from Cool Town Studios - importance of local businesses

Entrepreneurs, newer companies leading economic growth

What's leading economic growth in our cities?

Robert Litan, VP of Research and Policy at the Kaufmann Foundation* and director of Economic Studies at the Brookings Institution**, concludes that more of our growth today is generated by entrepreneurial or newer companies. He answers the following question in this interview from Smart City Radio:

Smart City Radio: "If you were advising a local urban leader on how he or she could encourage the start up of businesses that would have a good chance of expansion, what would you tell them to do."

Robert: "I'm going to give them advice that a lot of them may not want to hear, but through a lot of research here at Kaufmann, we think the most effective use of local dollars to encourage the growth of local business, is to do the basics right. If you can get crime down, if you can solve your local infrastructure problems, if you can have decent schools, nice parks and amenities, what that'll do is either attract or retain the 24-34 year old age group that are college-educated. That is the cohort that is most likely to lead to your future success. That's the cohort that's most likely to lead your future businesses. If you can attract and retain those people, that is the best indicator of whether or not you'll be entrepreneurially successful."

*The vision of the Kauffman Foundation is to foster a society of economically independent individuals who are engaged citizens, contributing to the improvement of their communities, thus focusing on two areas: advancing entrepreneurship and improving the education of children and youth. **Brookings is a leading research institution influencing urban policy.

Image source: Rob Millenaar.

The 'creative treehouse'

If you're looking for an affordable, creative place to work or hang out, you're in luck if you live in Pittsburgh, or more precisely, Bellevue, Pennsylvania, 4.5 miles from downtown Pittsburgh. That's where you'll find the Creative Treehouse; a 7500 s.f. arts-oriented coworking space. The key ingredients? An inexpensive lease in a developing neighborhood.

The membership-structured (starting at a mere $25/month) space features:
- A creative service center that will allow businesses to network with member artists (the coffeehouse/coworking scene, as pictured);
- Multi-purpose facility for public art displays, gatherings and even live music (essentially a large open room);
- Photography studio with darkroom;

Also, members are allowed to:
- Organize events;
- Host and attend workshops and classes;
- Be included in group showings,
- Update their online profile accessible to businesses and other members.

Events include 24-Hour Creative Marathons (e.g. publish a comic book), NY-style dance parties, and collaborative world happenings like the May 10, 2008 Pangea Day where 24 user-created films are shown simultaneously around the globe.

Open since June 30, 2007, the Creative TreeHouse has plans to expand to other cities (undetermined) in the future, which is expected since it fits the MySpace-oriented viral loop model of customer-motivated replication. As owner Jesse Hambley puts it, who founded the Treehouse as a 23 year-old independent photographer, designer and video editor, "It's like MySpace in a building."

Thanks to Christian MacAuley of Fab Apps for the reference!

Posted by Neil Takemoto | Link | Comment (0)

Crowd-sourcing a music festival

This is another one of those 'it was just a matter of time' things...

We've gone over how to crowdsource places and scenes, but not events. Well, here's a real world example in Scotland...

The Tennent's Mutual is a music festival with a quarter of a million $ budget (this can obviously be scaled smaller or larger depending on your market)... that its founders will allow music lovers to "shape, create and dictate gig provision - from selecting artists and debating locations to calling the shots on ticket prices."
Sponsored by Tennent's Lager, the 'crowdmanaging' opportunity is free, and its advisors include the likes of the Rolling Stones' Andrew Loog Oldham, so there goes the myth that this is only for college students.

Another one of the advisors, Stewart Henderson from Chemikal Underground, comments on the rengen-like impact, "This is a total watershed time that we're living in at the moment. It will change things completely--irreversibly. What Tennent's has done is they've effectively set themselves up as patrons. It's a positive thing as it allows things to happen that may not have otherwise."

Profits from this event will fund the next one. One can just see a viral loop network forming soon...

Attract more creatives with 'anchored coworking'

Creatives, free agents, entrepreneurs and mobile knowledge workers may be driving the economy, but they aren't going to be driving to work. They prefer avoiding isolation at home, but there are only so many coffeehouses, and even fewer coworking sites.

One growing source of spontaneous workplaces are anchored coworking sites - coworking sites provided by established companies who not only have extra space, but enjoy reserving it for untethered creatives. PSFK: Trends and Inspiration profiles several such examples in their recent article, A Deeper Look at Coworking.

What're the benefits of anchored coworking sites?
- For once, it doesn't take much additional investment or planning because the anchoring firm has already done so for itself (ie general lease, network printer, internet, phones, etc.)
- Second, the anchor company is often open to collaborating with its itinerant tenants, and thus will choose those with like-minded interests - a win-win proposition.
- Third, it's a heckuva lot faster, easier and much less risky with a more ubiquitous supply when you're talking about companies with extra desks vs starting completely from scratch.

coffee house as office

Third place coffeehouses as economic development

I first profiled Tryst back in 2003 as a popular coffeehouse third place in Adams Morgan, Washington DC. But five years later, ten years after it first opened, it's not only become a neighborhood institution, but it really should be seen as a contemporary model for job creation.

Here's the big picture:

1. A majority of big businesses come from small businesses, and small businesses are started by entrepreneurs... from their homes.
2. Many (not all) entrepreneurs who tried working exclusively from home will tell you one thing - it sucks. No human interaction, no place for meetings, no escape from spending most of your life stuck at home.
3. Coworking sites are ideal, but are often too pricey for the budding entrepreneur.
4. Thus, enter coffeehouses with free wifi and staff trained not to bug you too often if you've decided to park there for most of the workday. The good news is they're packed with entrepreneurs all day. The bad news is that they're not very profitable until they leave.

In the meantime cities are investing tons of capital in contrived business incubators that often fail. Why not redirect that capital into economic development tax breaks for coffeehouses that provide evidence of effectively acting as free workplaces for entrepreneurs?

On the one hand, Tryst makes no money before 6 pm. On the other hand one can't get a seat during the day. It seems to be an economic travesty not to have enough workplaces for the neighborhood entrepreneurs. Proactive cities will overcome this, but it obviously hasn't happened in Adams Morgan yet.

Simultaneous development of district

Crowdsource a tool to support local indie retail districts

What makes 'organically-grown' retail and entertainment districts (natural cultural districts) so cool? A lot of it has to do with the presence of local, independent businesses, you know, the shabby chic coffeehouses, restaurants with live music and neighborhood events, unique shops with cafes...

Many of you are also now familiar with crowdsourced placemaking, especially one specific business, one building, and one district at a time. But what if you wanted to make a difference to invigorate all of the local indie businesses in the natural cultural district within your own neighborhood, and you wanted to do it now?

Let's crowdsource a tool and system to do just that, shall we?

Let's start with a sponsor and an existing prototype a few triple-bottom-line businesses co-developed, such as a 'TV guide' and directory web portal and crowdsourcing tool for all the events, experiences, scenes and third places in your retail district that exist... and don't exist.

The effort to date is resulting in a vision to make it vastly affordable for all main streets, mass customizable, highly googleable, with Amazon-like user reviews/ratings of all the businesses and events, the ability to suggest missing events on the 'TV Guide', and the opportunity to crowdsource the missing venues that the local creative patrons collectively feel are sorely needed... In Adams Morgan, Washington DC, a willing candidate for this program, it's a bakery; another great coffeehouse because the present one's too crowded; a larger performance theatre; more legitimate places to buy clothes...

The incentive to join this crowdsourcing effort, in line with the Think Local First campaign (which I guess fittingly doesn't have a national website) and perhaps the National Main Street Center, is not only the chance to customize a program to help revitalize your neighborhood commercial center, but every contributor gets a tenth off the eventual cost, the top ones win a third to half of the eventual cost, some even free.

Email to participate via the email link in the right column.

User Interaction and Buy-in

Our customers need to feel like they are interacting with a toy like legos that they can build as they like and reconstruct at will. As much as possible the environment needs to be responsive to their needs and interest. Promoting user feedback, and quick response to that information is imperative. Recipe contests, public suggestion boards, rewards for customer suggested improvements, customer advisory boards, playlist feedback, custom merchandise, movable partitions and furniture, along with pianos, game systems, sections of the store that can be painted by the patrons, and a host of other innovations need to be in place to truly make our venue a unique and vibrant location.

The gowing economic impact of the creative class

The growing economic impact of the creative class

Richard Florida's Who's Your City?, profiled in the previous entry and available starting today, focuses on why place matters dearly in attracting the creative class. However, the book provides an effective visual (above) and an entire section among four on why the creative class matters in the first place.

Notice the rise in the creative class workforce along with services, and the decline in manufacturing and agriculture, especially to overseas. However, what's especially striking is the bar graphs in the lower part of the graphic, showing that while the creative class has 31% of the workforce compared to 45.7% for services, it produces 49.8% of wages paid compared to 30.6% for services. Even more compelling is that the creative class represents 70% of all discretionary income compared to 13% for services.

The good news for the local economy is that creative class jobs are not nearly as outsourceable as services and manufacturing, and they also add to the local arts, culture and entertainment scenes much more effectively as well.

Graphic used with permission from the Creative Class Group, and viewable on the Who's Your City? website.

CoolTown Studios: "The CoolTown visual guide to crowdsourced placemaking

What is crowdsourced placemaking? A beta community? Creatives, VIBEs, third places, scenes, natural cultural districts...? All of that is explained in one definitive 13-page document, the CoolTown visual guide to crowdsourced placemaking and economic development, Crowdsourcing Cool Places for Creatives.

The table of contents:
The conflict: Cities are hitting a wall
Where creatives are attracted to
Third places, events and scenes
Identifying the problem and solution via 'clocks' and 'clouds'
What is crowdsourcing?
Crowdsourcing in action
How indies can compete with chains
Systems for profound change
Placemaking crowdsourcing systems in action
Appendix: CoolTown strategic map

Check out the progress of three ongoing crowdsourced beta community developments here."

Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business

Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business

Profile of a future VIBE

To refresh your memory, a VIBE is a variegated independent business entrepreneur, the creative, evolved version of the franchise operator, that opens multiple unique, authentic businesses under different names and concepts, but with a common system of delivering high quality product and service.

Smart City Radio recently interviewed a young budding VIBE and former attorney in Pittsburgh's East End, Jamie Wallace who opened his first restaurant ever, Abay Ethiopian Cuisine. It soon became known as one of Pittsburgh Magazine's Top 25 Best Restaurants of 2005 soon after its opening in 2004. One of his primary motivations to switch careers is that he wanted his city to have a more multi-cultural heritage, which is a big deal to a creative city.

What's to say Jamie will be a VIBE? First of all, his first restaurant, with no restaurant experience, is a commercial success. Second, you can hear it in his interview, "My mindset wasn't that this has to run like every other restaurant I've read about or been in. My perspective was whether this was a technology company or a robotics company, there are certain principles that I want to apply to my business. So if you come in and you work here, the philosophy that we have, the approach we take, it's the same. It's essentially a customer service business, we're promoting culture as much as anything, we want people to have a great time, but there's a component of what I'm trying to do that would be the same regardless. So I feel like from a customer standpoint, they get that what we're there to do isn't just to turn a profit, it's for them to learn, for them to absorb this culture, have an enjoyable time, have it be educational, and touch them in a way that's different. Hopefully they get that."

Apparently they are.

Posted by Neil Takemoto | Link | Comment (0)

Gazelles + Economic Gardening = Prosperity

Gazelles: There are two kinds of entrepreneurs - the ones that do business (Mom & Pops) and the ones that grow businesses (gazelles*). While it's the Mom & Pops that offer the one-of-a-kind restaurants, brewpubs and shops that create happening places which attract entrepreneurs in the first place, it's the gazelles that account for 75% of all job growth, plus half of all innovations, two-thirds of inventions and 95% of all radical innovations created since World War II.

Economic Gardening: As opposed to 'economic hunting' (the industrial age method of trying to steal companies from other cities), economic gardening seeks to create jobs by supporting companies that are already in place**. Pioneered by Chris Gibbons at the City of Littleton, CO (pop. 45,000), the program has added 12,000 jobs since the program started in 1987 - with no incentives. Check out the program's three basic elements here.

Gazelles + Economic Gardening: Why this combination? You can't garden something that won't grow. With the presence of major universities, this magic equation helps explain the rise of Austin, Silicon Valley and Cambridge, each of whose economies exceeds most countries.

*Gazelles (in between Mom & Pop 'mice' and Fortune 500 'elephants') by definition have to grow at least 20% a year for four years, from a base of at least $100,000 in revenues - in effect, at least doubling in size over that four-year period. Only about 352,000 companies qualify, one out of every 16 companies with employees. Source: Inc.com

**In pro sports, a majority of talent comes from developing college players that teams draft. 'Free agent' veterans recruited from other teams are typically overpaid and temporary. Why is free agency still popular with some teams? Because they don't know how to develop their 'inexpensive' young talent. Understand this, and you'll also understand why the financially-disadvantaged Marlins, Angels and Diamondbacks won the last three World Series.

Entertainment Website

In order to promote activities at our venue, we a source of information that people look to for entertainment information. It could be populated by user generated content about activities in the community alongside the promotion of our events. We could allow a Digg style rating system that brings items up based on user support. We could also allow user ratings of events that they have been to (ours and others) and allow editorials. A website would also be an ideal place to put up video clips of local events like our stuff, plays, concerts in the park to give broader exposure to what is going on in Roseburg.

Modus Table

Modus HD6161 - Hudson Dining Round X-Base Dining Table

Linon Table

http://www.furniturefind.com/Linon-08T26-01-AS-U-LQ1037.html

IKEA Billista Table

Deneb Teak Table

Pecha Kucha Night - 'Speed art & chit chat' for creatives

In 2003, two employees of Klein-Dytham Architecture (KDa) in Tokyo felt there was a profound need for a place that young creatives could socialize, network and present their work publicly. Thus was born Pecha Kucha Night, which has since spread to 103 cities around the world.

Each month a group of designers, creatives, artists meet in, well, a creative space to view peer presentations of their work. Ah, but what makes it all so compelling is that ego is factored out of the equation - each presenter is allowed only 20 images, each shown automatically for 20 seconds, for a total of 6 minutes and 40 seconds before the next presenter is up.

Chair Ideas

Notes on Perugino

2 grinders
1 bunn grinder (drip coffee) w/ big drip machine
Lit pastry case (no refri)
Panini grill
2 Upright fridge
2 lowers (fridges)
Hand wash sink
Dishwasher unit with large tub sink to left
Ice cream case? Empty at the moment
Wood tables & chairs, stools
Wine racks - tall shelving behind bar, but also as a room divider
Seating for 40
Bar is 20'
Room is 26 x 70

I like the lights and bar top, not too enamored with the bar facing (hard to tell in pic). Many bars, look a little cobbled together on the back with mix match of cabinets, refris and dishwasher. It would be nice to tie it together better or obscure it. I liked the particle board floors and the simple seating was elegant.