Issue 72: A Bulletin for Big Ideas and Better Business

OPINION/ CREATIVITY

Pick one: three routes to business growth

💬 Sir John Hegarty

Opportunities are hiding everywhere. Sharp entrepreneurs are on a perpetual hunt for openings – new addressable audiences, gaps in the market, and savvy ways to bring about an upsurge in sales. But how do you uncover a new market and give your brand a boost? There are three ways.

Firstly, you can move into a new region. Whether you are simply moving into a neighbouring city, or rolling out a comprehensive global expansion, the principle is this: you do the same thing, but in a different place. The extreme example of this is of course, globalisation. Your second option is to move into a new sector. Your energy drink becomes a media company (Red Bull), your soap brand becomes chewing gum (Wrigley’s), your paper mill becomes a telecoms giant (Nokia). This usually involves doing a different thing, but in the same place.

Move into a new idea, invent something, unearth a whole new category

These might seem smart, but there’s a better option available to opportunity seekers. Moving into a new idea. This involves inventing something, and unearthing a whole new category. The biggest brands in the world all managed to pull this off successfully. Apple didn’t invent the smartphone, but the iPhone did bring the category to maturity. There was no peer-to-peer lodging before Airbnb. And if you’d like a more current example, look at OpenAI.

Each of these three options is sensible, but only one can enable you to be that lauded thing in business: the first.

THE AGENDA

🗓️ Diarise this: your agenda for the coming week

1.
The winner of the 2025 Women’s Prize for Fiction will be revealed in London on Thursday. The prestigious award celebrates outstanding novels written in English, with works by literary heavyweights including Miranda July and Elizabeth Strout shortlisted this year.
12th June

2.
Miami Beach plays host to the American Black Film Festival this week, spotlighting excellence in storytelling across cinema and television. Now in its 28th year, the event features screenings, panels and networking events celebrating both emerging and established talent.
11th – 15th June

3.
The Holland Festival kicks off this week, bringing all manner of surprising spectacles to the Dutch capital. It’s the Netherlands’ biggest performing arts festival, and this year’s edition is set to feature everything from contemporary Japanese dance to Lebanese folk music.
11th – 29th June

4.
The UN will mark the International Day of Play tomorrow — an important reminder that fun and games shouldn’t end as you get older. Play isn’t just an important means of fostering a child’s imagination, it’s a tool to unlocking creative potential for minds of all ages.
11th June

5.
The UK capital is set to become a hub of innovation as London Tech Week gets underway. Bringing together the brightest minds in entrepreneurship and digital transformation, the event will feature talks from luminaries including inventor of the worldwide web Sir Tim Berners-Lee and Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales.
9th – 13th June

BURBANK, CA / MEDIA

Princesses: Seven Disney associates not among the hundreds let go
Source: Disneyplus.com

Dismissals at Disney

The Walt Disney Company has initiated another large round of layoffs, letting go of several hundred employees across its film, television, and finance divisions. Spanning marketing, casting, publicity, development, and corporate finance, the cuts reflect a broader shift away from traditional media toward streaming-focused operations. Under CEO Bob Iger, this latest reduction marks the fourth major staff overhaul in ten months, as the company aims to cut costs while doubling down on profitable segments. Despite the upheaval, Disney’s recent financial results have surpassed expectations, buoyed in large part by strong theme park revenues and improved streaming margins. But industry observers warn the restructuring raises questions about Disney’s capacity to maintain creative depth while trimming legacy operations. It’s a high-wire act between efficiency and innovation.

ON CREATIVITY /

Contributor: Sir John Hegarty

LONDON / COLLECTIONS

A treat in storage

Vast scale: V&A East Storehouse
Source: vam.ac.uk/east

London’s V&A East Storehouse opened to much fanfare last week, hailed as a radical rethink of how museums share their collections. Designed by American architects Diller Scofidio + Renfro, the 16,000-square-metre space in Stratford’s Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park is no ordinary storehouse: it’s a fully accessible working archive, housing over 250,000 objects and 350,000 books. Visitors can wander behind the scenes, exploring treasures from the museum’s collection that are normally kept out of view. It follows in the footsteps of the ground-breaking Depot of Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam, the world’s first publicly accessible art storage facility that opened in 2021. But the vast scale of the V&A’s new institution takes the concept to a whole new level, representing a bold embrace of public access that could redefine what museum-going looks like in the 21st century.

UK and IRELAND / BOOKS

Independents: Distinct sense of optimism
Source: Booksellers Association

Turning a page

Friday sees Independent Bookshop Week kick off across the UK and Ireland, with all manner of author signings, early releases and exclusive editions planned. Underlying festivities this year will be a distinct sense of optimism among shopkeepers; a new survey by the Booksellers Association has revealed that younger generations are leading a revival of the physical bookshop. Despite often being typecast as screen-addicts, nearly half of Gen Z and over half of millennials say they prefer book recommendations from in-store booksellers over algorithmic suggestions, outpacing older age groups. For many, it’s not just about the books: it’s the calm, the community, and the authenticity of face-to-face discovery that draws them in. As trust in online algorithms wanes, and digital fatigue sets in, the humble bookshop is becoming a haven once more. It’s a twist few predicted – but one that bodes well for the future of independent bookselling.

A hunch is creativity trying to tell you something.

/Frank Capra