Issue 67: A Bulletin for Big Ideas and Better Business

OPINION/ CREATIVITY

Give your team freedom to have ideas

💬 Sir John Hegarty

Most people are familiar with Google’s twenty percent rule. “We encourage our employees, in addition to their regular projects, to spend 20% of their time working on what they think will most benefit Google,” the tech giant’s founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page wrote in their IPO letter. This rule reportedly led to innovations like AdSense and Gmail. But the technique, of allowing your teams to devote office time to their own projects, predates the rise of big tech.

It’s why I love Post-it Notes. This humble invention has infinite uses. Like shielding condiments from the dangers of communal fridges, and marking up key passages in books without damaging them. It also enables great ideas to be rapidly recorded in workshops (pending legible handwriting). If a colleague is feeling dejected, you should jot down a few words of encouragement on a Post-it Note. Then stick it to their desk when they aren’t looking.

But better than all this is how they were invented. The Post-it Note origin story features a lesson on how to build a creative company. In 1968 a scientist from 3M (which is a huge US conglomerate) tried to create a super strong adhesive. Instead, he accidentally invented one that wasn’t that strong. But could be used more than once. There was no problem for the solution he’d invented. But then a colleague, Art Fry, who sang in a choir, started using the adhesive to create a better bookmark for his songbooks.

Fry developed the idea into what we know today. This wouldn’t have happened without 3M’s policy – of allowing employees to spend a proportion of their time working on whatever they liked. It goes to show: ideas are the raw material of your business. And they always come from people.

Now: write that down – and stick it somewhere.

THE AGENDA

🗓️ Diarise this: your agenda for the coming week

1. This Sunday, the British Academy Television Awards (BAFTA) will be held at the Royal Festival Hall, London. ITV has been handed one of the biggest prizes – the BAFTA Television Special Award – for Mr Bates vs The Post Office, a drama about the Horizon IT scandal.
11th May

2. The annual Global Solutions Summit will take place in Berlin. Held by an organisation called the Global Solutions Initiative, it’s about bringing together sharp folk in business and policy to make recommendations for the G7 and G20.
5th – 6th May

3. Animators will assemble in southwest Germany this week for the 32nd Stuttgart International Festival of Animated Film (ITFS). Whether it is on the agenda or not, one theme artists will be keen to discuss will be whether AI poses a threat to – or an opportunity for – their creative craft.
6th – 7th May

4. The winner of the Oscar’s Book Prize will be presented with £10,000 this week at The May Fair Hotel, London. It’s an annual award for the best picture book for children, and supported by The Evening Standard.
6th May

5. The New York Ballet Spring Gala is to take place. The evening is about the cornerstones of the Company’s essence, according to the bumph. That is, physical poetry of dancers, and the transformative power of innovation through new work.
8th May

US/ ENTREPRENEURSHIP

Buffett, never buffeted
Credit: The Gates Foundation

Warren Buffett’s creative legacy

Warren Buffett stunned delegates at Berkshire Hathaway’s yearly meeting (known as ‘Woodstock for capitalists’) last weekend by announcing his retirement plans. The iconic investor will step down from his position as chairman by the year’s end. The Oracle of Omaha is known for his shrewdness and guile. In 1965 he bought a controlling stake in Berkshire Hathaway, and oversaw its transformation from a textile business into a titanic investment company – it currently ranks fifth in the Fortune 500. Buffett should be equally feted for his creativity. He likened his sprawling company – which owns multibillion-dollar stakes in giant public companies including Apple and Coca-Cola – to a great artwork in 2016: “I regard Berkshire Hathaway sort of like a painter regards a painting, the difference being the canvas is unlimited,” he said. Buffett’s achievements should be a reminder that business itself is an act of creativity.

ON CREATIVITY /

Contributor: Clo’e Floirat

UK / CITIES

Close quarters
Credit: IKEA

IKEA caters to urban lives

Customers of Swedish furniture and homewares company IKEA in the UK are used to visiting vast out-of-town locations. For those in central London, that has changed, with the brand’s new store in Oxford Street – set in a Grade II-listed building that has been renovated by British architecture studio BDP. The retailer’s ambition is to create an experience that appeals to residents who must find a way to thrive with less square footage in their homes than the rest of the country. As a result, the showrooms are much smaller, and have been designed by folk who live in the UK capital. IKEA has plans to roll out a store in Brighton (another place where residents are feeling the squeeze) in the coming months, citing a desire to revive the UK high-street. Furnishing one’s home is an act of imagination, and more so when there are limits on what might fit in the space (or up the stairs).

VENICE / ARCHITECTURE

Edifying thinker: Carlo Ratti
Credit: Venice Archiecture Biennal

Building intelligently in Venice

This weekend sees the opening of the Venice Architecture Biennale. The world’s most prestigious festival to do with the built environment is in its 19th year, and the theme for this incarnation approaches how urgent challenges must be met with intelligence. Its curator Carlo Ratti is a celebrated thinker on urban planning: “The Exhibition will search for a path forward, proposing that intelligent solutions to pressing problems can take many forms,” he writes. “It will present a collection of design proposals and many other experiments, exploring a definition of ‘intelligence’ as an ability to adapt to the environment with limited resources, knowledge, or power.” The biennale seems to be taking its own advice. To broaden appeal, organisers have enlisted the help of Sub, a Berlin-based studio that creates spectaculars for the likes of rappers Travis Scott, Kanye West, and fashion brand Balenciaga.

It’s far better to buy a wonderful company at a fair price than a fair company at a wonderful price.

/Warren Buffett