In Business, Creativity is both a trigger and a continuous process & THE Teenager Digital Life Interface

In Business, Creativity is both a trigger and a continuous process

Robin Lowe has an impressive experience and curriculum. He is currently Principal Lecturer in Marketing Sheffield Hallam University, Head of the Sheffield Business School Enterprise Centre, Business Development Manager for the Enterprise Centre (concentrating on student entrepreneurship, knowledge transfer and innovation). Robin is also author of several books and worked for twenty-five years in industry both with large and small companies, helping to start up new businesses. We had the pleasure and honour of his visit last December for lecturing at our Master Programme in Innovation and Technological Entrepreneurship.

MIETE-BLOG: Robin, please let me thank you so much for this interview. Entrepreneurship is fashionable these days but it has been pushing our world ahead for many, many years. How you describe your experience in student entrepreneurship at Sheffield Hallam University?
RL: Thanks it is my pleasure to have been invited to participate in your excellent programme and discussions. For many years graduates in the UK have typically followed the path of starting their career with a large organisation with some expressing their intention to start their own business once they had overcome the barriers to start up by gaining business experience, building up contacts and possibly even savings to invest. More recently there has been a significant increase in the number of students that are more interested in becoming entrepreneurs soon. I believe that there are a number of reasons for this. For example, schools and universities provide more encouragement and support, there are no longer guaranteed, satisfying 'jobs for life' with large organisations, start up costs can be lower due to the Internet and Ebay, which allows small scale start ups, and there are more realistic entrepreneur heroes for students, such as Alex Tew who started up www.milliondollarhomepage.com in August last year to pay his Nottingham University UK tuition fees and had generated revenue of $1million by mid January.
A few of our students are already running their own business and others have some excellent ideas for the near future. We run a business planning competition each year which also helps to generate some new student businesses. In our courses we are encouraging students to take a broader view of entrepreneurship that is not about only starting your own business, and the idea seems to be well received.

MIETE-BLOG: Would you say that one is born entrepreneur? Can entrepreneurship be induced?
RL: There are clearly stereotypical serial entrepreneurs that demonstrate all the characteristics that have been the subject of seemingly endless academic researched over many years. These are the names that are instantly recognisable and they usually say that they succeeded without any help, training or advice. In my experience there are many more people that have an 'entrepreneurial moment'. From time to time we all spot the opportunity to connect an idea, such as a technological development with a potential market. The idea may not be our own. Some of us have sufficient desire to be an owner manager, have acquired the necessary practical business knowledge to commercialise the idea and are encouraged and supported during the start up process. These become entrepreneurs. I believe that your programme is effective because it provides encouragement and support at each stage of the process and this is obviously paying off with the quality and progress of the businesses being created.

MIETE-BLOG: Sumit Ghosh states that "It is common knowledge that while creativity is elusive, its impact on the advancement of civilization, arts, science, and engineering, is definite and profound." Based on your experience could we further add that Creativity is the Trigger of Entrepreneurship?
RL: The Oxford English Dictionary defines creativity as the ability to create. As entrepreneurship is about creating a new activity then the case can be made relatively easily. However, this generalisation does not really help because the contribution of creativity to entrepreneurship depends on the context. Over the years technological or artistic creativity has been the trigger for some of the most significant product and service innovation examples of entrepreneurship. However, creativity in the way that prisons are run, in the way that a charity raises funds or the government develops its environmental policy could also be considered entrepreneurial. Equally, as well as the step changes brought about by creativity, there are many examples of small scale or incremental creativity, for example, in the way that traditional products and services are marketed or in the way the organization generates its revenues using an e-business model. Sometimes the benefits attributed to creativity can be viewed too narrowly. My experience tells me that some technological or artistic entrepreneurs believe that the technology or artistic idea will be sufficient alone to make the new product or service a success. However, the real test is whether customers will buy the product. Some successful entrepreneurial organisations, such as Apple are creative in every area of their business activity, so creativity is both a trigger and a continuous process.

MIETE-BLOG: As you know the methodology we are using was developed at the HiTEC Centre (NCSU) and we have been adjusting it to the Portuguese reality. At this point in time it seems that we may have a couple of startups coming out of the 1st edition of this master programme, one of them clearly "Triggered by a Creative Process". When discussing this issue we usually say that any startup coming out of this programme is only a "side-effect" of the actual training process and result of real hard work of the students involved. We have the advantage of working with real projects but that carries also some risk. What is your feeling about this scenario in a Master Programme?
RL: Masters programmes are changing considerably. For example, the traditional low risk US and European model of the MBA is being increasingly criticised because it is structured around standard modules of marketing, finance and HRM etc that are designed to transfer to students some theories for handling the generic problems that firms faced in the 1980s and 1990s. Problem focused approaches at Masters programmes are much more relevant to the 2000s because they encourage more reflection and re-evaluation of issues, integration of solutions and transformation of the organisation. Moreover, part time masters students no longer have the luxury of taking time simply to study topics that might be ‘nice to know’ - they need outputs that are beneficial in helping their organisation become more competitive or enhancing their career.
Your programme (MIETE) goes two steps further by integrating business and technology and then creating, where appropriate a new business. The core activity of a university is knowledge transfer not only for the benefit of students but the wider community too and so education, training and practice are coming ever closer together. Creating new spin businesses or using other methods to commercialise knowledge will become increasing important outputs for leading edge universities and this will benefit the community in general.

MIETE-BLOG: Do you think that working with real cases is a plus in the sense that it makes our students more confident when addressing new problems?
RL: Most entrepreneurs (and managers too) will emphasise how reflecting on their experiences (successes and failures) has made them more confident in their future decision making. Business in general and entrepreneurship in particular is about decision making, because problems rarely have one obvious solution. There has been a trend in the 1990s to develop processes to reduce the occasions that managers are required to make decisions. But there are times when more significant changes need to be made and this requires confidence that comes from experience.
In universities we use case studies to try to simulate problem solving and decision making but this is no substitute for the 'real thing' - working on a real case - where the consequences affect the performance of the business for a long time to come, rather than simply prompting a further half hour discussion after class over a drink, before the talk turns to football!

MIETE-BLOG: Would you say that our student’s training is valuable to stimulate Entrepreneurship and Intrapreneurship in Europe? Which aspects would you like to highlight?
RL: There are two, first initial training and, second, continual learning.
The failure rate amongst new starts is very high and many large organisations still have a 'blame' culture that discourages intrapreneurship. I think that we are winning the argument about entrepreneurs being made as well as being born, but I think we need to work harder to demonstrate that with training, students achieve higher levels of new start success, start firms with higher growth potential and are very effective in transfering technology and other knowledge into organisations. To compete globally we require managers that gain a knowledge of theories and concepts, are aware of the wider business environment, are confident in combining technological and business expertise and gain the essential practical skills of leadership and teamworking but also gain the entrepreneurial skills of innovation, flexibility, adaptability and responsiveness.

MIETE-BLOG: In your opinion which would be the value added of a type of master programme as MIETE for a brand new undergraduate in engineering and economics related fields? And for those already at the market place, i.e., with a job position?
RL: Undergraduates are entering university having been made much more aware of the world of work at school. Those already in a job increasingly recognise that career advancement depends on learning new knowledge and skills. Potential employers are looking for recruits that as well as having expertise in a specialist field, such as law, accountancy, medicine and science can demonstrate business awareness, the skills of enterprise, such as self reliance, creativity, planning, problem solving, implementation and so on. Students are increasingly realizing that they will have to be entrepreneurial or be able to manage those around them that are innovative if they are to progress.

MIETE-BLOG: The world is changing at a rapid pace. How important do you think it is to build international relationships and partnerships between firms, universities and institutes to face that pace? How can those relationships and partnerships foster creativity and entrepreneurship?
RL: Few organisations have sufficient resources and capability 'in-house' to keep pace with change and compete in a global market place. The temptation is to work with partners that can add complementary skills and expertise. But a word of warning is necessary because the failure rate of partnerships is high, particularly amongst international alliances that involve organisations from different social and business cultures. The challenge is to decide who to partner with and for what purpose. Then it is necessary to understand where the partner is coming from. Whilst universities are becoming more 'business-like' in their commercial dealings, private business partners often forget that the primary purpose of a university is learning and spend the first few meetings asking the impossible and telling the university how it should operate! In practice the creativity and entrepreneurship is generated by connecting quite different ideas but before it can be exploited it usually requires an individual or team with the ability to translate the ideas so that they are appropriate in a new context.

MIETE-BLOG: Robin, it was great to have you in our BLOG, thank you!

Reference: Sumit Ghosh, "Triggering Creativity in Science and Engineering: Reflection as a Catalyst", Journal of Intelligent and Robotic Systems 38: 255–275, 2003. Kluwer Academic Publishers.

THE Teenager Digital Life Interface

Jorge Santos and Fernando Gomes joined the Master Programme in Innovation and Technological Entrepreneurship (MIETE) in September 2004. At the same time, Fernando Almeida joined the TEC Sequence MIETE (joined the Master programme in September of 2005). The three worked together along 2004/05 and became the MINGLE Project team.

MIETE-BLOG: Let me start by thanking the MINGLE Project Team for this interview in our BLOG. Fernando Almeida, Jorge Santos and Fernando Gomes (MINGLE Project team), we were most flattered by your achievement in winning the 1st prize on the NET/ADI idea and business plan competition. You have a great concept. It seems that this now the time to get your hands on the real business. You are starting this February and we would like to start this interview by wishing you all the luck for your endeavour.
Your company will be based in Porto, how did that happened? Can you describe how it all started?
MINGLE: We were born and live in Porto, and we believe that Porto has the right “millieu” to create outstanding creative companies. Our work in MIETE was already a quite good starting point to a strong business case, but the trigger to materialize that work into a company was really winning the first prize on the NET/AdI ideas contest. More recently, the support received from Porto Digital was also a huge incentive that allows us to be more aggressive in the beginning.

MIETE-BLOG: What is the company name, do you already have one?
MINGLE: We created a company called Ideavity. Ideavity first product will be Mingle.

MIETE-BLOG: What does it stand for? How did you get to it?
MINGLE: IDEAVITY = IDEAs to the power of creatiVITY. The objective is to leverage the emerging Web 2.0 concepts and use them as a strong implementation platform for creative industries concepts. Starting from here, we did a little of brain/mail/sms storming and got to Ideavity. Our mantra is to create a “singularity” in the space/time of creative industries.

MIETE-BLOG: Please tell us a little bit about each of you and about your backgrounds?

MINGLE:(Jorge) I love innovation and to create and try new concepts. For me, candor, openness and respect are the keystones to create strong teams that can make dreams a reality. One of my preferred quotes is “If you can dream it, you can do it.” (Walt Disney). I have a degree in Computer Science and always worked in that area. In the last years I was the head of innovation in Enabler.


(Fernando Gomes) I love challenges, and to apply creativity to accomplish them. I’m a fan of the LEGO concept, building solutions based on blocks and not by “reinventing the wheel”. I also love to work with multidisciplinary teams, the different backgrounds and experiences usually catalyze the team, enabling results greater than the sum of each member effort. One of my favorite quotes is “Anyone can make the simple complicated. Creativity is making the complicated simple” (Charles Mingus).
I have a degree in Electric and Computer Engineering. Currently I’m a project manager and software quality assurance responsible at EFACEC.

(Fernando Almeida) I have a University degree in Informatics and Computer Engineering at Porto Engineering Faculty. I’m now working at FEUP, where I am responsible for the analysis and development of new software systems for the SEF department.

MIETE-BLOG: We do not want to disclose your business idea, that is clear, but we would like to go back to where we were one year ago. As I recall it all started with a bunch of technologies and a huge mind map with lots and lots of ideas. You now have an innovative virtual platform for collaboration. What did happen that made you arrive to this more elaborate and focused stage?
MINGLE: Exactly. We started brainstorming (Ideation phase of MIETE – Just Ideas, Sky is the limit) around the concepts of Ubiquitous Computing, Mobile Communications, Intelligent Gadgets, Artificial Intelligence, RFID… Than we built the TPM connections (Technology – Product – Markets) and choose the strongest ones. During this phase we refined and focused the product and the markets (Virtual Worlds, Avatars, IM, and Mobile Avatars, for teenagers). After that we went to the Business Plan phase of MIETE where we refined even more the concept based on the market strategy, organizational and financial plans arriving to Mingle that at a very high level can be described as THE Teenager Digital Life Interface, creating a new type of mobile social networking platform where they can choose who they are, share their thoughts and emotions, organize their activities, make new friends and communicate anytime anywhere at an affordable cost.

MIETE-BLOG: It seems that the Creative Process was particularly relevant for you. How relevant you assess the training you got at MIETE and are still getting in this particular area?
MINGLE: That’s true. MIETE training gave us new and powerful perspectives about the use of creative processes to generate powerful business concepts. For us, the creative process was fundamental in the beginning (Ideation), but it was always present during all the MIETE phases, to refine and adapt the product in ways that make it more competitive. It is very important to say that the creative process during these later phases was always very carefully aligned with the objectives of the business plan. Now at the end we did some additional brainstorming sessions using synetics methodology to find some additional powerful features for the first version of the product.

MIETE-BLOG: You have been assembling your operational team. You have already designers, programmers with different experiences and backgrounds. It looks great! How difficult it was for you to get and motivate these people to your project?

MINGLE: We are doing that at this moment. We already have the project leader (our colleague Mafalda) and some team members. We are still doing interviews and trying to get all the team we need. This is quite difficult and challenging as we are really an early stage startup competing for resources against established, well known and successful companies in the market.

MIETE-BLOG: What are your next steps?
MINGLE: We are putting together the team and dealing with all the administrative and logistics associated with the company setup. In March we start the development of the first working version of the product. In the middle of the year it will go live and evolve in a very agile and dynamic way based on the feedback of the users. In the last quarter we will start actively finding investors for a first round of investment.