Presentation for Europeana for Education and Creative Industry. Simon Cronshaw. National Library of Latvia, Riga, Latvia.

1. Build it and they will (probably) not come: Matching Supply with Demand through
Creative Entrepreneurship
SIMON CRONSHAW – CO-FOUNDER, REMIX
simon.cronshaw@remixsummits.com
1

2. A bit of background on me first of all.
6 years ago, I co-founded CultureLabel.com – my own entrepreneurial journey in the
culture space.
It’s a venture capital funded ecommerce marketplace bringing together all the
national UK institutions to sell art and artist-designed gifts, homeware and
accessories from their gift shops.
The central theme of my talk is responding to consumer trends, and back then, we
built CL out of multiple trends we were seeing: desire for unique and unusual gifts,
growing online art market, increased number of artist collaborations in product.
Rather than go for usual culture audience, we wanted people to think of museums
and galleries when they were looking for birthday or Christmas gifts – very
mainstream consumer channels; our customers may never have entered a cultural
institution; often their first encounter with insititutions was whilst looking for cool
product or artwork.
2

3. We sold and exited CL last Oct, and now focussing on Remix, global summits we’ve
hosted for last 3 years, bringing together the best brains across culture, tech &
entrepreneurship. It’s partnered with Google, Bloomberg, The Guardian, Vice and
Time Out among others.
Here’s a 2 minute video to introduce who we are and what we do:
www.remixsummits.com
3

4. Today three parts to my talk:
1. Making consumers the starting point – what do they want in their everyday lives,
and where does culture fit in?
2. Understanding and, most importantly, contextualising the assets we have as
cultural institutions – understanding where we fit within wider consumer culture
3. Move on to apply these approaches to Europeana and how it engages the
creative industries, and we explore three recommendations in detail
4

5. The creative industries understand/thrive on consumer trends
I now want to Illustrate this with a quick trip through several trends currently
impacting our space in the creative and cultural industries
5

6. Witnessing the rise of demand for the alternative, the authentic. Plus a consumer
desire to discover and to contemplate.
In terms of discovery, we’re seeing a consumer reaction to prediction and simply
presenting people with suggestions based on past behaviours – a need to create
room for serendipitous discovery and the element of chance encounters.
E.g. Spotify Serendipity is an artist in residence program starting with Brooklyn artist
Kyle McDonald, showing when two people around the world are playing the same
song at exactly the same time, giving you a glimpse of what others are playing.
How do we create the spaces and user journeys for people to discover and then to
contemplate? Often the museum experience is wandering past hundreds of artworks
in an overcrowded space, or swiping through thousands of artworks on an ipad.
Yet the increasing popularity of mindfulness and contemplation provides an
opportunity to respond – e.g. 99 days encouraging a movement to spend time away
from Facebook, Book of Life from School of Life – ongoing online project to collect
the best ideas around emotional life in one evolving digital book; itself building on
hugely popular School of Life, which packages philosophy for the mainstream through
Sunday Sermons and Classes on love, self and work.
6

7. It’s infiltrating tech and creativity – e.g. The Path NYC, launched by Dina Kaplan – one
of many examples of meditation studios emerging as a hub for tech and fashion
entrepreneurs to relax and network
6

8. So if quality, contemplative content is the ‘what’; the ‘Who’ has evolved to be
about trust relationships with organisations and brands: who you trust to take you
on a journey into new worlds
Touchpress: Created a number of well-know Apps advertised by Apple to showcase
the iPad including Wonders of the Solar System, Elements and Bjork’s album App
Raised £2 million investment for more projects on the back of this. Many of these
have a big focus on cultural content
Produced a series of profitable culture Apps including The Wasteland (Faber & Faber),
War Horse (National Theatre Michael Morpurgo), Shakespeare’s Sonnets, The
Orchestra, Beethoven’s 9th Symphony
Quality is key.
7

9. Moving on from the ‘what’ and the ‘who’, to the “how”. One route is through
Multi-channel networks – aggregators of niche channels, able to promote new online
destinations and a community of interest that connects more audiences with great
content that is already online but hard to find.
Rightster spoke at Remix London last year – selected to establish first MCN for the
arts with £1.8m Arts Council grant, help overcome fragmentation of arts on YouTube.
Launching later this year.
Working on licenced, ad-funded, direct to consumer or paid placement basis. Their
network now stands at over 1,950 Content Owners and over 7,500 Publishers. The
Group employs 256 staff in 11 offices across 10 countries.
8

10. Within this multi-channel world, who are the organic, bedroom, YouTube stars for
culture, beyond the megabrand channels like Tate and V&A?
Plenty of platforms looking to discover and promote fresh curatorial talent:
Guvera – coming over from Australia, anyone can be a radio host – allowing for live
streaming and interactivity with audiences.
Likewise Soundcloud and Audioboom in podcast space - tech/platform and even
audiences there – challenge is who can curate and inspire a following?
Closer to home, Retronaut has shown it can be done with collections. Raiding image
archives to find hidden gems. Half a million followers across Facebook and Twitter;
exclusive deal with Mashable reaching millions of users each month; book deal with
national geographic – all built out of quality curation.
9

11. Next, we’re seeing the emergence of platforms and cultural experiences fully at
ease with their digital birthplace. Not replace or even replicate the live experience,
but offering a truly innovative experience that only digital can offer.
Google Cultural Institute – global partner of Remix – So far Art Project (discover art
collections from around world in incredible high res detail, view exhibitions and take
virtual tours); Historic Moments (Online exhibitions) and World Wonders (Modern
and ancient world heritage sites online using Street View)
Google Open Gallery – tools for the sector – to create exhibits, embed images,
exhibits and indoor Street view on sites; Powerful zoom
Digital Theatre – VC backed by Ingenious showing consumer appetite can mean big
business. Ex-BBC with unique approach to capturing live theatre content.
10

12. Taking this theme further, looking at several great projects that use the very
interactivity and multi-media base of digital content to offer multi-layered online-only
exhibitions. Results in powerful storytelling and documentaries.
Some great classic examples on screen:
This Land – documents the Canadian Army’s patrol of the Artic in 2007, the most
extensive patrol since 1947 – covering more than 2000km
Healing Histories – understanding the rich cultural history of Central City in New
Orleans to help rebuild from the devastation of Hurricane Katrina
One in 8 Million – telling the story of New York’s residents through the eyes of 54
residents
Add to this multi-channel, telling stories across platforms with content native to the
platform (for example photo essays on Pinterest or Snapchat, or long form on
Medium), and the stories start to grow digital wings of their own.
11

13. Gaming is still largely untapped within cultural insitutions.
One example is Minecraft – heard at Remix London from Adam Clarke, Founder of
the Common People, who gave one of most captivating talks on Minecraft as an
obsessive user and one that builds for museums.
One of Adam’s projects was Tate Worlds – reimagining within Minecraft using
builders from all over world. Rather than just recreating, using imagination to explore
artworks – e.g. by walking into an artwork like Pool of London and exploring and
experiencing it whilst having great fun.
Order of motivations is critical: entertainment designed to draw people in, who may
then look at source material, then maybe do this stuff for themselves
Another e.g. Visible Human Project – medical scans used to create Minecraft
structures; can fly through human body – great for engaging with medical data; made
into survival game
Minecraft is an unintimidating way of making your own games, for people who want
to make things, can do anything you want and with friends, place to be for age 3 to
old age. Not just kid’s game – make very sophisticated stuff collaboratively together
12

14. Add Occulus Rift, Google Cardboard or Hololens to this in the future and this is going
to be an interesting space to watch with AR and VR.
12

15. Here’s a typical set of activities a cultural institution delivers
As we explore business models, partnerships and new entrants, one of the key
questions raised is which elements of the value chain are best served by institution?
Which by others?
Many industries have been disrupted by outsiders – we’re already seeing it on fringes
of culture with rise of distribution channels and aggregators, and I’m willing to bet
this will be the most substantial disruption over next 10 years
13

16. We’re already seeing change coming from 4 corners:
Culture – innovators and pioneers within institutions
Creative entrepreneurs – outsiders, fully at ease using creative and cultural assets to
deliver their entrepreneurial visions
Remixers – see great stuff in another industry and apply to the culture sector, e.g.
models from media, publishing, events
Disrupters – affect our world despite not necessarily realising, e.g. Amazon created
world’s largest public library when it allowed free sharing between Kindle devices in
the US. This impacts our core business models as it impacts our users and their
expectations.
14

17. Already seeing many entrants and new models in the social space, and witnessing the
growth and popularity of brands with triple bottom line.
Some early adopters of brands in cultural space, but will grow as more become aware
of potential.
Many mainstream corporations already see the potential – witness the
theatricalisation of retail, emotional marketing, growth of live experience, rooting in
history and authenticity. Will see more speed and depth as this continues.
The point is that we cannot take for granted that it will always be traditional
institutions providing cultural leadership and experiences.
15

18. So that’s some brief considerations where the outside world directly affects what we
do, and the world within which creative entrepreneurs exist and thrive.
I now want to briefly move on to consider our own assets as cultural institutions –
how best to understand what we have and contextualise them within the consumer
trends around us.
Why is this important? To deliver public value: attracting new audiences and new
revenues.
16

19. The first challenge is to consider the whole user journey, across physical and digital,
pre, during and post visit, and including cultural and commercial opportunities in a
smart, integrated way.
Look at the Sistine chapel onscreen – can you still get a great experience with this
intensity of visitors?
Perhaps the physical visit should be more expensive, a once in a lifetime opportunity
on a par with £500 to visit the mountain gorillas of Rwanda, with an exceptionally
high quality virtual reality experience the less expensive norm for the majority of
visitors?
Or, as another example, would you be willing to pay more just to see one painting,
rather than the whole gallery, if it included detailed curator-led talk on that work and
its significance? How about if that took place digitally?
I’m not saying these are the answers, but these are definitely the questions at the
heart of cultural business modelling.
17

20. Another consideration is to view your assets within the context of the wider world.
As part of our direct client work (www.remixsummits.com/agency) we worked with
the Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh, where one of our recommendations was to
position their work within the context of the massive consumer trend in escaping to
the Scottish highlands to escape daily life.
What if the gardens became the gateway and stopping point for those going off to the
highlands, who often travel through Edinburgh. What skills, tools and experiences
could the gardens offer for those looking to get the most out of their encounters with
nature?
Rather than looking inward to the Botanic Garden’s collections, we encouraged them
to look outward to sources of demand, and apply their knowledge, skills and
collections to create a truly unique offer. Taking their assets to where the demand
was, and packaging and contextualising it effectively.
18

21. This example sums up our approach to cultural entrepreneurship:
Understand your assets, purpose, who you are and what makes you special
Understand what the world wants in the form of trends
At the intersection find opportunities for new audiences and therefore new revenues
And once you have a good idea, make it happen. Going from an idea to reality was
the theme of our first book back in 2008…
19

22. …Intelligent Naivety, where we set out 56 strategies entrepreneurs use to make ideas
happen.
We accept that everyone has thousands of ideas. The value comes in enacting those
ideas, but fortunately we can learn from the best entrepreneurs of the last few
decades, and apply their methods to our own situations.
You can download a free copy of the book from www.remixsummits.com/books
20

23. Now finally, I’d like to turn our attention to what this all means for the policy
recommendations and Europeana’s engagement with the creative industries. I want
to look at three considerations:
How we reach the creative industries, Why we reach out to the creative industries,
and how we inspire true commitment from the creative industries
21

24. The first consideration is how and where in Europeana projects the creative
industries are invited to get involved.
I’m no expert in Commission processes, but have listed the five entry points on the
screen from what I’ve pieced together over the last 12 months.
Responses to calls, demonstrators and pilots seem to be pre-project funding, at the
time when key priorities are outlined and an open call is issued for responses.
This is the moment where creative entrepreneurs could have the most impact; whilst
projects are in the ideation stage; before project scopes are fixed and options
become more limited. How can we instil lateral thinking and creative approaches at
this very first stage? Inspire those with big ideas in the creative industries to respond
to Commission calls?
From talking to people, and from my own experience, these calls, and opportunities
to be demonstrators and pilots are often virtually invisible to the creative industries:
only those actively seeking EU funding would know it exists, or those directly
approached as a result of prior involvement. The many opportunities to bring in fresh
talent and ideas are not reaching the eyes and ears of those well placed to respond.
Then, once we’ve got interest, remove any barriers and make the application process
as frictionless as possible. Admittedly a very big ask considering the current
22

25. complexity of the application process.
22

26. There are then two stages later in the projects, entries – for example open calls to
creative industries such as within Europeana Creative, or hack events such as within
Europeana Space – plus the creative industries may be seen as end users for a range
of apps, APIs and other deliverables and outcomes.
One issue is that these opportunities for engaging with the creative industries tend to
come after too much of the project has already been decided. It removes much of
the opportunity for creative divergence and innovation.
This severely narrows the scope of people willing and able to respond to the
opportunity presented. It may be too far removed from their consumer-driven
business interests.
It’s also often hand in hand with a lack of new funding at this stage: usually it is
incubation, skills or mentoring on offer. Although these have huge value within the
process, does this reduce the attractiveness of the offer, limiting applicants and the
opportunity for disruptive innovation?
So invisibility of opportunities, and a question of relevance. Awareness and relevance
are the two key issues we shall return to.
23

27. Secondly, let’s look beyond the mechanics of how to involve creative entrepreneurs,
and consider the question of relevance.
Having a clear purpose means a clear sense of your role and overriding mission. It
inspires people. It inspires community. It inspires action. It inspires loyalty and
engagement. From individuals and from creative industries.
This is tough to hear, and I’m saying this as a critical friend, but the reality is that I
would argue very strongly that the purpose and role of Europeana needs translating
from its current policy-speak into a vision that truly inspires hearts and minds.
Yes, it has 30-odd million objects in its database. A good achievement. But why? For
what ends?
I know that the Google Cultural Institute aims to host the world’s cultural treasures.
They create easy tools for galleries and museums to freely power their digital
outreach. Artsy wants to make the world’s art available to anyone with an internet
connection. It’s Art Genome is creating a recommendations engine for institutions
and art lovers. The Wikimedia Foundation wants every human to freely share in the
sum of all human knowledge and comes top of almost all Google searches.
But what does Europeana stand for? Why can’t I hear loud and clear the purpose
24

28. that inspires each of you to get out of bed every morning?
24

29. That purpose can’t be in a vacuum. Given that direct competitors exist, some of them
in the list I’ve just given, what are the elements that make Europeana distinct and
unique?
Engagement with digital heritage is thriving, as we’ve seen in some of the examples
earlier – so why does it need Europeana as an intermediary or an infrastructure? Why
not continue to go direct to source and work with institutions and owners of
collections? These are the sorts of questions that need to be clearly and directly
answered for its purpose to resonate and inspire.
The opportunity is to take what makes Europeana truly distinct and unique, and
leverage these to create a compelling narrative to describe the mission it is on. One
that genuinely resonates, and inspires and attracts collaborators in the creative
industries and far beyond.
The distinction can’t just be funding. A creative entrepreneur with a strong idea now
has many sources of finance. From debt funding to venture capital, from public
funding to crowd-funding. Competition for attracting quality applications is intense.
So it needs to be built on a common vision: a mission and mindset that inspires
action and support. One that is loud and clear. The challenge is this: set a big vision
and ask the creative industries for help delivering it.
25

30. Let’s dwell on the words ‘big vision’ a little bit longer.
One of the unique assets that I want to consider for a second is Europeana’s sheer
scale. It has over 30 million objects. It is Europe-wide. It has the potential to attract
global expertise, support and finance like few other organisations.
So what is the truly big idea sitting at the heart of Europeana? To use terminology
from Google X, what is the Moonshot that it transforms the world with, on a scale
that few other organisations could ever even dream of? Europeana is one of the few
global giants that could transform innovation and performance in this sector and
beyond. If it dreams big.
Europeana and its projects has had hundreds of millions of Euros in funding.* It
should therefore be operating on a par with the best of Silicon Valley, with similar
levels of consumer and industry awareness, and similar loyalty and engagement from
users. With similar dreams to disrupt whole industries.
---
* NOTE: This figure was questioned, but the funding total is quoted from http://ciber-
research.eu/Europeana/Factsheet_Europeana_under_CEF-June-2012.pdf (“Current
funding by the EU for the Europeana service platform and its ecosystem totals some
30-35 €M per year” – as at June 2012). I’ve assumed this covers much of the period
26

31. from the prototype launch in 2008 to 2012, with very considerable public funding still
allocated within the current business planning cycle.
26

32. But for me, if I’m honest, Europeana’s purpose, it’s Moonshot aspiration to change
the world, doesn’t inspire enough passionate excitement. What and where is it’s big
vision? I simply can’t get excited about yet another creative incubator, or a library of
case studies that no-one reads, or the creation of a few more apps.
I’m very conscious that standing here I’m possibly preaching to an audience of the
converted. I’m sure that many of you, perhaps starting with the next talk from Jill, will
come straight back setting out the grand vision and big challenges.
Well, as an entrepreneur, as a disrupter, all I can say is that something isn’t working.
The problem is either awareness or relevance. And by relevance, I mean capturing
and inspiring people’s hearts and minds.
The draft policy recommendations default to awareness being the problem: we’re
building a great thing and if only people knew about it, they’d come knocking at our
door. There’s some truth in the problem of awareness: as a long-time creative
professional, closely watching the industry for our global conferences, the first time I
heard of Europeana was just over a year ago.
However, as my final conclusion, I’d like to emphasise the question of relevance. Even
here, now, I’m struggling to understand the overriding goal of Europeana. I can’t
describe to a person on the street, or an entrepreneur, what it will have built 10 years
27

33. from now. What will be transformed as a result of its work.
And therein lies both the immense challenge and the immense opportunity.
27

34. Find Europeana’s clarity of purpose. Find a boldness of ambition that befits the sheer
scale of its operation.
Root these within consumer and industry trends, and then use these to truly excite
people about the world you’re building. Make the entry points visible, attractive and
frictionless, and ask the creative industries and many, many others, to help build the
new world you paint.
Only by doing this can Europeana live up to the once-in-a-generation opportunity it
finds itself custodian of.
28

35. 29