One of the many interesting parts of my MDes experience is attending sessions given by experts in their fields. Today’s guest speaker was Pat Younge. Before launching WeCreate Associates Ltd, Pat has spent over 22 years working in all areas of media, particularly broadcasting and pay-tv, in the UK and internationally. As the Chief Creative Officer, BBC Production, he was the creative leader of the business, spending £350M pa producing global hits such as Dr Who, Strictly Come Dancing, Natural History, Ab Fab and Top Gear, along with many of the biggest shows for UK audiences. He currently spends part of his time in the Silicon Valley working with startups on Innovation processes, media strategy and crowdsourcing.
Younge talked about the EDG model where the essence of it is that when companies want or need to strategically transform their business, they need to examine at the current structure, tasks (what they do), and people and to explore needs to be changed because companies can’t change and stay as they are at the same time. Based on my observations, most leaders tend to change the structure and tasks if they’re convinced with the potential but they hesitate to change the people. They rather wait until someone drops the ball and then fire them. It’s worth mentioning that sometimes it is the leaders who end up being the odd ones in the group because they couldn’t adapt.
I asked Younge at the end of the session if companies and startups will have a chance in the future to achieve growth without relying on investors. He said (and I’m paraphrasing here), ‘Yes, because I do think that crowdfunding is a totally new paradigm that makes it possible. For example, in the past, if you had an idea for programme and the broadcaster rejects it, you had no means of producing the show. Now, with the likes of Kickstarter and Indigogo, you can find your show without giving up equity, which is a win-win.’ Personally, I think crowdfunding has its limitations. For example, most services and products in B2B markets do not come across as appealing as a new 3D printer, music album, or the next social media app. Also, the amounts generated from crowdfunding are quite small compared to traditional venture capitalists investments. I agree with Younge’s point of view that now we have more choices, I just see that we need more variety.
Obviously, there was more to the session than these two topics such as the COSTAR model and managing your own business lifecycle, which I will cover in an upcoming post.
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