Creativity at work 

0:11Hello and welcome to The Entrepreneurs on Monocle Radio, the show all about inspiring people, innovative companies and fresh ideas in global business. Today's program is a book special. First, we'll meet the author of a volume that challenges the traditional divides between creativity and business. There are lots of things you get bogged down with that take away from the time you can spend on creativity. I think AI can take over, you know, a lot of productivity stuff, a lot of routine tasks. So I think it's very, very exciting. And later, we'll meet a serial entrepreneur with some advice for how aspiring business leaders should embrace failure.

0:47I think it's totally okay to fail. It's totally okay to make mistakes and learn from it. And I think it's only when you personally make some of those mistakes that you get those learnings. This is The Entrepreneurs with me, Tom Edwards.

1:08You're listening to The Entrepreneurs. Carolyn Daly is the founder of Creative Entrepreneurs, a platform she launched after a career in media at Time Warner, where she worked closely with some of the world's most influential creatives. After years of helping others turn their passions into thriving businesses, Carolyn saw a need for a space that combined creativity with the practical side of running a business. Her new book, The Creative Entrepreneur, a guide to building a successful creative business from industry titans, features conversations with 10 of the world's most inspiring and famous entrepreneurs.

1:41Through their stories, Carolyn demonstrates how it's possible to grow a business without sacrificing one's artistic vision. She stopped by Midori House on a recent trip to London, and I began by asking her if creativity is being overlooked in business today. This book is about people who are using their creativity in unimaginable, wonderful ways. But maybe we don't talk about creativity as a pursuit in itself. The goal of this book is to smash the taboo that creativity and commerce shouldn't mix. So maybe the other side, clearly we need to talk about business and commerce, but maybe we need to be much more intentional about talking about creativity, especially in the age of AI.

2:22But talking about, you know, what is so special about human creativity? It's the human imagination. I always say I think the core of it is the imagination being able to connect unexpected dots, you know, where algorithms and predictable learning tools for AI can program AI to connect dots. But it's the unexpected ones that the imagination comes up with that really makes something original. So I think that's a really interesting point to pursue to be much more intentional about talking about creativity. I think that intentionality is important. And to that point with AI in particular, if you look back and obviously you write about your experience with Ted Turner and through your whole career, do you have then the confidence or conviction almost that had you had some of these tools, like AI for example, large language models, whatever, you could have treated them as such, as a tool.

3:09It would have been functional. It would have enabled and empowered your creative instincts. I think it was a big worry. Oh, well, you know, as a creative, I'm just going to be irrelevant because this machines can do dot, dot, dot. Do you feel like these are tools and we just need to reframe that conversation and be like, these are tools to facilitate creativity. They're not here to threaten it or to denude it. I don't know. Where do you stand? Yeah, I'm always very careful when I talk about this. But I think they're going to be, you know, let's be practical. Let's be realistic. There are going to be a lot of job losses in the creative sector because of AI.

3:41Of course there will. But there'll be certain types of jobs and roles and it's going to be painful. But in terms of the actual creative, the creation process, I firmly believe that these are tools that will give opportunities that we can kind of start to identify now I mean, I think we're still at the very beginning of the AI revolution There are lots of things you get bogged down with that take away from the time you can spend on creativity I think AI can take over, you know, a lot of productivity stuff, a lot of routine tasks So I think it's very, very exciting Let's talk a little bit more about the entrepreneurs that you selected to help you tell this story, these 10 And obviously some of them, I guess for me, it's easy to see why you picked them And people like Ruthie, who obviously is a friend of Tyler's, someone who's been on Monocle Radio so many times, Yinka the same, Thomas Heatherwick and so forth.

4:26How did you choose? So you had this idea of the 10 stories. They broadcast their merits as great tales. But how did you pick? Because I imagine you probably had, I don't know, a long list of 100 or 1 ,000. So how did you choose? It must have been tricky. It was tricky only because, you know, there are many amazing stories. But these people, it's really amazing how this all kind of came together. It was quite organic. And my ambition, what I was looking for, number one, people who are doing something completely and totally original, something that only they could do. You know, something where they've – and they all talk about being the most important thing.

5:06It sounds like a cliche, but it's so true. About being very, very in touch with their creative vision, their values, and what makes them unique. And so I wanted people who are doing something completely original that make us see the world a little bit in a different way because of what they're putting out there. I also wanted to have people from all across the creative sectors. So I didn't want just someone from design or someone from music. I wanted to cover all the creative sectors because, you know, my background, I've worked across the creative sectors. And I see how much it remains a bit siloed across the different subsectors and how everyone wants to work together and understand, you know, film people want to know fashion people.

5:44and music people want to know design people. And also they all, a different longer conversation we can talk about if you like, but fascinating to see how all of the people I interview, they have their main discipline, but they work across, they're inspired across all the other creative disciplines. So that was the other, you know, different sectors. And then also I was very attracted by talking about people at different phases in their career so that you capture that evolution as well. So you have, you know, Nile Rogers, who's a god, who's been a creative god through the decades and shaping the music of our times for many decades.

6:18But then you have people who are more at the beginning of their journey, although they're superstars, but they're more beginning like Priya, Oluwalia and Yiki Ilori. So I thought that was quite interesting to see the different approaches. And there are universal themes, which I thought was quite fun to see. It doesn't matter the generation, but I wanted to bring that out and hear those different voices. Karela, let me ask you, a question occurs to me hearing you explain that. Presumably, therefore, there were interesting commonalities and threads that ran through all 10 of these journeys, albeit they're at different phases on that road between them.

6:50Were there threads that emerged that you had not even imagined? That's an interesting question. Did you discover, oh, there are these other unifying qualities or interests or frames of reference that these kinds of creative entrepreneurial folk have that actually I didn't imagine I would be mapping? Did the book help you discover those things as the journey came together? I think it wasn't so much because there were very universal themes. And I wasn't, do you know, it's a great question because I wasn't so much, it wasn't so much that I saw a theme I was surprised by. I was surprised by the universality, really surprised by it, you know, across the sectors through different generations.

7:30and every single one of them, as I just touched on, every single one of them, the importance, and this is such a, this is the wellspring of creativity, being very, very in touch with their unique vision and their values. And so that was such that every single one of them talked about that. In fact, Yinka tells this whole story about how he was going to pack it in. He was going to give up design because it just wasn't working for him. And he decided he'll give it one last shot because he didn't have anything to lose. So he did a collection that he did just for himself because he said he realized he had been pulled around by what he thought press wanted to hear or to make his designs more easy to swallow by people.

8:10And so he said, I'm going to give it one last shot. And he did this exhibition that he, I mean, he's so fascinating and enterprising. But it ended up having a show at Bluebird, which is a long time ago, used to have this concept store in the King's Road. And so he did this show called If Chairs Could Talk. And that changed his life. Now his chairs are in the V &A permanent collection in MoMA. He's done these traveling shows with Art Basel. So that whole, be very, very clear on what's unique to you and keep in touch with that. But the other thing that they all talk about, again, this isn't surprising, but I was surprised by how much they emphasize it, collaboration.

8:48And I think that is such a thing that's particular to the creative sector that we, especially Thomas Heatherwick, was he said, you know, I used to think, Thomas, why can't you just get on with it on your own? Like, why do you keep needing to talk to people? And he said, I actually thought I might have a disability, which I screamed when he said that because I'm like, I am like that too. And he said, I need to talk. I need to exchange ideas with people. That's how I work. And I think every one of them talked about how collaboration is so, so, so important. And the other thing is, and I guess none of this is surprising, given that we're talking about the creative sector, but community, you know, building a community around them that is a source of new ideas, that's a source of support.

9:31And so that that was so important. And also just, you know, it can be lonely. So feeling that they have their people around them. And that was very, very important. them. And also, you know, the broader networking, which has such a bad name, and really, that's not what that word means. It means building relationships. But, you know, all of that, and which is also great for business, because through that, and they all talk about this, you meet people who don't have the skills you have, who have different skills that you really need, mainly business skills, or, you know, people who can introduce you into new opportunities.

10:01So that was another common theme that all of them talked about, you know, by continuing to meet new people expand their horizons that that they also sometimes they could articulate things they were struggling with that they didn't even understand that that was the problem so i think those themes really came through and i was surprised by how universal they were it was leafing through whilst you were talking and i found you know some lovely up pictures of you know when you were sort of launching the creative entrepreneur back at number 10 downing street you're talking to the brilliant amanda levite in the picture below how good are these external mechanisms and frameworks one of the problems a lot of creative people and creative entrepreneurs this is looking through the uk lens specifically for a moment are saying at the moment is it's not a good place to be an entrepreneur the support isn't there our risk-taking appetite isn't appreciated we need to go to new markets you've sort of well you're literally inside the corridors of power do we value creative entrepreneurialism enough are the right systems in place to help to support people who are setting out on this journey in your view?

11:05My favorite question, because the answer is no. And that I hope that the book can help in some way to start building an infrastructure and ecosystem that we need to nurture creative people. That picture at number 10 Downing Street, what that was is we did a series of roundtables on creative entrepreneurship during Theresa May. And they said, actually, because I knew one of her people and said, you guys don't pay attention to creativity. You don't recognize the economic power of it. And they said, you know what? We have tech people around to number 10 all the time. We never talk about creative entrepreneurship.

11:41Why don't you host some roundtables on creative entrepreneurship? So that's what that photo was from. And we had those. That was another reason for writing the book because what came out of those, and we had creative entrepreneurs, but also investors, educators, obviously policymakers were there. And what came out of those roundtables was that the biggest missing piece was role models. Why do we say that? Because parents don't think, well, first of all, people don't think they can have a successful career in the creative sector because they don't understand mainstream conversation, mainstream full stop, don't really recognize how economically successful the creative sector is.

12:17You know, it's the second biggest contributor just in the UK alone, going faster than many other economic sectors. So because of that, people think they have to keep their creativity as a hobby. Parents who are rightly protected of their children don't want them to who go into the creative sector because they think they'll be starving artists. Investors don't take it seriously. Policymakers and educators don't tend to take it seriously, and that causes many problems, the main one of which is cutting the creative curriculum. So there are all kinds of problems that come out of not seeing the economic power of the creative sector.

12:50That's a big thing the book wants to shine a light on, but also what you just articulated, which is the reason why I started Creative Entrepreneurs and also wrote the book, there isn't, as opposed to other sectors, there isn't this well-formed, well-known infrastructure that's there. So if you want to start a creative business, this happened to me. It's like, who do you ask? I don't even know. What things do I not know? I don't even know. And in the tech sector, for example, they're fantastic at that. They're very well organized in terms of nurturing the people coming up and having places people can go.

13:25And the creative sector really doesn't have that. And that's one thing I notice as well in the book, the question of was there anything surprising? I guess it wasn't surprising, but it kind of was. I was surprised by how enthusiastic all these people were to be interviewed for this book, this book with this mission. And why? Because they all know how much they struggled when they were starting out with business support. And they were thrilled to have a platform to come and talk about it because it's kind of like it was pent up in them. You know, like they'd love to talk about this stuff, but nobody asks it.

13:55You know, it's not out there and they'd love to help people coming up. So that was a big point of this was to start. Let's start telling these stories. Let's start getting this out there to help people. That was Carolyn Daly, the founder of Creative Entrepreneurs. And you can find the book in all good bookstores now or find out more about the business by heading to creativeentrepreneurs.co.

14:27You're listening to The Entrepreneurs. Mark Roberts might be best known as the co-founder of Beerhawk, a business that grew from just him and his partner working out of a shed to a team of around 200 people in less than a decade. He's also the author of The Entrepreneur Within, a book that shares his personal journey of entrepreneurship, failure and the lessons he's learned along the way. In it, he lays out his FORGE methodology, a practical framework for driving innovation and building successful businesses. Mark stopped by Midori House to discuss what it takes to turn a bold idea into a money-making venture.

15:04Mark began by telling me about the often difficult task of sitting down to write. I think like with starting a business, writing a book, you just need to be full of naive optimism. You need to just think that it's just going to be really fun, really easy. Of course, we'll be able to solve it. And I think, you know, being an entrepreneur, you like solving problems. and there's lots of problems in the writing side, in the business side. So I think there is some crossover. But I guess my way of running a business is much more about talking to people, much more about getting involved physically. And I think that's the side that is more difficult when you're writing.

15:36Now, we're going to talk about the book in more detail, but let's just roll back a little bit in your story. Maybe not right to the start, but obviously you enjoyed great success. You then exited a business. Let me look at that point with you, Mark, because I think there are certain founders who are hungry then for the next launch. They love that. The jeopardy of those early days, it's high risk, but high reward. Did you have a sense of the direction you wanted to go in, thought you might go in? Obviously, you then retain these connections with the businesses that had bought into your business.

16:05But did you sort of have clarity at that point? Because you've enjoyed the success. Where did you imagine your journey was going to go at that point? I had no idea at all. And let me be honest, because I love being open to opportunities that the world throws at you. I think that's one of the things that I hold very dear. So I wanted to make sure, first of all, that the people who had trusted their careers with me, with us, were all right. I wanted to make sure that the team was set up for success and that the people were looked after. I think beyond that, I wanted to feel, I guess, curious and challenged about different things.

16:39And it was that that made me reflect back on all of the different things I'd done in my life, my career, my business, and realised that innovation was probably the common thread, whether it's big business or small business. And that's what I wanted to poke on a bit. And talk to me about keeping focus, because I know when we talk about focus as one of these kind of forge attributes later, but if you have that curiosity, and so many entrepreneurial folk that I talk to have, they're curious about everything and their minds are going 50 to the dozen. How do you retain workable focus that has the utility that you need to make successes if you have that curiosity and that breadth of distractions?

17:16Because presumably that is always a tension. Is it a healthy tension? So when I was running Beer Hawk, I set it up with a co-founder, Chris. And Chris is one of these people who is just my perfect balance. Because yes, I come up with 10 different ideas. And Chris says, Mark, you know, nine of them are rubbish. They're never going to work. And by the way, we're still working on the three that you had last week. So just focus down. And I think having someone who can be that balance, whatever your strengths are, to have that balance. And I found it much, much easier being in partnership with someone running a business than perhaps being that sole entrepreneur.

17:52Let's talk about the entrepreneur within Mark and particularly this idea, this sort of forge methodology, right? For driving innovation. Tell me a bit about how, well, it's the product of the career. You've spoken about some of those stages in your journey already. It's the product of all of that. But how did the sort of forge methodology idea, how did that kind of come together? So it started out with post-it notes. And it started literally with me on the floor thinking about why didn't some innovation work? And in particular, I thought about my own experience of times of where things went wrong.

18:27I thought about big examples of where other companies had failed, like really spectacularly failed. And why was that? and I started to put all of the reasons down and then stood back and literally tried to group them and I thought five areas came about in pretty clear groups. Firstly, maybe the strategy wasn't quite right, maybe what they were trying to do didn't fit with the company or maybe the idea just wasn't distinctive enough, maybe it didn't cut through or maybe they just didn't test it quick enough and it stayed in the boardrooms and the minds of executives and didn't get out into the market.

19:01Then it didn't scale. It was okay, it got some traction, but it didn't enable to grow really rapidly. And maybe then they didn't get connections from outside the business or inside the business. So I grouped these and I thought the way that we need to think about this is in an easy to memorize way. I feel expressing things simply is great. And so if you can find a word that sums it up, forge innovation. F is for focus, O for originality, R for results, G for growth, EFA ecosystem. They were the five areas that I saw people fail in innovation. So then I then tested it and said, well, if all of those are there, does this increase the likelihood of success?

19:40And certainly looking back on my own journey, I think it does. Interviewing lots of people, whether they're in big companies like Sony and Nike and Apple or small startups and VC-backed companies, it seemed to resonate. And I think there's so much advice that entrepreneurs and innovators can have, but just keeping it easy to remember, just a framework that when you're running at breakneck speed, just actually thinking, oh, hang on, have I got this covered? That's what I wanted to provide, something that's quite useful and easy to remember. And I think what's interesting about that is that's the idea and there's some almost philosophical elements, which is interesting.

20:14And in the book itself, it's a sort of a mosaic of different textures. There's interviews and insights, there's some fun, there's a levity, always important. um how mindful were you mark that the the book in its literally you know in its how it feels in the hand and its design it had to communicate those values obviously they they're through in the text yeah but it's that's the point about a book it's something a little bit a bit different was that daunting or did you enjoy the challenge oh i love that absolutely love it this is a book about innovation about new ideas about concepts it needs to look and feel different and exciting and something that people can come back to and scroll in the margins.

20:54And what it couldn't be, in my opinion, is 200 odd pages of black and white text. Nothing screams innovation like black and white text over 200 pages. So I wanted to break it up. And I think we all learn best from other people's stories. So I wanted to fill it full of tales from others and ask them about their tips of how they think, what advice they would pass on if people were trying to either start something new or innovate within a business. And then the traps as well. What have they seen where people have failed? So by using those tails, tips and traps, and then bringing my model together, you do have, I hope you have this sort of fun mosaic of I just want to keep dipping in and out.

21:39No, I think it's very dip into-able. I love that. That wasn't a word before, but now it is. Now, let's talk a bit about, just to come back to this fundamental thing about forging innovation in particular. One of the things that strikes me is you've had success with your own business, then you work with founders, as you said, VC and all the rest of it. Very different objectives that you're presumably confronted with when you start any particular journey. Look at that, as you said, the appetite for failure. Hugely different in a startup than in a big, maybe slightly unwieldy corporate. So how does Mark Roberts bring people along on that journey when those risk appetites are so different?

22:17Maybe they don't exist at all in a big corporate. How can you wield this method to drive progress? How does it work? You're right, because there are so many different businesses and people within businesses, different risk appetites. But I think one thing that unites most people within business is a desire for growth. Whether that is growing the top line or growing the people within the company, you know, personally, professionally, or just in numbers, growth tends to make everything easier. If you're not growing, actually, really, because the market typically is, you're in decline. And if you're declining, it's hard because you're then starting to think about getting rid of people and closing things down.

22:56Now, to grow, you just can't do what you've always been doing. You have to, by definition, do something new. and I think the challenge that a lot of companies have is they leave it too late until they start to think about doing new things. So there's a classic business life cycle. If an idea is going to take off, it takes off and then takes off quite quickly and then reaches a plateau and then it often falls back down that other side of the S. And I see so many businesses leave it until then to think about, okay, well, what's next? Well, it takes time to develop the traction on what's next and they need to be doing it there.

23:29But what happens so often is the well-intentioned processes, the well-intentioned ways that a company tries to become more efficient at running its day-to-day actually stops the new stuff from happening in the first place. And so, so much of my conversation is how do you stop the organization from actually killing new ideas before they get a chance to grow and they get nurtured? And then they actually people can then see the potential and, oh, well, this could be what could take our company to the next stage. That's quite interesting. Give us a use case, Mark. You mentioned, you know, there's lots of great examples where you've been fortunate enough to go on the journey or lead people in the right direction, lead them by the hand a little bit.

24:11Give us one example where you were able to sort of install these values, this shift in mindset and focus and delivers, you know, sort of tangible benefits. Because I think that always helps people to understand this journey from abstraction and theory into practice. Give us one example that maybe there's a couple of use cases within that that show singular moments or how you can do these kind of pivots that can be quite challenging. Give us some examples. So I think there's probably a couple of examples that's most easy to articulate by unlocking the focus part of the chapter. So, you know, I have sat on the boards of quite a few companies, either as an investor, as a member of the advisory team.