Yule Heibel's Library tagged creatives → View Popular

Filter:
All
Annotated

01 Jan 09

Bjork turns venture capitalist

Self-explanatory, by title. I always liked Bjork, starting with The Sugarcubes... ;-)

www.timescolonist.com/...story.html - Preview

bjork venture_capitalist creatives

Bjork has partnered with a Reykjavik-based venture capital firm to establish a fund that will invest in socially and environmentally responsible companies that will help restore Iceland's battered economy.
The BJORK venture fund will be run by Audur Capital, which has put down the initial investment of 100 million Iceland kronur ($826,000). It is seeking investors to participate in the fund with investments to close by March 2009.

"The fund will invest in sustainable businesses that create value through the country's unique resources, spectacular nature, vibrant culture and green energy," according to Audur Capital's Web site.

It also states that Bjork "has become a spokeswoman for innovation, creative thinking and increased diversity in the Icelandic economy."

17 Oct 08

About Creative 30 - Creative 30

Want to look at this later. Interesting tension (imo) between being chosen to be profiled like this, vs just doing it (as 1000s of other "creatives" are). There are a number of people here (as anywhere) who would fit the bill to be profiled, but they don't live in London, so they're not. Now, does that mean you have to live in London (or: insert fave big / creative city)?, or can you be whiz-bang successful creative and live beyond the pale? Where is the pale these days? What,for that matter, is a pale, in the age of the internets?

www.creative30.net - Preview

creatives trends questions

16 Oct 08

CEOs for Cities Blog: "The Big Three Creatives"

Discussion of panel with John Howkins, author of The Creative Economy; Charles Landry, author of The Creative City; and Richard Florida, author of The Rise of the Creative Class, which took place in Detroit at the Creative Cities Summit.

www.ceosforcities.org/...1926 - Preview

ceos_for_cities creatives creative_cities

Although the creative city, the creative economy, and the creative class are fundamentally different concepts, they are all related. Each panelist has clearly been influenced by the work of the others.
Creativity is not only slippery, as John said. It is also risky business. It “fails” more often than not. And therefore, it’s not easy political business.
6 more annotations...
- The panelists’ list includes openness, curiosity, the right to use your full talent, and the right to full expression (the freedom to create).
- bigger cities have real advantages over smaller cities. So he had special advice for 3rd tier cities: Build strength by connecting to a bigger city, connecting to universities, accept brain circulation as a reality and use it to your advice, understanding what is authentic about your city and capitalize on that (distinctiveness), and most especially, acting with imagination.
- Using distinctiveness to build your local narrative.
- The panelists agreed that people gravitate to physical beauty. There is today an aesthetic premium.
- Charles called for a concerted effort to advocate for the creative city and build evidence for the case for the creative city. He also urged us to work with places in a coordinated way to implement projects in “the new creative city paradigm.”
- John reminded us that it is unlikely that politicians will take the lead on the creative city. Instead, it is up to us to define the agenda and ask them to respond. In this, content is king.

18 Feb 08

We are not 'the next Silicon Valley' by Margaret Pugh O'Mara (Crosscut Seattle)

Really interesting article from the historian's perspective on what it takes to "be" Silicon Valley (hint: certain historical confluences helped) and why it's unlikely that another place will "be" just like that. On the other hand, great places can build on their core strengths, and there are lessons to be learned in this. As O'Mara writes: "In this worldwide network, the most vital innovation centers are those that know their own strengths, provide exciting and dynamic environments for people and firms, and have the resources and institutions that provide a home for new and exciting ideas." I added a comment to this article, particularly as it jives with something Richard Florida also posted today.

www.crosscut.com/...+%27the+next+Silicon+Valley%27 - Preview

business creatives crosscut margaret_o'mara seattle silicon_valley technology

Seattle should build on its local strengths while remaining a key part of the global network of technology industries
Silicon Valley resulted from a combination of powerful local institutions, savvy real estate development choices, immense capital investment by the Cold War military-industrial complex, and the simple good fortune of being on the right side of national economic and demographic trends. The repeated failures of other places to replicate that success – much less seize Silicon Valley's high-tech mantle – attest to the trickiness of getting this formula right.
The lessons of the tech industry's Cold War-era infancy still hold true today.
8 more annotations...
- You need lots of money that can be spent (somewhat) recklessly. Military grants and contracts provided the capital needed for Valley pioneers like Hewlett-Packard to survive in their earliest, leanest years and created a demand for sophisticated technologies before there was a sizeable commercial market. As military contracts declined in the late 1960s, private venture capitalists and angel investors rose to take their place, giving smart but untested people repeated opportunities to innovate and develop new products.
- Like the Bay Area and other gold- and silver-rush cities of the American West, it has a long tradition of supporting innovators and iconoclasts. But it is only very recently that the local venture pool has reached critical mass – thanks in large part to the individuals who benefitted from the boom days of Seattle's first tech wave in the 1990s.
- Stanford University was not solely responsible for building Silicon Valley, but it had a great deal to do with it. But the mere presence of a big university is not enough – and this is one crucial fact that so many would-be Silicon Valleys have gotten wrong. A university or other research institution has to have strong programs in the disciplines that matter to high tech. It needs to have the budget and willingness to engage in things like university-industry partnerships and to encourage technology transfer rather than hobbling it. And strength is in numbers: It's important for a region to have one of these institutions, and it's even better for a place to have many of them.
- You need to be a place that attracts talented people and retains the ones you've already got. Silicon Valley grew because it was a place with qualities that attracted people who had the education, economic resources, and social advantages to live anywhere they chose. It was located in an economically booming state in a prosperous nation, within commuting distance of a major city, but with open land available to build suburban houses, research parks, and highways. It has been able to create an environment that allows white-collar high-tech workers to live, work, and network in something of a self-contained bubble.
- Retention of talent also matters. Cities like Philadelphia and Baltimore have some of the top-ranked research universities in the world, but the alumni of schools like Penn and Johns Hopkins often hop the first Amtrak out of town after graduation.
- Seattle has excelled at attracting talented people; its high proportion of college-educated residents attests to this. It hasn't done as well at producing them. The people who went to college here make up a relatively small part of the tech workforce. In Silicon Valley, Stanford and Berkeley pulled talented students to the Bay Area from across the country and the world. Many of the builders of the Valley, from Hewlett and Packard to Google, are products of local universities. A region's students are essential to its future economic success.
- You need to build on existing strengths, not follow the next big thing. This is another one that many Silicon Valley wannabes get wrong. As the eminent urban scholar John Friedmann puts it in his book The Wealth of Cities, "cities are not containers." The perpetual pursuit for outside capital – and transplanted ideas and innovations – is a far less productive strategy than building on core competencies. Thirty and 40 years ago, regions around the world were trying to emulate Silicon Valley by building semiconductors; today, nearly as many places are fixated on becoming the next biotech hub or the next capital of nanotechnology. Simple rules of economics dictate that few of these aspirants will meet their goals.
- Silicon Valley succeeded not because of the "silicon" but because it was doing something that complemented existing regional strengths. The area had been a hotbed of amateur tinkering with radio technology since the 1910s; faculty and students at Stanford had been working on transistor technology for a generation. Similarly, Seattle was launched onto the global economic map by technologies and companies that built on things local people and firms already did well. Nordstrom injected a new level of customer service to selling shoes; Starbucks did the same thing years later in selling a cup of coffee.
  - Ha, no kidding with the tinkerer aspect: think of Doc Searls and his "IT Garage"... - on 2008-02-18
  Add Sticky Note

Place Wars - Seattle vs. Silicon Valley (Richard Florida and The Creative Class Exchange)

Florida points to two techologists, one SV-based (Michael Arrington), the other now once again Seattle-based (Glenn Kelman), having a bit of a dust-up over whether one region/ city is better than the other. Robert Scoble also weighs in, as do several others. Of particular interest is that Crosscut today also published Margaret Pugh O'Mara's article on the Seattle - Silicon Valley comparison. I commented here (and in Crosscut).

creativeclass.typepad.com/...place-wars---se.html - Preview

business creatives richard_florida seattle silicon_valley technology

25 Jan 08

Gawker and the Rage of the Creative Underclass -- New York Magazine

References to a "creative underclass" and "roiling Schadenfreude" of course set off bells for anyone familiar with the Victoria BC scene, which has long sustained itself on highly creative (often volatile) people living on substandard wages. True, that might be the only thing Victoria and NYC have in common, but the socially determined psychology suggested by the author's intro makes me want to read this with an eye on our local scene. We have in this city "a huge cheering section for failure," as a local commentator once put it, and maybe Grigoriadis's article will shed light on how that happens.

nymag.com/39319 - Preview

creatives psychology reference schadenfreude vanessa_grigoriadis victoria

09 Jan 08

seven for 2007 | varnelis.net

I've had this open in a browser tab for days, wanting to bookmark it, but hesitating because I found it impossible to describe, tag, or in any way categorize. So, let's just say it's "wow" and one of the best recaps-cum-predictions amongst the blogs. Read it.

varnelis.net/...seven_for_2007 - Preview

architecture cities cloud_computing creatives economics ideas predictions privacy reference wow