Google exec: Creativity is about innovation

Innovate and listen to your customers.

Dr. Joe Adam Fry, Google’s Global Creative Team head, shares this tips to young businessmen-artists during last Friday’s 2nd Cebu Creative Industries Summit at the SM Cinema 1.

“Creativity is not about some wacky, totally new, and out of this world ideas, it’s about innovation and making what seems to be an old idea more relevant to your customers. Listen to them,” Fry said.

Fry, who spoke during the summit, said the web is a strategic engine that a business can use to grow and get more customers to buy their products.

“Understand what they (customers) do and then develop and conceptualize a message that will reach out to them, talk to them, and give them reason to buy your product,” he said.

He also told artists in order to succeed in being creative, you should understand first why you’re doing it and how you did it.

He said that everyone is born creative but some are just born more creative than others.

“That doesn’t mean however that you can’t learn. There is a creative process and it’s important to define why and how you’ve come up with that creative concept, that way you can apply the same process to your other creations,” Fry said.

designer

International designer Kenneth Cobonpue said that one could draw inspiration for a creative concept from things around us.

Cobonpue cited his success in the furniture industry as a living proof that drawing inspiration from things you see everyday works and sells.

“There is no definite formula for creativity. You can look for inspiration anywhere. There is beauty in everything,” said Cobonpue, whose furniture products have been bought by Hollywood stars.

Cobonpue also shared his nuggets of success to young artists last Friday during the Creative Summit.

explosion

Mary Anne Alcordo-Solomon, the event’s chairperson, said the Cebu Chamber of Commerce and Industry (CCCI) decided to bring back the summit after they saw an explosion in the consumption of creative concepts and products globally.

Solomon said there is a very big potential for the Cebu creative industry to grow given the right inputs from those who have already made it big in the global market like Cobonpue, who have successfully made a brand of his own and transforming the face of manufacturing in Cebu from only manufacturing for international brands to designing our own products and selling them under our brand.

“That is the long term goal. To create more value to the very creative designs we make here. It is time for Cebuanos to step up and make the world know what we are capable of,” said Alcordo.

economy

In 2000, the creative economy was estimated to be worth US$2.2 trillion worldwide and is projected to grow at an average of five percent annually.

Global exports of creative goods and services like arts and crafts, design work, movies and films, performing arts, audiovisuals, books, music and creative services registered more than double growth between 2002 and 2008 with total value reaching US$592 billion in 2008 growing at 14 percent annually, said Department of Trade and Industry provincial director and Creative Cebu Council board member Nelia Navarro. /Aileen Garcia-Yap, Reporter