Lecture 1

with Stuart Tolley (Transmission), Emma Harverson (White Lion Publishing), Lucy Warburton (Freelance Commissioning Editor -> approaching designers and illustrators to put together ideas)

White Lion’s original strategic outline or business plan when they published an internal book series (Build + Become):

• 1. is the idea strong?
• 2. Do sales term think it’s gonna happen (economic sense)?
• business plan for 3-5yrs
• first 4-5 months challenging
• Knowing people that help market the book
• recommendation remains the main way people do commissioning = a client hires a designer etc. to create an artwork based on their request
• communication
• keep looking at the market

Lecture 2

with Hamish Makgill (former Red Design studio co-owner -> BBCyclinders employee -> Creative Director & Founder Studio Makgill)

Strategy setting up a design studio?:

• quality of work more important than financial gain
• The Product manager from a client was mentoring them
• big client work made their exposure and quality grow but they didn’t want to become bigger (4 people at that point)

Businesses are quite straightforward to set up but partnerships are quite complicated

Learnings?

• be a bit tougher with money, know their value (also time wise, nothing is for free)

Walk in the client’s shoes – taking them somewhere they weren’t expecting

• learned a lot during recession: Needed to find tools to survive and find them quickly

There are a few studios that have a really distinct voice, they are all not so different from each other

• -> wanted to say more about themselves not only about operations or “we listen to our clients”

Being good at meeting people is a different skill from being able to see opportunities

• with 6 people you are still not very efficient, have a lot of overhead

Have people to lean on to ask questions; get some financial advice

Work out what you do, what is it you’re doing? Why is your agency there?

Don’t just be another agency

Other resources

Kourdi, J. (2009), Business Strategy: A Guide to Taking Your Business Forward. London: John Wiley & Sons

What is business strategy?

• helps to highlight how profits can be increased through product extensions, changes; it relates to developing and implementing a firm’s internal organisation

“People like to do work that is meaningful to them and that has purpose. Strategy should provide that meaning and purpose” (p. 12 – 13)

What strategy is not…

• vision/mission statement
• goal, budget, business plan, data analysis

Development of strategy includes:

• Who is target audience
• What products/services
• How to undertake related activities efficiently

• Attractiveness of offer for customer = value proposition

importance of values & incentives:

• internal: skills, people’s attitudes towards their work
• external environments: regulatory developments, demographics, economic growth, political stability

How scarce and valuable are the products and services?

Starbucks: “The best way to deliver the greatest customer experience is to deliver the best employee experience”

Developing a business strategy and thinking strategically (p. 69 – 70)

Analyse business strategy (p. 70 – 72):

• Unterstand your market -> What are the trends, customer prios?
• Decide on your business -> what business? distinctive competitive approach?
• Focus on profitability
• How strong is your competitive position (strengths and weaknesses)
• Understand your customers -> How encourage them to stay loyal?
• Innovate -> The challenge is to understand what can be done differently and better -> ex: apple used to acquire ideas from out- and inside the company for ex. ITunes was acquired from outside and then overhauled (p. 101 – 102)

Planning

• Define your purpose in the long run
• Explain your advantage
• Strategy boundaries: Be clear aboiut which products & markets you will deal in or not
• Prioritise -> Emphasise the most profitable or significan products
• Budget -> financial requirements: estimate costs, revenues etc.
• Resources -> How do resources affect each other? -> ex: cash -> ability to market product -> customers acquire -> generate cash

Implementing business strategy

• strategy is dynamic -> choices change, move the business
• have people with different experience cooperate

Managing finance and risk

• improving profitability (p. 131 – 133)
  • variance analysis -> interpret differences between actual & planned performance
  • using KPI’s (key performance indicators)
  • Break-even analysis (sales cover costs; neither profit nor loss)
  • Focus on most profitable areas (sales, ads)
  • How to treat least profitable products?
  • positive attitude towards budget(ing)?

Making strategic decisions (p. 139 – 140)

Operational business decisions:

• managing knowledge and info

businesses that manage to provide customers with up-to-the-minute info about for ex. location of their parcels

• getting corporate culture right

• foster creativity and improvement

• empower and mobilise

remove unnecessary bureaucratic or procedural constraints, give people clear areas of responsibility

• fitting operational decisions with overall strategy

Is there a problem? ex. Pareto analysis: 80% of problems are caused by 20% of possible factors -> 1. Identify 2. Determine factors 3. List biggest factors 4. Develop a solution targeting those

-> Flow diagram of work processes might help to illustrate relationship between problems, their effects and causes