Seth Godin, Author of the Purple Cow, The Dip, Meatball Sundae and he’s latest book Tribes. Some points and thoughts from the article in ‘the marketer’ (12.08/01.09)
Godin describes how marketing has changed; it’s no longer thrusting marketing to the masses but being leaders of tribes. “The new marketing is leadership”.

There are two routes you could go if as a marketer you find yourself in a company your values don’t align too, either quit or lead a change of culture from within. Seth Godin states that organisations need people who are the later.
What struck me is that Godin says that conservative people do not follow tribes. People who do not join tribes do not want to improve life and want to keep everything the same, so they aren’t looking for a new product or service therefore not looking at your ads. Your audience are the ones who want change, who gather like tribes and connect with each other. Adding to this most people want to follow and to be lead by someone. The new leader according to Godin is the marketer.
‘What people are waiting for is someone to say, “here’s an idea or here’s a service or a product or a candidate that will take us somehere new, let’s go.”

He goes on to say that tribe building is easy, as long as your customer/member is delighted in what you do and not feeling ripped off, they will help build your tribe by recommendation. Spreading your ideas freely also attracts interest, membership and sales.
“Once you have it, a tribe makes money all by itself. If you go into it saying, ‘I want to make money from this’ you fail.“
Personally, what I’ve got from this, is that I want to create that kind of feeling in my business, becoming very tribal!!!! This is how I see the business culture at IE Design and the customer relationship and philosophy with keepandshare.co.uk.
Godin ends this article on advice to marketers with the recession in mind.
• That this is the biggest opportunity any of us will ever have.
• He believes that great companies and brands are built in this environment.
• To create real value and real change.
• And to hire amazing people who can’t get ordinary jobs because there aren’t any.
“This is what you’ve been waiting for and I hope you don’t miss it.”

I’m going to take this on, that he is right and see what I can create in the world!

See Seth Godin really cool blog! http://sethgodin.typepad.com
Look you, if you are a Seth Godin tribe member you can get a doll to!

Ollie displays characteristics of a cultural entrepreneur by having an individual, collaborative and holistic approach to work, motivated by solving problems and being a servant leader. He has learnt new skills in producing and managing creativity throughout his career, mainly project based work for clients and has managed risk by concentrating on a 20% profit margin dropping clients who do not produce that kind of margin. Ollie’s company is involved in the majority of time, in producing and distribution of his client’s commissions especially around web based projects. IE Design developed a management system for themselves which they then marketed as periscope, an online creative management system for creative enterprises becoming producer and consumer or rather in this case consumer-producer, a trait of a cultural entrepreneur. Ollie foresaw 7 years ago, that interactive and online services would be the way to go and so brought on board Oliver Westmancote, as a company director. Seeing and predicting market needs is a distinct trait of an entrepreneur. (Southam et al, 2005)

Ollie Leggett is a cultural entrepreneur because he inspires artistic leadership in those that work for him in small teams and understands the creative process so managing it effectively to create an economically viable, high culture and value based company that produces visual media in print, interactive or web based output. ‘Forming such a business is not only an economic but also a creative act, for it involves shaping a complex cultural web of identity, relationships, communication, language and technology.’ (Rae, 2007: 194) It could be said from the previous quote, that Ollie Leggett demonstrates this with his management and business leadership service to his customer and employees.

Hope you enjoyed and please comment:

Rai Jenkins

Ollie Leggett of IE Design, was totally inspiring from how he obtained his first client, to his approach in running his business. His personal values have shaped his business ethos. When Ollie started his company he created his core values which he still works by today however he did say that it’s a daily struggle to keep to them when he has to let someone go etc. His ‘Key Values’ are non negotiable and suggested that to ‘Be true to yourself and live it’

Ollie stated that he lead not managed his company and went on to say that only 3% of us are ‘Natural Leaders’ however the good news is that you can learn to be one!!!!! He referred to a book ‘Developing the Leader within You’ by John C Maxwell.

Most of what Ollie spoke about reflected current management thinking……I really think he should write it down!

Second up was Rachel Hargrave with a totally different approach to her business. Rachel, is a partner of Phoenix Partners based in Leicestershire which she set-up 7 years ago. Organic strategy comes to mind in how Rachel approaches her business, responding to clients needs with ‘Yes we can do that to’ then finding a way! Moving from live events and film and video into different areas such as PR and graphic design has been a business strategy that has benefitted the company in the downturn as the projects and budgets have been slashed in Live Events. Rachel recognised that she has to be more structured since the early days where she was very much hands on, she now finds herself managing and moving the company forward. Something she admits seems at times rather alien to her. How she wins work is being really good a what you do – helping people to communicate their story in a variety of multi platform and cross discipline work, that is memorable and full of impact.
Alan James, a freelance producer shared with us his experience of producing a unscripted improvised live band with an orchestra and live writing composers. The Band –“The Bays” based in London.
10 years ago, a group of session musicians from well know acts came together and decided not to make records but only play live totally improvised with no rehearsals and no vocals. The four piece, The Bays, are drums, bass, keyboards and ‘science department’ – effects with a special guest each night. Alan explained the difficulties in working with an improvised band with an orchestra and how it was overcome by the use of technology.
All these speakers had qualities of passion, commitment and creativity in what they produced and how they ran their business or project. I would like to thank all of them in taking the time to come and talk. Thank you for reading…

I’ve done the assignment and what I’ve learnt is that entrepreneurs are not just someone who starts their own business like the Americans definition. Entrpreneurs creates a new business model, market or product. Most creatives create but not all make a product that creates it’s own market demand or fullfils a unreleased niche market. However there seems to be a blurring of being entrepreneurial in the creative industries. Haven’t quite got the Cultural diffusion idea…..on the David Rae part especially as Loudmouth doesn’t appear to exist now and that was his ‘case study’. Lost interest at 3.15am this morning after a hour of exhaustive searching via Google. In case you are wondering why I’m working that late – I think better without distraction.

‘As Leadbeater and Oakley (1999) argue, cultural entrepreneurs ‘blur the demarcation lines’ between consumption and production, work and non-work, individualism and collaboration’ (Rae, 2007:194)

I might be following Maddonna on this next assignment or perhaps the guys who set up Lovehoney.co.uk. They were both pushed and pulled into it!!!!! Maddonna wasn’t, she pushed!!! Or Ollie Leggit?

Has anybody got any ideas???

The concept of a cultural entrepreneur

The concept of a cultural entrepreneur is one in which culture is connected to enterprise. According to Peterson (2004:17).

“Culture is the relatively stable set of inner values and beliefs generally held by groups of people in countries or regions and the noticeable impact those values and beliefs have on people’s outward behaviours and environment”

The definition of culture actually transcend into the concept of entrepreneurship in that according to Malone (2002).

“An entrepreneur is a person who has an overwhelming need to control and organise his or her life. So profound is that need, and so deep is the commitment that the entrepreneur is willing to bet everything, including their life, to reach that goal”.

Entrepreneur is often deemed a fix identity (Rae:2007). For example, definitions include “a person who creates organisations” (Gartner: 1989), “the enterprising person (Gibb: 1987) and “ the person who recognises and acts to exploit an opportunity” (Shane and Venkataraman: 2000;Stevenson and Jarillo: 1990).

For Kirby (2003) “ it entails the ability to create and build something from practically nothing. It is initiating, doing, achieving, and building an enterprise or organisation, rather than just watching, analysing or describing one. It is the knack for sensing an opportunity where others see chaos, contradiction and confusion…”

What is highlighted is that their own definitions did not mention anything about business even though Entrepreneurship is often dominated by economic theories. In fact they spoke of the diversity of entrepreneurs from all walks of society filtering into different sectors from politic to entertainment to culture by looking at the characteristics that instilled such drive within them. Their environment and indeed their “culture” would inadvertently affect their entrepreneurial prowess.

The concept of a cultural entrepreneur and enterprise

As mentioned in the introduction the concept of a cultural entrepreneur is one in which culture is connected to enterprise. Spinosa et al (1997) argued “entrepreneurs are history makers who change the world around them through action”. There is not a concrete definition of what a cultural entrepreneur is but in my opinion it entails being motivated by something creative for individualistic and potential eventual commercial gain. An example of this would be James Dyson founder and chairman of Dyson. The objective for him was to create and innovate a product that was better than the last creation and because of this passion he continually developed ways to enhance his product in an attempt to create the best vacuum within the industry. The initial agenda was not to generate wealth but a better product. I think that this differentiates a cultural entrepreneur from an entrepreneur in general. Schumpeter (1934) characterised the entrepreneur as an innovator rather than a profit seeker. With “the capacity of seeing things in a way which afterwards proves to be true ……learning in his natural and social world so that actions can be simply and reliably calculated”. The characteristic are similar but the motives vary from individual to individual.

Another example of a cultural entrepreneur is Annette Naudin currently the course director of the MA Media Entreprise course she has vast experience within the creative sector and ran her own textile business for 7 years. Her experience within the industry has provided her with a wealth of creative industry knowledge, which she now shares with her pupils. I believe she is another example of a cultural entrepreneur as she has the entrepreneurial prowess and experience and obviously thrived in her sector based on the years spent in the textile industry but she opted to become a course director to impart what she was passionate about, the creative industry. Other cultural entrepreneurs are people like Bill Gates and Bob Gedolf. Though people like Joy Roxborough who created and developed Island Joy Cards can also be viewed as a cultural entrepreneur because she developed a product that she was passionate about, as identified earlier the differentiation really depends on what is relevant to the person analysing the concept but in my opinion cultural entrepreneurs are driven for more than monetary reasons.

Characteristics and motivations of a cultural entrepreneur

What characteristics motivate an entrepreneur to take on a new venture and risk everything? Within today’s society many people are so used to the security of a annually paid job, family time and constructed leisure that they are fearful to venture out into the entrepreneurial world. According to Hisrich and Peters (1989:72) “the motivations for becoming and entrepreneur vary and are hugely dependent upon the person but the primal focus is that of independence and being one’s own boss. This is what enables many people to endure the psychological and financial risks attributed to successful ventures”. According to Rae (2007), Edith Penrose (1959) considered enterprise to be a psychological predisposition on the part of the individual to take a chance in the hope of gain, through risk taking behaviour.

Dr Atkinson a leading business psychologist identified the key traits of entrepreneurs and he found that the desire to win was a huge reason for the entrepreneur’s resilience and drive. I believe that the cultural entrepreneur deviates from this theory in that the objective is to be creative and passion about the product produced or the service/skill provided. The drive is to progress and enhance not necessarily competitively “win”.

According to John Howkins the creative/ cultural entrepreneur has some of the following characteristics:

According to Gibb (1987) entrepreneurial attributes within a UK context are:

The characteristics are numerous but the underlining theme is that the attributes of a cultural entrepreneur are positive and only possessed by few people. Often the difference between a “normal person” and an entrepreneur is that the normal person has dreams of grandeur but the entrepreneur makes them a reality.

Entrepreneurial approach

According to Rae (2007), the entrepreneurial learning is a dynamic process of awareness, reflection, association and application. Which involves transforming experience and knowledge into functional learning outcomes. The close connection between the processes of entrepreneurial learning with those of opportunity recognition, exploitation, creativity and innovation (Lumpkin and Lichtenstein: 2005) can be used to gain self-direction in planning, problem solving and implementing tasks successfully.