I am off to Cass Business School in the City on Friday night for a 'big ideas' thinking session. [@Dougald you must come along...]
Using the we20 forma t, the group will be trying to
talk about the issues and come up with some potential answers. Founders of the we20 project will be on hand to introduce the event and generally help out.
Teams can be made up of friends and/or be representative of a specific company or brand. All ideas can then be put forward to the we20 website, which has a direct link with decision makers at the G20 summit in London.
So, enough of that moaning into the early hours at your Soho members' club about how our world leaders don’t have a clue. Now’s your chance to actually tell them! As an added bonus, the name of your company or product may well be seen by millions of people.
This theme has been buzzing around for a while – I met up with Steven Waddington recently and he's just put a great blog post about 'thinking positive' in the recession . Actually I really like the title "Bollocks to Denial and Despair!"
And so would you all help me think up some great ideas that will help people in the creative industries through these difficult times?
My list starts with
- New business models – take products to market on a risk and reward basis (like bike sharing, The Anomaly business model and Lauren Luke )
- Low cost marketing ideas – Tim Reid has a list
- Social media tools that can support your existing marketing strategy and tactics
- Creating opportunities for new business to happen – there will be loads of new ones developing as time goes on
- I still think there's a role for CRM – the tools are cheap and freely available and all it takes is some strong thinking about your differentiation by need to really stand out
- And Opensource for Agencies…. a topic close to my heart… DM me if you want to know more about how to re-use and publish your failed pitch ideas and see the benefits flowing back to your agency.
- Umair Haque's Manifesto for Smart Growth – I particularly like point 2 "Connections not transactions" which echo the motivation behind Amplfied 09 the network of networks.
- The Sirolli Institute has a economic development methodology that I've long admired since my days with the Aga Khan Rural Support Project in Gilgit – their bottom-up development method (enterprise facilitation) involves working with people who want to start a business and mentoring them through the process on a totally confidential basis. Rochdale Council in the UK i s using it right now and I think it's a great way for an economy to kick-start itself.
Now over to yo'all [gotta stop that Texas thang goin' on in my mind!]
[later... keep thinking up new ones - just added 6 and 7.... and later again number 8.]
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