1. Empowering a Culture of Creativity
June 23, 2011

2. About Us
‣ Digital agency
‣ Based in Brooklyn
‣ 50 People
‣ Two dogs
‣ In our second decade

3. Clients

7. HOW DO WE
EMPOWER CREATIVITY?

8. BETA

9. BETA
“ We’re only 1% done.
—Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook

10. BETA
Stop chasing perfection.

11. BETA
Stop chasing perfection.
Start listening.

12. BETA
Stop chasing perfection.
Start listening.
Continue optimizing.

13. BETA

14. It starts with three questions
‣ What’s our purpose?
‣ What are our values?
‣ How do we want to work?

15. Purpose can shi over time…
but it has to be clearly understood.

16. EXISTING NEEDS EMERGING PRACTICE

17. EXISTING NEEDS EMERGING PRACTICE

18. EXISTING NEEDS EMERGING PRACTICE

19. EXISTING NEEDS EMERGING PRACTICE
Help businesses
communicate
digitally

20. EXISTING NEEDS EMERGING PRACTICE
Create deeply
engaging
Help businesses experiences
communicate
digitally

21. EXISTING NEEDS EMERGING PRACTICE
Make useful
stuff
Create deeply
engaging
Help businesses experiences
communicate
digitally

22. Make stuff useful
EXISTING NEEDS EMERGING PRACTICE
Make useful
stuff
Create deeply
engaging
Help businesses experiences
communicate
digitally

23. Inent new products
Make stuff useful
EXISTING NEEDS EMERGING PRACTICE
Make useful
stuff
Create deeply
engaging
Help businesses experiences
communicate
digitally

24. Sole business
problems
Inent new products
Make stuff useful
EXISTING NEEDS EMERGING PRACTICE
Make useful
stuff
Create deeply
engaging
Help businesses experiences
communicate
digitally

31. What’s our purpose today?
‣ Help businesses communicate digitally
‣ Create deeply engaging experiences
‣ Make useful stuff
‣ Make stuff useful
‣ Invent new products
‣ Solve business problems

32. Values must remain concrete.

33. Our values
‣ Have fun because fun leads to quality
‣ Take care of each other
‣ Be brutally honest
‣ ...but don’t be a brute
‣ Always take clients beyond their comfort zone
‣ Flex every single muscle in the company
‣ Everyone has a voice and everyone participates
‣ Everything we do must be exceptional

34. We have to rethink what work means.

35. STRUCTURE APPROACH

36. STRUCTURE APPROACH
Culture
People
Space

37. Collaboration Creativity
OUR CULTURE
Commitment Caring

38. What does work sound like without collaboration?

39. What does work sound like without collaboration?

40. What is creativity?
(hint: it’s not art)

41. Our people
‣ Everyone participates
‣ Everyone shares
‣ Everyone has a depth of expertise and a breadth of knowledge
‣ We don’t hire jerks no matter how talented
‣ We keep relationships personal
‣ We want people to bring their personality to work
‣ ...and we take care of each other

42. Our Space

43. STRUCTURE APPROACH
Culture
People
Space

44. STRUCTURE APPROACH
Culture Frameworks
People Iteration
Space Tinkering

46. “ Insanity is doing the same thing over and
over again and expecting different results.
—Attributed to Albert Einstein but first mention was made by Rita Mae Brown, 1983

48. Teams are guided by three principles
‣ Work as a multi-disciplinary team
‣ Produce exceptional work
‣ Be profitable
‣ Take care of each other
➡ The rest is up to you

49. uestions are guided by zero presumptions
QUESTIONS WE ASK CLIENTS
‣ What are you trying to accomplish?
‣ What are your business goals?
QUESTIONS WE ASK OURSELVES
‣ What are we trying to do here?
‣ How are we going to do it?

50. Develop notions quickly and act on them
LISTEN
THINK
DESIGN
AMPLIFY
ITERATE

51. “ Creativity is just connecting things.
When you ask a creative person how they did something, they may feel
a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It
seemed obvious to them after awhile. That’s because they were able to
connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things. And the
reason they were able to do that was that they’ve had more
experiences or have thought more about their experiences than other
people have.
Unfortunately, that’s too rare a commodity. A lot of people in our
industry haven’t had very diverse experiences. They don’t have enough
dots to connect, and they end up with very linear solutions, without a
broad perspective on the problem. The broader one’s understanding of
the human experience, the better designs we will have.
—Steve Jobs

52. EMBRACE
TINKERING

54. How we encourage tinkering
‣ We’ve created a culture of sharing
‣ We encourage people to explore
‣ We look outside for behaviors we can borrow
‣ We provide budgets to teams for the explicit purpose

56. WHAT’S NEXT?

57. SOLVING BUSINESS PROBLEMS
We solve business problems
(from a natively digital perspective).

58. A cheat sheet for empowering creativity
Define your purpose
Agree on your values
Develop a culture that rewards sharing and collaboration
Allow everything to be questioned
Embrace frameworks over processes
Create an environment that’s open and empowering
Look for efficiency only where it’s needed
Let people explore and discover – encourage tinkering
Don’t penalize well thought out decisions that don’t work
Don’t confuse creativity with art

59. ...and have fun.

60. anks.
@bigspaceship
www.bigspaceship.com
June 23, 2011