Creativity and sustainability - shurely shome mishtake

An upcoming conference in Edinburgh has its sights firmly set on the role that creativity can play in all areas of Scottish policy making, business and society.  While the so called ‘Creative Industries’ – film, art, broadcast, music, gaming – will inevitably be a focus, the conference sets out to identify how the wider business and government sectors can embrace the creative urge.  This may mean redesigning processes, products and business plans, embracing digital technologies or redefining the ways in which businesses and government deal with employees and indeed their customers.

This debate fuels my own view that the urge and need for reinvention also applies in business attitudes towards the environment and sustainability.  At the moment, as soon as the ‘E’ word is mentioned it induces well rehearsed arguments along the lines of “the debt crisis and recession are infinitely more important issues;” “head-hunters are telling me that demand for sustainability professionals has fallen off a cliff;” “we comply with legislation, and that is enough of a cost burden”, or “our customers are not asking about this stuff.”

While fully accepting that there are of course many and competing external pressures on business, there is a growing band of companies that have redefined the importance of sustainability and are seeing the rewards in cost savings, enhanced employee motivation, better management control and a much greater degree of competitive advantage.

With some noteable exceptions, the real business action on creativity and sustainability is taking place in small and medium sized enterprises.   One exception is Interface, world’s biggest producer of carpet tiles, founded by the late, great Ray Anderson in the 1970’s.  In the mid-1990’s he reinvented the business with environmental sustainability at its heart.  While still subject to the vagaries of the global market, Ray Anderson showed that sustainability and business success are not separate bedfellows. The company remains at the top of the flooring tree.

For small businesses, that decision to place sustainability to the fore and centre can be somewhat daunting, particularly as the first task is to decide what it means in its own context.  Having done so and defined priorities, the next major challenge is one of performance measurement, which means some data crunching.  All this takes time and resources, but there is lots of free advice and support out there from the likes of Zero Waste Scotland, Carbon Trust and business organisations such as FSB or the Scottish Food and Drink Federation.   Once the groundwork is done, the business can then review its performance or report to customers or financiers.

The latter are playing an increasingly interesting and important role as agents of sustainability, for if we accept the enhanced importance within a business, it inevitably has financial consequences.  These may be reducing overheads by diverting waste from landfill and turning this material into revenue as recyclate or an investment may be required in machinery to help process and store the waste.  Through having performance information to hand and a willingness to communicate, the business can respond to external scrutiny from customers and investors.  This scrutiny may be in the form of tendering requirements, where a ready response on questions about sustainability, not only saves on management time, but might help to win the business.

Where investment is required, the company’s bank may profit through working with a stronger business and providing asset finance for new plant or equipment.  Getting closer to the customer is an oft quoted banking aspiration, so, in the form of a sustainability dialogue, there is a way for the banks to [1] understand and de-risk their customers, existing and potential; [2] unearth new business from those customers and [3] promote some creativity and innovation within the bank’s own product development teams. 

The opportunities presented around sustainability are there for businesses and their financiers.  It just needs a bit of guts and some creativity.  That’s why I welcome the conference and its effort to provoke a debate on the wide ranging benefits of ‘creativity’ to Scotland’s future.

The Creativity Applied conference is organised by the RSA Fellows' Media, Creative Industries, Culture & Heritage Network and the Institute for Capitalising on Creativity, University of St Andrews.  It will take place on Monday 21st November 2011 at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, 9 Queen Street, Edinburgh EH2 1JQ.  The conference is free, but bookings should be made before 16^th November http://creativityapplied.eventbrite.com

Great Circle gets a slug of private equity

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/f9f3aacc-f29d-11e0-931e-00144feab49a.html#axzz1aKH3PlDL

The College Group (http://www.thecollegegroup.com/), including my business Great Circle (http://www.greatcircle.co.uk/), has received a substantial investment from private equity outfit Vitruvian Partners (http://www.vitruvianpartners.com/).  Onwards and upwards!

Trading with the West amongst the best at EIF

Trading with the West

Edinburgh International Festival

19^th August, 2.30pm, Filmhouse, Lothian Rd, Edinburgh

www.eif.co.uk/trading

A panel of business gurus use film clips to discuss the status and future of business relationships between Scotland and Asia.

Michael E Ward, Screenwriter, producer and marketer
Michael Ward was born and raised in India.  A veteran of business and the arts in the West, including producer and co-adaptor of The Far Pavilions stage musical in 2005 and theatrical director in 2007 of Miss Bollywood, starring Shilpa Shetty.  Michael is deeply involved in the UK-India creative corridor and works to build bridges between the two countries, solving problems in order to increase co-operation for mutual commercial benefit.  His first film will be the low budget urban comedy "The Phone Thief" to be shot in Mumbai in October and distributed in India by Fox Star Studios.

Catherine Schenk, Professor of International Economic History, University of Glasgow
Catherine Schenk has written widely on changes in the international economy since 1945.  Most of her research has been on the development of international banking in East Asia and Europe since the 1960s and also on crises in the international monetary system.  Her current project examines the failure to introduce effective international banking supervision.  She has been a visiting researcher at the International Monetary Fund and the Hong Kong Monetary Authority and has presented at the Bank for International Settlements, Bank of Japan and at Chatham House.  Her most recent book is entitled International Economic Relations since 1945 (Routledge, 2011).

Zarir J Cama, Group General Manager – Group Management Office, HSBC Holdings PLC

Zarir Cama joined HSBC in 1968, becoming CEO of HSBC India in 1999, the first Indian to hold the position.  In 2002, he became CEO HSBC Bank Malaysia Bhd and in June 2007 set up a new International Division overseeing the Group’s business worldwide.  In 2009 he ran the Group’s Continental European business, before taking up his current role of Group General Manager – Group Management Office.  Zarir was born and educated in India, is on the Committee of the British Malaysian Society and the Royal Society for Asian Affairs and has recently been elected to the Board of Trustees of Asia House.

Ian Ritchie CBE

Ian Ritchie founded Office Workstations Limited (OWL) in Edinburgh in 1984.  OWL became the largest supplier of Hypertext/Hypermedia authoring tools for personal computers and was sold to Matsushita of Japan in 1989.  Ian Ritchie was awarded a CBE in 2003, for services to enterprise and education.  He is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering; a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh; a Fellow and a past-President of the British Computer Society; Co-Chair of the Scottish Science Advisory Council and was a member of Scotland's Cultural Commission in 2005/2006.  He is Chairman of leading technology companies and advises a number of venture capital firms.

John Callaghan, Former President, Director and CEO pt hero tbk, Indonesia

John Callaghan has a 40 year career in retail, encompassing Canada, South Africa, UK, Ireland, Hong Kong and Malaysia.  For the past four years he has been based in Jakarta, where he held a number of senior positions within major retail companies in the UK and overseas.  He is active in the Globalscot network, assisting Scottish businesses to internationalise and grow.

Michael Groves, Creator and Producer, Moving Conversations

Since completing a PhD in airborne remote sensing, Michael has worked in the UK and internationally in the fields of environmental management, sustainability and corporate communications.  This included three years based in Indonesia, pioneering forest certification throughout south-east Asia.  Since returning to the UK he has advised companies on sustainability strategies and reporting and co-founded a consumer product company that exports to more than 40 countries.  Moving Conversations^® was born from a long standing interest in cinema.  It is now an established format, attracting sponsorship and working with film archives in the UK and internationally.

Moving Conversations^®

“It’s a terrific format”, Sir Michael Grade

Moving Conversations^® is a proven ‘intelligent entertainment’ format where expert panellists choose film and television archive material to shed light on any topic.  Moving Conversations^® have covered a wide range of subjects, including the oil industry, climate change, renewable energy, urban development, fast food, comedy, digital media, journalism, acting, conflict, heritage, banking and television; working with a range of public and private sector sponsors.  Moving Conversations^® have been produced in the UK and Ireland with more planned internationally.

The National Library of Scotland, Scottish Screen Archive

The Scottish Screen Archive is a film and video collection of over 100 years of Scotland's history.  The archive reflects 20th-century Scottish social, cultural and industrial history, the lives of ordinary Scots across the generations and the achievements of Scottish film-makers in the craft of film production.  It houses more than 32,000 items, mostly non-fiction, including documentaries, newsreels, educational material, home movies, television and public information films (including Gaelic broadcasts), industrial material, promotional films and an array of written and printed matter.  The archive was set up in 1976 and has been part of the Collections Department at the National Library of Scotland since 2007.

Cashmere is Scottish....isn't it?

My Moving Conversations show at the Edinburgh International Festival is shaping up well.  All of our panellists have chosen their films from the Scottish Screen Archive - an amusing, amazing and enlightening bunch of movies.  We now await, with eager anticipation, the punchy, controversial arguments from our Bollywood producer, technology investor, banker, retailer and Professor.  The latter is Professor Catherine Schenk, whom has chosen a film called Cashmere is Scottish http://tinyurl.com/3htj4sh, a 1970's promotional film for the cashmere industry.  Catherine has kindly shared some of here thoughts with us on her reasons for choosing this fabulously retro and Joanna Lumley starring film.

The film clip from the 1970s firmly states that Cashmere IS Scottish and this was certainly its reputation and a key part of its value as a luxury product.  It was traditionally a part of Scotland's international brand image (along with bagpipes, shortbread and whisky).  In fact, of course, cashmere was almost always a 'globalised' product that linked Scottish producers and designers with rural Chinese herders who supplied and undertook the first processing of the essential raw material.  In recent years, the production of cashmere has been shifted to China and other countries in East Asia, and the luxury 'brand'  has been somewhat tarnished by variation in quality and fraudulent products.  If cashmere WAS Scottish in the 1970s, it isn't any more - many of the key traditional companies here have been taken over - most notably Pringles.  The ability of Asian companies to produce large amounts of cashmere products for the global market has had an important impact, not only on Scottish business and on consumers, but even more importantly on the environment in China because of the huge expansion of grazing goats.

This leaves the questions:
Was cashmere ever REALLY Scottish or is it an example of long-standing integrated trade links between Scotland and China? 
Does it matter if cashmere is now predominantly 'made in China'?

To see the other films and hear from the other panellists, come along to Trading with the West on 19th August, 2.30pm at Filmhouse, Lothian Rd, Edinburgh.  www.eif.co.uk/trading.

From Folk to Fact: Father and son do Fringe and Festival

A father is performing at the 2011 Edinburgh Fringe while his son is producing a show at the 2011 Edinburgh International Festival.  The father is Mick Groves, one of the legendary Liverpool folk group The Spinners, whom is bringing his one man show, Still Spinning, to the Acoustic Music Festival at Fringe 2011.  The son is Michael Groves, Edinburgh entrepreneur, whom is bringing his successful show Moving Conversations to the Filmhouse, combining lively debate with film clips from the Scottish Screen Archive.

Still Spinning sees Mick perform three shows, weaving together songs and stories from thirty years at the peak of the folk business, including the folk revival in the sixties, many television series and specials in the seventies, 30 plus albums and tours of West Africa, Australia, USA, Canada and Europe throughout (www.edfringe.com/whats-on/music/Still-Spinning).  The Spinners were defined by their ability to fill the UK’s largest concert halls and get audiences singing along to their wide repertoire, encompassing traditional ballads, Caribbean riffs and new songs that have become folk standards.  Somewhat sniffed at by the folk music purists, the ‘other fab four’ nevertheless introduced a generation of young people to the richness and diversity of traditional music.  Mick is now based in Devon and is an active member of the local folk scene, as well as still recording music (www.mickgroves.co.uk).  On May 22^nd 2011, The Spinners received a lifetime achievement award from the Acoustic Music Festival of Great Britain. 

Moving Conversations is a unique combination of lively debate and film archives that has explored a wide array of topics in recent years at venues throughout the UK and Ireland (“It’s a terrific format” says Sir Michael Grade).  Taking its cue from the Asian focus of the International Festival, this particular Moving Conversation, ‘Trading with the West’, will explore the history and future of business and trading links between Scotland and Asia (www.eif.co.uk/trading).  Panellists include Bollywood film producer Michael E. Ward, technology entrepreneur Ian Ritchie, economic historian Professor Catherine Schenk and Directors of HSBC and a Jardine Matheson company.  Each one will show a clip from the NLS Scottish Screen Archive from which they will draw inspiration for an impassioned speech on the future of Scottish-Asian business.

Mick Groves said, “I need no excuses to visit Scotland, having had many, many happy experiences touring with The Spinners.  I recall some wild nights in the Howf in Kircaldy and the many appearances at Aberdeen Music Hall, the Caird Hall in Dundee, Perth Town Hall, Glasgow Empire and Edinburgh’s Playhouse.  It’s great to be back and a pleasure to be doing the Fringe when Michael is doing the International Festival.  I may even persuade him to join me for a number or two.”

Michael Groves said, “As an Edinburgh resident I see the transformative power of the festivals.  Having brought Moving Conversations to the Fringe some years ago, I am absolutely thrilled to be part of the iconic International Festival in 2011.  Given the turmoil in the world economy, the Scottish focus on exporting, the rise of Chinese and Indian business power and underlying concerns over climate change, this is the perfect time to look at the future of Scottish-Asian business.  Moving Conversations has been a family affair previously when Mick joined a debate on the future of television.  As for the Fringe, at the very least, I will join my daughter and help to sell some of his CDs.”

Still Spinning is at 7.30pm on 11^th, 12^th and 13^th August at St Brides centre in Dalry.  Tickets are available through the Fringe and Queens Hall box offices at £8 (£6 concession).  It’s not quite folk, but it’s most definitely entertaining!

Trading with the West is at 2.30pm on 19^th August at Filmhouse.  Tickets are available through the International Festival or Queens Hall box offices at £6.

Real Engineering vs Financial Engineering

Working with private businesses in Scotland on how they can respond to and benefit from sustainability, has really brought into focus the distinction between their world of making, buying and selling and the associated world of financial support.


What has struck me about all of these companies, working across many sectors, is their honesty, commitment, ingenuity and general all round positive approach to life. Despite the fact that they are all operating in a challenging economic environment and some have seen changes as a result, they retain a complete passion and commitment what they are doing and a desire to do it better. They are also characterised by a willingness to adopt new ideas and new approaches, particularly given the resource constraints under which they are working.

The small business sector in the UK has, through force of circumstance, had to consider alternative sources of funding such as traditional private equity investment, public markets or even crowd-sourced loans and investments. The traditional bank loan has become a rare thing because the application process involves endless spreadsheets, management accounts, assignation of all future life earnings and multiple internal examinations, after which the risk manager says ‘No’. Even if the risk matrix is successfully negotiated, the nature of the offer on the table, may make it deeply unattractive. Personal guarantees are sought for loans underwritten by the Government and even widely touted support packages for renewable energy and environmental projects may not be what they seem. In particular, funding for wind turbines may require a charge over the land on which the turbine is built – a very traditional funding model, driven by the pervading culture of balance sheet protection and risk aversion.

While the Greek tragedy unfolds, does this mean that the banks cannot start to unfurl their innovation wings again, to re-assess long term risk models, find new business and meet their own sustainability goals? Even given the macro-economic turmoil, the banks are placing sustainability towards the top of their corporate agendas. This encompasses support for worthy causes, efficient use of resources or control of carbon emissions from office buildings and transport. However, like the supermarkets or public services, the banks are also starting to look at the supply chain, in the form of that which they buy and the products and services that they sell to their varied customer base. The next step is to embrace financial innovation for sustainability, or sustainovation, through which they can enhance their levels of data capture and knowledge about company and sector performance. Further to this, they can develop and nurture demand for standard products and new transactional services that generate revenues while helping customers meet targets around carbon, climate change, water, waste and other environmental impacts.

While the current nervousness about innovation is understandable, surely sliced and diced risk products based on dodgy US mortgages is not the same as tackling the rise of carbon as a valuable and tradeable commodity. An agenda driven by climate change, or the ever rising cost of throwing valuable material into holes in the ground, or the growing costs of fuel and associated materials in the peak oil era, or the rising price of food as land pressures and demand increase, is more pertinent to long term prospects. Perhaps it is more to do with an ability to only deal with the narrow here and now, allied to the view that these are all problems for future generations.

Fortunately there are individuals that understand the potential risks and associated business opportunities – they are just not in the decision making seats at the moment. These individuals working within the banks can draw inspiration from the many honest, toiling private businesses out there in Scotland. They are holders of the innovation flame and need support to deal with rising energy, waste and resource costs – that is when financial engineering will once again benefit real engineering.

Politics....its a clean business

Imagine my surprise at a recent business hustings for the Scottish elections when a significant proportion of the debate focussed on matters ‘environmental’. First there was discussion about high speed rail links, initially about infrastructure, but rapidly focussing on the potential for carbon emission reductions. Inevitably we moved onto the question of the renewable energy dividend in Scotland – onshore and offshore, wind, wave, tidal and associated research, technology and service jobs. It was fascinating to sense that the politicians and businesses were as one on this. It would seem that clean energy and clean technologies are increasingly viewed as the great commercial hope. Quite right – we should not shy away from the fact that Scotland is well placed geographically, with a skills-base forged in the wilds of the North Sea and research labs up and down the country.


As this aspect of the discussion developed, it was also interesting to note the reaction from the audience when discussing the need for nuclear or gas baseload electricity in a country increasingly reliant on renewable sources. It was intimated that renewable energy was alright if the wind was blowing in the right direction, at the right speed for an adequate amount of time. The argument was delivered in a slightly jaded and cynical way, but received by the audience in a fairly hostile manner. How times have changed! Renewables would not have been on the agenda five years ago, let alone received such positive backing from Scottish businesses. The only thing this part of the debate lacked was reference to microgeneration, energy efficieny, energy storage, smart grids, pollution control, recycling and water treatment and we could have been at any number of environmental technology conferences.

Inevitably, in relation to the above, there was much reference to ‘where the growth is coming from’ and the ‘green jobs dividend’. This also brought in a question about the Green Investment Bank and the intensive lobbying effort to locate this in Edinburgh. All parties were in agreement of course, with a slight jarring note about the fact that the bank cannot borrow (initially at least) and that its balance sheet is tiny in comparison to the spending power of the financial behemoths that we already own!

Regardless of the caveats, in my view the Green Investment Bank in Edinburgh is a good idea because:

It focuses minds and attention on the task of decarbonisation, climate change adaptation, waste reduction and the need for new commercial and investment models to support this.

It will be a major boost to Edinburgh if the lobbying works and will act as a focus for other related financial services businesses – creating a financial and investment centre built on new, innovative models of insurance, asset finance and bonds, for example.

It will inevitably form alliances with other established institutions, perhaps acting as a white label route for their own lending resources. Whatever the form of these alliances, it will serve to encourage the big banks to up their game in terms of environmental products and treating the clean technology and clean energy sectors as worth doing business with. This recognises of course that it is not just about renewables, there are a host of technology and services businesses that will grow up around the broader environmental sector.

It will act as a cradle of innovation and represents a great opportunity for Scottish universities and researchers to work with a UK institution that is on their doorstep. Scotland retains an excellent pool of financial talent which can build careers and reputations around the environmental agenda.

Finally, being in Scotland, means that it is slap bang in the centre of one of the most dynamic and potentially fruitful renewable energy technology hubs in the world. Not to mention a centre for financial innovation and one that has a dynamic research base....and a country for which the environment is one of its main selling points, but as we all know, it is a complicated environment, shaped by the hand of man over many centuries.

The coming Scottish elections are fascinating for many reasons. However, where we have a significant amount of political debate about matters environmental, the business sector acknowledges the role of clean technology and clean energy as growth engines and the financial sector is starting to see the commercial upside, Scotland could actually be looking at economic nirvana in a peak oil world.

Moving Conversations launches at world's biggest television market

Moving Conversations launched to the world's broadcast media at MIPTV in Cannes.  Thanks to Scottish Development International and PACT for their help!

"This could be really big", "This is really clever", "There is definitely something here" - just some of the epithets applied once the producers and broadcasters had seen the showreel.  Next step - turn this enthusiasm into an online or broadcast property.

Interesting to see that in addition to the traditional broadcast scene, there was a big emphasis on 'branded' content and entertainment.  That's exactly what Moving Conversations is, so some great contacts made there.

As with all trade shows.....its all in the follow up.  As Steve Jobs has supposedly said, "its all about perseverence".

Yours truly does the Edinburgh International Festival

Having produced a series of Moving Conversations at the Edinburgh Fringe a few years back, I am bringing my 'intelligent entertainment' format to the 2011 Edinburgh International Festival.  www.eif.co.uk/trading From popular culture to the altar of high art - Moving Conversations knows no bounds!

In line with the theme of EIF 2011 - To the Far West - we are bringing together business gurus to discuss the rich tradition of trading links between Scotland and Asia.  As well as a Director of HSBC [yet to be confirmed], the line-up for Trading with the Far West includes:

Ian Ritchie CBE - technology entrepreneur and mentor to many Scottish start-ups.
Michael Ward - a Scottish expat Bollywood film producer! Planning a full length feature of The Far Pavilions.
Professor Catherine Schenk - expert on the history of Chinese financial services and chronicler of the rise of HSBC.
John Callaghan - CEO of pt Hero, Indonesia's biggest supermarket chain and part of the Jardine Matheson trading empire.

As it is a Moving Conversation, each panellist will come armed with an entertaining clip from the Scottish Screen Archive http://ssa.nls.uk/ around which they will build a compelling argument.  It promises to be entertaining and enlightening - worth seeing for its unique historical value, let alone the views of a diverse and engaging panel.

Trading with the Far West is a one off show at The Filmhouse, Edinburgh, 2.30pm on Friday 19th August.  We are in Screen 2, which seats 100 - so book early!  Tickets are available at £6 through http://www.eif.co.uk/, the Hub or Filmhouse box offices, from 2nd April.

Moving Conversations

Here is a short film about Moving Conversations, my 'intelligent entertainment' format, which has been on the road in Ullapool, Glasgow, London, Dublin, Aberdeen, Edinburgh and Liverpool over the past few years.  We work with ITN Source and the Scottish Screen Archive and have covered a huge range of topics - climate change, energy, fast food, urban regeneration, selling, cities of the future, digital media, video games....the list goes on.  Sponsors have included Bank of Scotland, Renewable UK, Ernst & Young, McGrigors, SURF, Scottish Wave of Change, Zero Waste Scotland and EPSRC.

Its a great way to entertain an audience and get under the skin of a topic.  Michael Grade, former Chairman of ITV, says its a 'terrific format' and Stuart Cosgrove, Head of Creative Diversity at Channel 4, thinks its a 'clever concept'.  Audiences love it!

Contact me if you are a corporate looking for a fantastic way to communicate with target audiences [the ROI is excellent] or a broadcaster/online content provider looking for a proven and successful format that attracts an enthusiastic audience and corporate sponsorship.

Look our next week for a further Moving Conversations announcement.