How To Make Money By Giving..Creatively!!

The Creative Leadership Forum is currently conducting research to gauge reactions to our new series of workshops. When I talk to organisations I am trying to ascertain whether they embody creative leadership and creative and innovative thinking. 9 times out of 10, no I should say, always, there is general agreement that an organization should be creative and innovative. The problem seems to be though how the organization can actually implement and live those concepts. Contemporary IT and its emphasis on measurement of everything, the ever pervasive risk managers and the importance of order in the system, in other words, bureaucracy have made creativity and innovation something organisations can speak about and in most cases that is how far it goes. So are there examples of organisations who live the ideals of creative leadership, creativity and innovation 100% of the time and, if so, how do they operate?

Well I have stumbled across an organization that appears to embody the ideal - Red Balloon Days. Red Balloon Days offers a gift service. They have two divisions - a consumer division, whereby you can simply purchase a gift voucher on-line from the many thousands of experiences they have had created by suppliers specifically for them and gift it to someone and a corporate division whose specialization is creating reward and recognition campaigns for employees.

Importantly this is a profitable business whose business model is based on Web 2.0 and the notion of giving. Web 2.0 business models are something the business world and IT are still struggling to make meaningful and profitable, with the buzz word of the year being collaboration. Here is a living example!!

The founder, Naomi Simson has written a very accessible and honest book "I Want What She's Having" on how she founded the business and, importantly, her ever evolving business philosophy. The sense I had in reading this book is the founder is a communicator, an adaptive leader as well as collaborator in an equitable sense, clearly focused and very in touch with her own values.

The book doesn’t contain theory. It is a concise treatise on Simson's world and her organisation's mission and it is..well..wonderful -how to make money through giving - need I say more!!! I didn't feel any contrivance or sense of proselytizing. The book doesn't suggest there is a rational reason for everything, nor does the author pretend that this is the only way to develop a business. Indeed, she shows a real sense of curiosity and goes out of her way to cite examples of people and events who have intrigued her. What the book demonstrates is with energy, commitment and resilience mixed with a good idea in the first place, you can create, maintain and lead a continually creative and innovative environment built on collaboration. The book sparked off ideas for me all the way through as I read it…

I am keen to discover much more about this organization! Can it become the Creative Leadership Forum's icon "best case" example? Watch this space.