Build it and they will (probably) not come: Matching Supply with Demand through Creative Entrepreneurship

SIMON CRONSHAW – CO-FOUNDER, REMIXsimon.cronshaw@remixsummits.com

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A bit of background on me first of all.

6 years ago, I co-founded CultureLabel.com – my own entrepreneurial journey in the culture space.

It’s a venture capital funded ecommerce marketplace bringing together all the national UK institutions to sell art and artist-designed gifts, homeware and accessories from their gift shops.

The central theme of my talk is responding to consumer trends, and back then, we built CL out of multiple trends we were seeing: desire for unique and unusual gifts, growing online art market, increased number of artist collaborations in product.

Rather than go for usual culture audience, we wanted people to think of museums and galleries when they were looking for birthday or Christmas gifts – very mainstream consumer channels; our customers may never have entered a cultural institution; often their first encounter with insititutions was whilst looking for cool product or artwork.

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We sold and exited CL last Oct, and now focussing on Remix, global summits we’ve hosted for last 3 years, bringing together the best brains across culture, tech & entrepreneurship. It’s partnered with Google, Bloomberg, The Guardian, Vice and Time Out among others.

Here’s a 2 minute video to introduce who we are and what we do:

www.remixsummits.com

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Today three parts to my talk:

1. Making consumers the starting point – what do they want in their everyday lives, and where does culture fit in?

2. Understanding and, most importantly, contextualising the assets we have as cultural institutions – understanding where we fit within wider consumer culture

3. Move on to apply these approaches to Europeana and how it engages the creative industries, and we explore three recommendations in detail

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The creative industries understand/thrive on consumer trends

I now want to Illustrate this with a quick trip through several trends currently impacting our space in the creative and cultural industries

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Witnessing the rise of demand for the alternative, the authentic. Plus a consumer desire to discover and to contemplate.

In terms of discovery, we’re seeing a consumer reaction to prediction and simply presenting people with suggestions based on past behaviours – a need to create room for serendipitous discovery and the element of chance encounters.

E.g. Spotify Serendipity is an artist in residence program starting with Brooklyn artist Kyle McDonald, showing when two people around the world are playing the same song at exactly the same time, giving you a glimpse of what others are playing.

How do we create the spaces and user journeys for people to discover and then to contemplate? Often the museum experience is wandering past hundreds of artworks in an overcrowded space, or swiping through thousands of artworks on an ipad.

Yet the increasing popularity of mindfulness and contemplation provides an opportunity to respond – e.g. 99 days encouraging a movement to spend time away from Facebook, Book of Life from School of Life – ongoing online project to collect the best ideas around emotional life in one evolving digital book; itself building on hugely popular School of Life, which packages philosophy for the mainstream through Sunday Sermons and Classes on love, self and work.

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It’s infiltrating tech and creativity – e.g. The Path NYC, launched by Dina Kaplan – one of many examples of meditation studios emerging as a hub for tech and fashion entrepreneurs to relax and network

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So if quality, contemplative content is the ‘what’; the ‘Who’ has evolved to be about trust relationships with organisations and brands: who you trust to take you on a journey into new worlds

Touchpress: Created a number of well-know Apps advertised by Apple to showcase the iPad including Wonders of the Solar System, Elements and Bjork’s album App

Raised £2 million investment for more projects on the back of this. Many of these have a big focus on cultural content

Produced a series of profitable culture Apps including The Wasteland (Faber & Faber), War Horse (National Theatre Michael Morpurgo), Shakespeare’s Sonnets, The Orchestra, Beethoven’s 9th Symphony

Quality is key.

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Moving on from the ‘what’ and the ‘who’, to the “how”. One route is throughMulti-channel networks – aggregators of niche channels, able to promote new online destinations and a community of interest that connects more audiences with great content that is already online but hard to find.

Rightster spoke at Remix London last year – selected to establish first MCN for the arts with £1.8m Arts Council grant, help overcome fragmentation of arts on YouTube. Launching later this year.

Working on licenced, ad-funded, direct to consumer or paid placement basis. Their network now stands at over 1,950 Content Owners and over 7,500 Publishers. The Group employs 256 staff in 11 offices across 10 countries.

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Within this multi-channel world, who are the organic, bedroom, YouTube stars for culture, beyond the megabrand channels like Tate and V&A?

Plenty of platforms looking to discover and promote fresh curatorial talent:

Guvera – coming over from Australia, anyone can be a radio host – allowing for live streaming and interactivity with audiences.

Likewise Soundcloud and Audioboom in podcast space - tech/platform and even audiences there – challenge is who can curate and inspire a following?

Closer to home, Retronaut has shown it can be done with collections. Raiding image archives to find hidden gems. Half a million followers across Facebook and Twitter; exclusive deal with Mashable reaching millions of users each month; book deal with national geographic – all built out of quality curation.

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Next, we’re seeing the emergence of platforms and cultural experiences fully at ease with their digital birthplace. Not replace or even replicate the live experience, but offering a truly innovative experience that only digital can offer.

Google Cultural Institute – global partner of Remix – So far Art Project (discover art collections from around world in incredible high res detail, view exhibitions and take virtual tours); Historic Moments (Online exhibitions) and World Wonders (Modern and ancient world heritage sites online using Street View)

Google Open Gallery – tools for the sector – to create exhibits, embed images, exhibits and indoor Street view on sites; Powerful zoom

Digital Theatre – VC backed by Ingenious showing consumer appetite can mean big business. Ex-BBC with unique approach to capturing live theatre content.

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Taking this theme further, looking at several great projects that use the very interactivity and multi-media base of digital content to offer multi-layered online-only exhibitions. Results in powerful storytelling and documentaries.

Some great classic examples on screen:

This Land – documents the Canadian Army’s patrol of the Artic in 2007, the most extensive patrol since 1947 – covering more than 2000km

Healing Histories – understanding the rich cultural history of Central City in New Orleans to help rebuild from the devastation of Hurricane Katrina

One in 8 Million – telling the story of New York’s residents through the eyes of 54 residents

Add to this multi-channel, telling stories across platforms with content native to the platform (for example photo essays on Pinterest or Snapchat, or long form on Medium), and the stories start to grow digital wings of their own.

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Gaming is still largely untapped within cultural insitutions.

One example is Minecraft – heard at Remix London from Adam Clarke, Founder of the Common People, who gave one of most captivating talks on Minecraft as an obsessive user and one that builds for museums.

One of Adam’s projects was Tate Worlds – reimagining within Minecraft using builders from all over world. Rather than just recreating, using imagination to explore artworks – e.g. by walking into an artwork like Pool of London and exploring and experiencing it whilst having great fun.

Order of motivations is critical: entertainment designed to draw people in, who may then look at source material, then maybe do this stuff for themselves

Another e.g. Visible Human Project – medical scans used to create Minecraft structures; can fly through human body – great for engaging with medical data; made into survival game

Minecraft is an unintimidating way of making your own games, for people who want to make things, can do anything you want and with friends, place to be for age 3 to old age. Not just kid’s game – make very sophisticated stuff collaboratively together

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Add Occulus Rift, Google Cardboard or Hololens to this in the future and this is going to be an interesting space to watch with AR and VR.

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Here’s a typical set of activities a cultural institution delivers

As we explore business models, partnerships and new entrants, one of the key questions raised is which elements of the value chain are best served by institution? Which by others?

Many industries have been disrupted by outsiders – we’re already seeing it on fringes of culture with rise of distribution channels and aggregators, and I’m willing to bet this will be the most substantial disruption over next 10 years

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We’re already seeing change coming from 4 corners:

Culture – innovators and pioneers within institutions

Creative entrepreneurs – outsiders, fully at ease using creative and cultural assets to deliver their entrepreneurial visions

Remixers – see great stuff in another industry and apply to the culture sector, e.g. models from media, publishing, events

Disrupters – affect our world despite not necessarily realising, e.g. Amazon created world’s largest public library when it allowed free sharing between Kindle devices in the US. This impacts our core business models as it impacts our users and their expectations.

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Already seeing many entrants and new models in the social space, and witnessing the growth and popularity of brands with triple bottom line.

Some early adopters of brands in cultural space, but will grow as more become aware of potential.

Many mainstream corporations already see the potential – witness the theatricalisation of retail, emotional marketing, growth of live experience, rooting in history and authenticity. Will see more speed and depth as this continues.

The point is that we cannot take for granted that it will always be traditional institutions providing cultural leadership and experiences.

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So that’s some brief considerations where the outside world directly affects what we do, and the world within which creative entrepreneurs exist and thrive.

I now want to briefly move on to consider our own assets as cultural institutions –how best to understand what we have and contextualise them within the consumer trends around us.

Why is this important? To deliver public value: attracting new audiences and new revenues.

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The first challenge is to consider the whole user journey, across physical and digital, pre, during and post visit, and including cultural and commercial opportunities in a smart, integrated way.

Look at the Sistine chapel onscreen – can you still get a great experience with this intensity of visitors?

Perhaps the physical visit should be more expensive, a once in a lifetime opportunity on a par with £500 to visit the mountain gorillas of Rwanda, with an exceptionally high quality virtual reality experience the less expensive norm for the majority of visitors?

Or, as another example, would you be willing to pay more just to see one painting, rather than the whole gallery, if it included detailed curator-led talk on that work and its significance? How about if that took place digitally?

I’m not saying these are the answers, but these are definitely the questions at the heart of cultural business modelling.

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Another consideration is to view your assets within the context of the wider world.

As part of our direct client work (www.remixsummits.com/agency) we worked with the Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh, where one of our recommendations was to position their work within the context of the massive consumer trend in escaping to the Scottish highlands to escape daily life.

What if the gardens became the gateway and stopping point for those going off to the highlands, who often travel through Edinburgh. What skills, tools and experiences could the gardens offer for those looking to get the most out of their encounters with nature?

Rather than looking inward to the Botanic Garden’s collections, we encouraged them to look outward to sources of demand, and apply their knowledge, skills and collections to create a truly unique offer. Taking their assets to where the demand was, and packaging and contextualising it effectively.

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This example sums up our approach to cultural entrepreneurship:

Understand your assets, purpose, who you are and what makes you special

Understand what the world wants in the form of trends

At the intersection find opportunities for new audiences and therefore new revenues

And once you have a good idea, make it happen. Going from an idea to reality was the theme of our first book back in 2008…

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…Intelligent Naivety, where we set out 56 strategies entrepreneurs use to make ideas happen.

We accept that everyone has thousands of ideas. The value comes in enacting those ideas, but fortunately we can learn from the best entrepreneurs of the last few decades, and apply their methods to our own situations.

You can download a free copy of the book from www.remixsummits.com/books

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Now finally, I’d like to turn our attention to what this all means for the policy recommendations and Europeana’s engagement with the creative industries. I want to look at three considerations:

How we reach the creative industries, Why we reach out to the creative industries, and how we inspire true commitment from the creative industries

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The first consideration is how and where in Europeana projects the creative industries are invited to get involved.

I’m no expert in Commission processes, but have listed the five entry points on the screen from what I’ve pieced together over the last 12 months.

Responses to calls, demonstrators and pilots seem to be pre-project funding, at the time when key priorities are outlined and an open call is issued for responses.This is the moment where creative entrepreneurs could have the most impact; whilst projects are in the ideation stage; before project scopes are fixed and options become more limited. How can we instil lateral thinking and creative approaches at this very first stage? Inspire those with big ideas in the creative industries to respond to Commission calls?

From talking to people, and from my own experience, these calls, and opportunities to be demonstrators and pilots are often virtually invisible to the creative industries: only those actively seeking EU funding would know it exists, or those directly approached as a result of prior involvement. The many opportunities to bring in fresh talent and ideas are not reaching the eyes and ears of those well placed to respond.

Then, once we’ve got interest, remove any barriers and make the application process as frictionless as possible. Admittedly a very big ask considering the current

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complexity of the application process.

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There are then two stages later in the projects, entries – for example open calls to creative industries such as within Europeana Creative, or hack events such as within Europeana Space – plus the creative industries may be seen as end users for a range of apps, APIs and other deliverables and outcomes.

One issue is that these opportunities for engaging with the creative industries tend to come after too much of the project has already been decided. It removes much of the opportunity for creative divergence and innovation.

This severely narrows the scope of people willing and able to respond to the opportunity presented. It may be too far removed from their consumer-driven business interests.

It’s also often hand in hand with a lack of new funding at this stage: usually it is incubation, skills or mentoring on offer. Although these have huge value within the process, does this reduce the attractiveness of the offer, limiting applicants and the opportunity for disruptive innovation?

So invisibility of opportunities, and a question of relevance. Awareness and relevance are the two key issues we shall return to.

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Secondly, let’s look beyond the mechanics of how to involve creative entrepreneurs, and consider the question of relevance.

Having a clear purpose means a clear sense of your role and overriding mission. It inspires people. It inspires community. It inspires action. It inspires loyalty and engagement. From individuals and from creative industries.

This is tough to hear, and I’m saying this as a critical friend, but the reality is that I would argue very strongly that the purpose and role of Europeana needs translating from its current policy-speak into a vision that truly inspires hearts and minds.

Yes, it has 30-odd million objects in its database. A good achievement. But why? For what ends?

I know that the Google Cultural Institute aims to host the world’s cultural treasures. They create easy tools for galleries and museums to freely power their digital outreach. Artsy wants to make the world’s art available to anyone with an internet connection. It’s Art Genome is creating a recommendations engine for institutions and art lovers. The Wikimedia Foundation wants every human to freely share in the sum of all human knowledge and comes top of almost all Google searches.

But what does Europeana stand for? Why can’t I hear loud and clear the purpose

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that inspires each of you to get out of bed every morning?

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That purpose can’t be in a vacuum. Given that direct competitors exist, some of them in the list I’ve just given, what are the elements that make Europeana distinct and unique?

Engagement with digital heritage is thriving, as we’ve seen in some of the examples earlier – so why does it need Europeana as an intermediary or an infrastructure? Why not continue to go direct to source and work with institutions and owners of collections? These are the sorts of questions that need to be clearly and directly answered for its purpose to resonate and inspire.

The opportunity is to take what makes Europeana truly distinct and unique, and leverage these to create a compelling narrative to describe the mission it is on. One that genuinely resonates, and inspires and attracts collaborators in the creative industries and far beyond.

The distinction can’t just be funding. A creative entrepreneur with a strong idea now has many sources of finance. From debt funding to venture capital, from public funding to crowd-funding. Competition for attracting quality applications is intense.

So it needs to be built on a common vision: a mission and mindset that inspires action and support. One that is loud and clear. The challenge is this: set a big vision and ask the creative industries for help delivering it.

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Let’s dwell on the words ‘big vision’ a little bit longer.

One of the unique assets that I want to consider for a second is Europeana’s sheer scale. It has over 30 million objects. It is Europe-wide. It has the potential to attract global expertise, support and finance like few other organisations.

So what is the truly big idea sitting at the heart of Europeana? To use terminology from Google X, what is the Moonshot that it transforms the world with, on a scale that few other organisations could ever even dream of? Europeana is one of the few global giants that could transform innovation and performance in this sector and beyond. If it dreams big.

Europeana and its projects has had hundreds of millions of Euros in funding.* It should therefore be operating on a par with the best of Silicon Valley, with similar levels of consumer and industry awareness, and similar loyalty and engagement from users. With similar dreams to disrupt whole industries.

---* NOTE: This figure was questioned, but the funding total is quoted from http://ciber-research.eu/Europeana/Factsheet_Europeana_under_CEF-June-2012.pdf (“Current funding by the EU for the Europeana service platform and its ecosystem totals some 30-35 €M per year” – as at June 2012). I’ve assumed this covers much of the period

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from the prototype launch in 2008 to 2012, with very considerable public funding still allocated within the current business planning cycle.

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But for me, if I’m honest, Europeana’s purpose, it’s Moonshot aspiration to change the world, doesn’t inspire enough passionate excitement. What and where is it’s big vision? I simply can’t get excited about yet another creative incubator, or a library of case studies that no-one reads, or the creation of a few more apps.

I’m very conscious that standing here I’m possibly preaching to an audience of the converted. I’m sure that many of you, perhaps starting with the next talk from Jill, will come straight back setting out the grand vision and big challenges.

Well, as an entrepreneur, as a disrupter, all I can say is that something isn’t working.The problem is either awareness or relevance. And by relevance, I mean capturing and inspiring people’s hearts and minds.

The draft policy recommendations default to awareness being the problem: we’re building a great thing and if only people knew about it, they’d come knocking at our door. There’s some truth in the problem of awareness: as a long-time creative professional, closely watching the industry for our global conferences, the first time I heard of Europeana was just over a year ago.

However, as my final conclusion, I’d like to emphasise the question of relevance. Even here, now, I’m struggling to understand the overriding goal of Europeana. I can’t describe to a person on the street, or an entrepreneur, what it will have built 10 years

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from now. What will be transformed as a result of its work.

And therein lies both the immense challenge and the immense opportunity.

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Find Europeana’s clarity of purpose. Find a boldness of ambition that befits the sheer scale of its operation.

Root these within consumer and industry trends, and then use these to truly excite people about the world you’re building. Make the entry points visible, attractive and frictionless, and ask the creative industries and many, many others, to help build the new world you paint.

Only by doing this can Europeana live up to the once-in-a-generation opportunity it finds itself custodian of.

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