Last Spring/Summer, The National Centre for Creativity, in association with Kilkenny County Enterprise Board held a series of pilot workshops for a group of owner/managers. See the post here for more information on how that went.

Following the positive response to these workshops, we are now delighted to announce the launch of a new Business Innovation Network which will run for 12 months, starting in early 2008. This programme will form the basis of a lifelong network of entrepreneurs who support and help each other come up with brilliant solutions and ideas for developing their businesses.

This is a unique opportunity that is being offered to just 20 businesses.

Membership will include monthly network meetings, one-to-one creativity coaching consultations and ‘on-site’ workshops. These workshops will enable your business partners and employees develop an innovative approach within your business.

To learn more about how this programme can make a difference to your business please contact me on (086) 2300702 or email keith@creativity.ie.

keith

Design Week 2007 is kicking off tonight with the official launch of the GDBA Practice Directory and a viewing of the movie: TYPECAST (a must for film buffs and design anoraks)

Free cocktails on arrival kindly sponsored by Bombay Saphire.

Hope to see you from 7pm tonight at the Kilkenny Design Centre (opposite the castle) for a few drinks, nibbles, a great book and a great movie! (oh and Design Week tee-shirts too for all who attend!)

See you there - more information at www.semibold.ie

All events are free and all are welcome to attend

keith

Inspired by an email from Justin Knecht regarding some films on design he is showing around the country during Design Week (5th to 11th November) we contacted IT Carlow and Semibold and helped to organise a number of events in Kilkenny and Carlow.

Why would the National Centre for Creativity do this? Because of the close links between the structured creative thinking techniques that we use with businesses and the process of design which can involve both analytical and creative thinking in order to come up with design solutions. For information on all events go to www.semibold.ie

Kilkenny event - The Business of Design

Where: The Maltings, Tilbury Place, James Street, Kilkenny
When: Tuesday, 6th November, 6pm-7.30pm
Price: Free
Sponsor: National Centre for Creativity

The event will explore how small to medium businesses can make use of design in their businesses and what impact that might have for them. There are 3 speakers and then a Q&A.

Mary Whelan of The Creative Thinking Network will outline some of the key benefits of using Creative Thinking techniques for anyone in business who has to develop new designs or innovate within their business.

She will outline how each individual has a dominant thinking style and how this knowledge can be used, in combination with creative thinking techniques, so that people working to design and innovate can solve challenges more easily.

Peter Curran of IT Carlow will speak on experience in the application of design in SME’s. He has worked on all the Design staff and student interactions with business over the last number of years and his specialism is in design management. He will talk about a couple of small business casestudies showing the successful outcomes of design projects.

Aonghus O’hEocha, Managing Director and Designer in Chief at O’heocha, (whose work featured in Men in Black 2!) will speak on the challenges and opportunities of a business pitched at the high end of the market and specifically the management of outsourcing and creating of a design focused brand. Aonghus has over 10 years experience as a designer and group product research manager at BMW and Land Rover. The best engineering philosophies and principles are carried over into O’heocha products.

Based in Connemara in the West of Ireland, O’heocha has established a reputation for combining cutting edge design with superior audio performance throughout its extensive product range. The seamless synergy of aesthetic beauty and crystal clear sound transcends all products, from the eye-catching D2 Saturn, through to the high quality Celestial ceiling speakers. The new O-Link Wireless Range take these qualities to a new level, where the classic O’hEocha aesthestics are combined with the most compact, high definition audio technology on the market, this time wireless.

keith

We are half way though the second day of the 10th European Conference on Creativity and Innovation and there has been one outstanding talk so far. Jorgen Knudstorp is the CEO of Lego and his talk was a combination of modesty and great insights into the Lego story of creativity and innovation. Here are some extracts:

• Innovation is about increasing prices and margins - and therefore ensuring the survival of a business. Innovation that does not contribute to that goal is not relevant.
• Lego have taken the traditional approach to innovation which is about change and works in with this the idea of continuity. For them the acknowledgment of continuity - the pattern of children’s play has not fundamentally changed in the last 50 years - is an important part of their innovation of the toys and tools that the children use in pursuit of those patterns. (the core Lego brick is 50 years in existence in January 200
• His definition of leadership - the ability to change an organisation in response to changes in the external environment.
• A learning by Jorgen from the CEO of Toyota - it takes 15 years for Toyota to bring a new manufacturing facility up to the standards of the rest of the group. For Jorgen and Lego this has massive expectation limitation implications as they move to outsource elements of their manufacturing process.
• Over 10 years to 2010 Lego will go from 10,000 employees to 3,000. This is the result of a process which is stripping them back to their core competencies. Therefore the theme parks are now only 30% owned by Lego and are not managed or run by them.
• This process is part of moving from being a manufacturer of physical product to being a digital brand with strong licensing income. One of the implications of this is a reduced requirement for cash to finance the operation - thus making the business more profitable.
• His thoughts on strategic focus versus execution are informed by an observation. Through contact with many businesses in his quest to outsource and partner he reckons that the majority of businesses execute badly. Therefore in most sectors a poor strategy that is well executed will probably ensure that the business is towards the top of its sector!
• One of his Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) is measuring how many of their customers would (unprompted) recommend the product to a friend. He said that this is running at 75%.
• In recent years Lego have strongly focused on using the internet to harness user feedback and to date there are 150,000 Lego model sets that have been designed by users. He believes that this interactions is a core part of Lego’s future yet he also commented that he has a constant battle with the legal eagles who advise Lego. For them this interaction breaches a multiplicity of Lego’s IP (intellectual property) and they want to control this.
• He sees the emergence of the internet as a digital platform is key for Lego (acknowledging that they missed out on the first wave of it) and he made references to a number of projects which they are engaged in which will position them as a digital brand.
• He also said that Lego regularly have visitors from other businesses and universities who ask him what the keys to success in this digital platform are and he has to say “I have no idea - can you tell me!”. This is an emerging space and no-one knows.

keith

Myself and Sean are lucky enough to be going to this conference which happens in Copenhagen from Sunday 14th to Wednesday 17th October - more information from their site linked here.

They have a great schedule of events and an approach which mixes talks with the practical use of structured creative thinking techniques - practitioners attending the conference are invited to run workshops while they are there and share their experience.

For us it is an opportunity to meet up with organisations who are more established and advanced in what they are doing and learn from how they have developed.

If you are going to be there please let us know

keith

Following on from the previous post on Design Week there is another event coming to Kilkenny that also explores cross-over areas. PodCamp Ireland (site linked here) is a free gathering of podcasting and videocasting passionates  who are spending  the day exploring  these new media uses and learning from each other.

The cross over? A strong presence at the gathering of people from the creativity sector - music, art and poetry.  All of whom use a multiplicity of media to communicate their particular blend of creative output so the extension into the digital world is of strong interest to them.

See you there if you are coming - I am looking forward to sitting back and listening to speakers and discussions on an area that I know little about. And to watching the cross over lead to new thoughts and ideas in the same way as structured creative thinking techniques do - by stimulating little/under used areas of your brain

keith

Thanks to Justin Knecht from the Centre for Design Innovation in Sligo for contacting us to work with him on a side project for Design Week in November 2007.

That initial contact has lead to the National Centre for Creativity working with Carlow IT and Semi-Bold (a local network of Designers) to put on events in both Carlow and Kilkenny during that week. Details not yet firmed up - however there is likely to be an evening of speakers here in Kilkenny on Tuesday  6th November around the broad topic of Design for Business. With a good helping of structured creative/whole brain thinking thrown in :-). And Carlow will possibly host 2 evenings - one with speakers and another with a couple of design films being shown - Justin’s project.

I will post more here as we get clearer. It is great to be able to use events like this to explore the cross over between design and creativity.

keith

We have an Advisory Group working with us to help us with our direction and strategy and for our next session we are going to shift to a Dublin location and use one of the Irish consultants who works in the area of structured creative thinking to run a half-day session with us. It will have a clear focus (helping us to define a gathering which we want to hold in Kilkenny in Autumn of 200 and allow the group to watch a number of those structured techniques being used. On and by them

The group currently consists of

1. Fergus Cronin (KIDCo). Fergus is current Chairman of KIDCo - the Kilkenny Industrial Development Company, which was set-up in 1998 by local authority, community and business interests in Kilkenny for the purpose of promoting local community economic development projects. Among his many other interests, Fergus is also the current Chair of Kilkenny Arts Festival.

2. Declan Rice (BNS LEADER - www.bnsrd.com). Declan has been a strong supporter of the concept of the nc4c since the beginning and he was instrumental in encouraging us to make application for seed funding to ‘fit-out’ the Maltings annexe building.

3. Jim Dunne (Enterprise IG - www.enterpriseig.ie). Jim is co-founder and managing partner of Enterprise IG, Dublin. He is involved in advising clients on managing corporate and brand reputation, which involves managing effective and aligned communications across all media from print to on screen and into physical spaces. Jim was previously Manager of the Kilkenny Design Consultancy, a Government body established to promote design in industry. He has written about and delivered position papers on design for national competitive advantage and the branding of Ireland for Tourism and Foreign Direct Investment. Jim has also chaired or participated in many industry initiatives to develop and promote design in Ireland.

4. Michael Dee (Enterprise Ireland - www.enterprise-ireland.com). Michael is a regional executive with Enterprise Ireland (EI) based in Waterford. He has an extensive background in stimulating the development of local community based development initiatives. Among his many interests, he regularly delivers workshops and seminars on stimulating ideas and developing creativity;

5. John Purcell (KCLR96FM - www.kclr96fm.com). John is a native of Kilkenny. After a period with leading Dublin public relations company Gilmore Communications, he joined Radio Kilkenny as General Manager in 1993. While at Radio Kilkenny he was actively involved in radio industry initiatives and served as a founding Director of Independent Network News (INN). He is currently Director of NewsTalk 106, and is a board member of Beat 102 -103. John is also Chairman of CK Broadcasting and Chief Executive of KCLR 96FM, the new radio service for Kilkenny and Carlow

6. Sean McKeown (Kilkenny CEB - kilkennyceb.wordpress.com) who is the CEO of Kilkenny CEB and one of the core champions of the Centre.

The lack of females around the table is something we are acutely aware of and it will be addressed very soon so that the gender inbalance gets remedied somewhat.

As we come closer to the next Advisory Board session I will post more on the approach and facilitator we will be working with. In the meantime we are in the early stages of preparing for the next round of Interreg calls.

keith

Way before the various methods that you can use to kick your brain into thinking creatively there is something far more basic that needs to happen - you need to do stuff. Otherwise nothing at all happens - creative or not.

So I find myself in the embarrassing position of not having posted anything here for two months - and of being overtaken in the blogging stakes on the Creativity Centre by Sean McKeown. It is not a competition but still

I am going to restart my posting here with a link sent to me by Justin Knecht from the Centre for Design Innovation in Sligo. The link is here: www.cecilvortex.com/swath/conversations_about_creativity  and it is a great exploration of how people who work in creative industries and sectors operate, think and spend their time. For those of us in more traditional work patterns those observations can help us adjust our approach a little and kick in a little creativity for us as well.

keith

The areas of creativity, innovation and design are strongly interconnected and so this event might be of interest to you.

Semibold (link to their website here) is a new grouping of designers in the South East and Midlands and they are combining their launch with a talk by Adam de Eyto on pragmatic strategies that designers might employ to create more sustainable products and also product service systems.

Thursday 14th June, 17.00, A100 Lecture Theatre in IT Carlow.

For more information on the talk click here.

keith