So because we love NIN and better entrepreneurship, let's all enjoy a video of a live rehearsal of the song 1,000,000 from NIN's recent "The Slip."

Questions, not answers, is what you want

"There is more power in the words of a well positioned question than in the statement of a clearly defined answer"                                                                                                                                   - anonymous

There is no shortage of books, magazine articles, blogs, or self help guides stating that the answers you seek, they have. The situation now becomes that when you state a defined position you have nowhere to go from there. No room to grow. No new information to attain. No fresh ideas to apply. The reason being because you have an answer.

The reality with this, though, is just like fingerprints no two people, problems, scenarios or circumstances are the same. Every predicament is situational. One set of answers is often not transferable to another set of issues. There may be some similarities but there is a high probability that a new set of strategies will be necessary to remedy the new set of challenges.

This is especially true in our post-industrial age business climate - where we have seen similar circumstances in the past but not exactly the same as what we are facing today.

So in order to be efficient you have to understand the art and science of question asking.

Whether you are a trainer, facilitator, CEO, or entrepreneur - knowing how to ask excellent questions allows those you are engaging, to grow - on their own terms. You don't have to have all the answers, but if you ask a question that forces your audience to think. . . you are now in the ideal situation.

As an excellent question asker you position yourself as someone who knows the landscape and wants others to see and know the current realities for themselves. Telling people or giving them examples of "the answer" is a strategy that might work in the short term. Asking them questions and facilitating a process that helps them see things for themselves is innovation in the making - and as the Chinese proverb goes "tell me and I'll forget; show me and I may remember; involve me and I'll understand."  When those you are engaging understand, it is because you're asking them questions - involving them in the process. . . now you're moving to the next level.

This is extremely valuable for today's business landscape where the unknown is the order of the day. Asking the incorrect question from the beginning could put you on the path to wrong answers. Wrong questions leading to wrong answers could mean you're heading south when the market is heading west. This means doubling back which then becomes lost time, money and resources and in this economic climate NOBODY can afford that.

Think about profound, valuable, and necessary questions to ask friends, colleagues, co-workers or even yourself. It could prove more valuable than any answer you were ardently looking for.

Whooaaa. . .

At the end of the day I would imagine that anyone or any business pretty much wants a brand that 1. connects with people 2. says you are unique and 3. clearly demonstrates you as innovative.

In my last few posts I talked about a few ideas that can help you get there:

• Asking questions

• Sharing your stories

• Tapping into your creativity

Well nothing exemplifies these three more than this. . .

wingsuit base jumping from Ali on Vimeo.