On Tuesday 30th of October I attended the “Get Creative” conference in the Helix DCU. Guests speakers gathered to talk about the importance of creativity in both business scenarios and everyday life. The topic of discussion varied between each guest some talking of their own creative innovations and products, others discussing methods and tools they use to achieve successful creativity. All discussions were inspiring in the aim to convince us all in attendance to focus on creativity and use creative thinking in our daily lives and futures.
The conference was hosted by Joan Mulvihill and included a panel discussion. The speakers in attendance are as follows:
- Aisling Cowzer (Accenture – digital manager)
- Tania Banotti (Creative Ireland – director)
- Joanne looby (Diageo – Baileys global head of innovation)
- Ailbhe & Izzy Keane (IzzyWheels – founder&creators)
- Patrick Hickey (Rothco – CEO&cofounder)
- Mark Bennett (TalentGarden – country manager)
- Brian Dillion (Meltybrains – experimental Musician)
- Akil Voorakkara (Eirloop – head of electronic control systems)
Aisling Cowzer:
The first speaker presented to us in the helix was Aisling Cowzer.
Aisling is currently working in Accenture as an experience strategy digital manager after completing her degree in Computer Science and Business in Trinity College Dublin.
Accenture is an organisation that specialises in creativity and innovation, helping their customers all around the world with management consulting, technological services and outsourcing.
Aisling believes design plays a huge role bringing people into the heart of everything we do. Companies need design in order to establish their goals as a business, create good relationships with their customers and also to shape the future of the business.
Aisling talks about many aspects of design such as the research involved and tools used in order to ensure efficient design is being carried out within the work place. Some of the design tools she mentioned were the likes of researching and interviewing the target markets which allows the companies to understand the consumers’ needs and wants. Aisling also mentions the use of personas which business use to help designers understand wants of a consumer by taking them out of their normal life & day job and making them think like the customer they are deigning for .SET factors are also important in understanding the social economic and technological sides to things.
Aislings main opinion on design is that is all about challenging the norms, understanding problems and finding ways to fix them/ improve already existing things, which is why research is such an important tool when it comes to design. The double diamond is an approach used for this problem solving.
Aisling also talks about design as the mindset people bring to current situations and it was interesting to learn that Aisling uses post it notes , something so simple , to optimise her design thinking.
Aisling speech was extremely interesting and insightful and has left me with a new mindset on how to tackle problems faced with in the future.
Ailbhe & Izzy Keane:
The 4th speakers of the day were the inspiring sisters Ailbhe and Izzy from a company called IzzyWheels.
Ailbhe is the founder and creative director of IzzyWheels which she set us as part of a final year project while studying Visual Communications in NCAD. Her sister Izzy is not only the brand ambassador for the company, wearing the customized wheel covers herself, but is also a major inspiration and a reason as to why the company was founded. Izzy was born with SpinaBifidi being paralysed from the waist down a wheelchair has always been a huge part of her life, instead of looking negatively at the situation the girls would decorate the wheels when they were young hence generating the idea for the company.
The positive pair went on to set up the company with the motto “if you cant stand up stand out”. Ailbhe says in her opening sentence “expression is a human right” which she hopes her company will allow everyone to enjoy. The aim of her business is to make wheelchairs more aesthetic by creating and designing wheel covers in various designs to reflect the personalties and expressions of the wheelchair users themselves. Ailbhe believes with IzzyWheels people not only recognise the wheelchair but also the personality of the user through the decoration and customization of the covers.
IzzyWheels has proved very successful taking the sisters to events such as “Forbes 30 under 30” in 2018 and winning awards such as the “Accenture Leaders of Tomorrow Award 2017”. The girls have a market of over 67million wheelchair users and have marketed the product cleverly by advertising their product on social platforms, magazine publications even Instagram’s official story, which is where I personally first learned of them before the conference.
They have an online store selling the wheel covers which are customizable or else designed by various well-known artists and fashion designers. Although having some big names on board designing for them the girls prefer not to use celebrity endorsements and instead have decided to use spokespeople instead, choosing wheelchair users themselves, allowing them tell their own personal story and share their experiences while also displaying the product on social platforms monthly. I think this proved to me the most how dedicated they are to not only the company but also to improving the lives of other wheelchair users.
The positive attitude they have and how young and successful the girls are is just truly inspiring.
https://www.instagram.com/izzywheels/?hl=en
Patrick Rooney
Patrick rooney was up next the CEO and cofounder of Rothco, a creative brand working on brand advertising bringing the full potential of a product to the market.
Patrick and his partner formed RothCo some 23 years ago after they designed a spring loaded dispensing system for drink bottles, unfortunately another product was brought to that market a few years ago however that has not deterred RothCo and they have gone on to create other innovative products and systems. Patrick had many exciting anecdotes to share throughout his speech and shared many experiences with us.
Patrick describes his success coming as a result of 3 methods he uses and has fine tuned over the years.
Method 1: Keep saying no!
Patrick believes the best business partners to be the ones that say no. In order to create the best version of a product honesty is needed, they go through many drafts before finding the best product however he feels it is the only way to get the product to its full potential. There are many successful examples of this method.
Method 2: What if?
Patrick also believes in always questioning an idea and not being afraid to break the rules. He then presented us with a video of this method in use. Using AI technology the recreated the speech JFK was due to give the day of his assassination, they gained much success from this as so many people were afraid of doing what they did. Watch the video for yourself here
Method 3: Sticking to a brief like glue!
Usually a client will deliver a detailed brief of what they want to a company like RothCo. For a creative design company this is difficult as they only have so much control over their imagination limiting their creative ideas, in order to make the most of this they stick to the brief like glue taking it apart piece by piece to include everything wanted by the client while also adding their creative visions to it. RothCo has had a lot of success using this method as shown to us in the video they created for Heineken for the campaign #Runwithit. The creativity and imagination while also sticking to the brief was extremely impressive, I wont do it justice in an explanation you’ll have to watch for yourself.
Panel discussion
To finish there was a panel discussion in which Mark Bennett, Brian Dillon & Akhil Voorakkara , all successful and creative business people talked on their own experiences of creativity, what it meant to them and how they implement it into their daily lives and jobs. The opinions varied from person however they all agreed on the point that creativity is important in everything we do. Each one ambitious and driven in their careers feel they would not be where they are today if it wasn’t for creativity.
Conclusion
From the conference as a whole I’ve learned a lot about what creativity means to numerous people and the various ways in which it is used to achieve success. A take home point constantly referenced throughout the day was that it is never too late to find your own creativity, which has certainly changed my outlook as previously I would not have described myself as a creative person.
Thanks for reading. Watch this space for my next blog!
D.I.C.E 18/19 