DISTRICTS OF CREATIVITY DUNDEE WORKSHOP OUTPUTS Reverse Mission to Scotland October 2015
The Districts of Creativity Network unites 13 of the most creative and innovative regions around the world. The network was formed to foster the exchange of best practices and experiences of stimulating creativity and innovation in business, culture and education.
In late October 2015 a group of international delegates hosted by the Scottish Government visited Edinburgh, Dundee and Glasgow to learn and share experiences. In Dundee, the delegates visited world class bio-tech labs at the University of Dundee, watched presentations on the video games industry at Abertay University including serious games exploring disease prevention. They also heard how Creative Dundee and the waterfront development including the V&A Museum have created a new optimism in the city. The delegates responses and advice were captured in a short workshop in the innovation space at Scott and Fyfe, an employee owned technical textile manufacturers in Tayport.
This is a transcription of delegates notes.
www.districtsofcreativity.org
Encourage unselfish collaboration. Open source learning. Hats
of de Bono. Connecting people (possibly “different”). Listen to music for
15 minutes (together) before starting a dialogue. Always challenge the status quo. 60+ break up – when an organisation grows beyond
60 people, break it up. Through example and showing
evidence of previous success. Emphasising open dialogue and
communication and reducing the stigma of failure. Co-working office
and housing. Introduce artists in the group. Go out. Work in
unusual spaces. Water is attractive - use it to bring people together.
Invest in infrastructure. Do it fast (don’t linger). Communicate about it. A
day in the others shoes. Facilitating cross-collaboration between disciplines. Move around. Cruise ships to bring in the
money.
How do you build an effective culture of collaboration and
creativity?“
Skip leaders. Guggenheim Museum. Conduct meetings standing. Big Challenge (which ‘moves’ people). Cross-over events for industry art
culture. Address challenges from industry teams from art, culture,
creative industries. Arrange blind dates. Awards. Team Building. Build
a diverse team: gender, age, culture, talents and skill sets. Mix offices from industry, art, culture, creative industries. Develop
formats. Communicate. Start from zero. Start with finding ideas with
shared enthusiasm. Public event like Dutch design week. Trigger by
future assignments. Believe that there will be a follow-up. Define small
predications for success and long term bigger ones. Swap teams for
one day/week. Follow-up: start up, package of business modelling,
vouchers, network knowledge, investors. Farmer Organisation
Netherlands.
How do you build an effective culture of collaboration and
creativity?
Slack-time. Designer work/sleep with challenge owners for deeper
understanding and co-creation. Put all change-makers and stakeholders
together: students, farmer, policy, entrepreneur, and researcher. Start
doing it. Have people in your organisation that have experience in
different branches. Create/do/organize unexpected reactions or
feedback. Postpone Judgement. Good food/Good coffee. A
concept needs a home. You need to have some time, money and backing
from management.Clear communication lines, opportunities
for networking/matching. Challenge Business rituals. Visualise
fast. Give room/space for disruptive actions. Invite an artist in your team.
Be open minded. Give freedom to your people. Self-organized
teams. Culture of “open minds” and open minded language.
How do you build an effective culture of collaboration and
creativity?
The power of optimism to rejuvenate again. Be
optimistic, trust yourself. Innovation and big ideas can happen
anywhere, not just big cities. Interdisciplinary respect. Good
ideas need investment. Interdisciplinary teams. Regular
events amongst creative workers. Strong support and
effective use of collaboration spaces. Positive attitude,
governmental support, youngsters/students. Game can
be serious. Respect employees not depending on what they do.
Game changer! Follow what already exists. Be agile. Capitalise on
change. Time sensitive. Trust your employees: make sure
everyone is involved. “Need is the mother of all inventions”
Create opportunities. Do not wait for them. Yesterday’s solution
won’t solve today’s problems and make us successful tomorrow.
What can we learn from Dundee’s experience?
Create an open atmosphere. Lose naysayers. Games, games,
games. Shareholder involvement for best ideas. Data is made
available in a useful way (good translation of
business needs). Let people work in one room. Serious
gaming is necessary to involve people at challenges at food
production/farms. Data = open = useful! Original
presentations. The role of educational adjustments in creating new
business. Government/region/city should take a role by
facilitating and allocate money. Collaboration – crossovers
education/company. A life without vegetables. Multi-disciplinary
work, looks great but intangible “recipe”. Embed in DNA of the
region. Translation only works in co-creation. Never give up
“failing” is a trigger to innovate. The role of charities in
financing research. We need tighter hubs in our own district.
Maximizing the empty and added value of the different partners
via effective collaboration. Culture of collaboration cross-
sectoral between policy levels.
What can we learn from Dundee’s experience?
Willingness to change. Have a bold plan (big space). Enthusiasm.
Business = passion = great student presentation. Attitude of
entrepreneurship. Start with the intention of giving to society. Open innovation. It’s all about sharing (big) data. It’s ok to fail.
Multidisciplinary. Translating data. Employee ownership. Contact with
environment. Bridging tradition and innovation. Fulfillment
employees. Taking tradition (like textile industry) and adapt for the
future. Listening to every idea. It’s possible to transform a 115 year old
company (amazing). The power of involvement. Scott and Fyfe is
cool. Social design training in city council. Be proud. Small is
beautiful. Big is even nicer. The multidisciplinary project in the “gaming”
education works. Hold on to your strategies for a longer
period of time. Emphasis on the process. copy that! Waterfront. I
love the workshop space at Scott and Fyfe. Destructive
approach. (waterfront). Serious games are cool.
What can we learn from Dundee’s experience?
Keep on moving. (organisation/people/challenges). Match
making with other fields. Embracing the unknown!
Contact firms/organisations doing the same.
Strengthen the intermediate industries. Triple helix
cooperation focusing on innovation and cross over
business development.(Ricardo Semler). BRYO “bright young
entrepreneurs”. Look at Flanders DC and the cooperation with
business. “my machine” project. Come to Dutch design week.
Position of the arts? Digital arts and entertainment Kortrijk.
Business models. New media and communication technology.
Devine! IPO! Ricardo Semler – the 7 day weekend. Build
ecosystems with unusual suspects. Brew better beer. User centred
design. Learn fast, fail cheap.
What can Dundee learn from the Districts?
The district are truly inspired by Dundee. Schools, public and
private. Travel! Visit other places. Ideas are found elsewhere. Reverse
mission. Connect with education. Internships. Create a strategic
agenda for the region. Bring in the bicycles. Free public transport. To network or not to network. Creative lunch for single workers.
“Flipping” the classroom. Start a foodie culture. Bring mixed terms of
students together to deal with hairy issues. Use civil society. Leisure as
carrier. Use beaches for creative rest. Business model canvas (Alex
Osterwalder). Emerging global social enterprise. Lose your
dominant logic! Act in spite of fear. Business models. Match making
B2B, B2G, business to business, business to government.
Creating entrepreneurial culture. Government models. Financing
models. Funding models. More artist as spokesmen. Establish
global think tank economic developer. Virtual consultants (forums,
blogs). To cuckold! (learn from other sectors). What about the arts? Data
is used in agrifood (low input high output). Censoring. ICT solutions.
What can Dundee learn from the Districts?
First incentives, then putting people to work, works better. #ulabnb
#ulabscot. Use the “man bites dog” methodology for getting insights.
Use experimental design landscapes “EDC” for complex challenges.
European social innovation week. Dutch design week. Getting
empathetic insights. The 20% project can be done with design research.
Student/Government/Business work spaces. (like gruyterfabriek). Read
the book “frame innovation” by Professor Kees Dorst. Big/open data
living lab in Edinburgh. Connect with different social designers.
”
What can Dundee learn from the Districts?
Workshop facilitated by Hazel White and Mike Press from openchange.co.uk and Gillian Easson from creativedundee.com. Open Change is a design-led organisation that helps people do the things they want to do, better. Creative Dundee is an international exemplar of how to bring creative communities together. Thanks to Michaela Millar at scott-fyfe.com a 150 year old employee owned creative manufacturer that embeds design thinking in all of its operations. Photography by Kathryn Rattray.
Images available at http://bit.ly/DoCDundee. Contact: [email protected]
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