Posts tagged "environment"

Post the PM digital awards last night what I really needed was a dark warm room, a duvet and to be entertained. Fortunately part of this was possible, unfortunately only after having to go to Brighton to hunt down insights into Nurses/virology/technology for 9am. The skedaddle back to Town for 3pm proved all a bit of a blur.

This entertainment came in the form of an afternoon with Paul Smith, sharing his views on inspiration, business, customer satisfaction and being polite. Equipped with wild gesticulations, vivid facial expressions, and a bit of dancing he provided a total inspiration for us. It was hard not to be enthralled by him and totally hit the mark – a perfect replacement for what could have been an afternoon of Murder she wrote.

Paul built his archetypal British label on a foundation of playfulness, an impeccable eye and a steely business sense. Since setting up his first shop with wife Pauline Denyer in 1970 – he’s been knighted, had his own exhibition and owns 230 ‘individual’ stores worldwide. But more than any of this, he proved to be a total gentleman, true to himself, and elegant in his honesty. Classically quirky to the core.

His views on globalization, homogenization, and characterless multinational organisations were bluntly put. He willed us to strive for character and difference, to not just repeat what is successful, and role it out country to country but to strive to build on that success, to challenge it, or risk becoming yesterday.

His views on success and happiness were nicely encapsulated in him recommending we all ask ourselves “what’s the point of you”, defining what we love doing, and doing it. No more complicated than that.  Awesome.

Apparently when the Romans used the term Genius they referred to a disembodied thing that lived  in the walls of an artists studio. The artist was a channel for this being  and when their creativity bombed it took the heat, when they soared they were kept in their place by the assumption that they were part of this process but not the foundation for it.

I found this out via this little gem with Elizabeth Gilbert, a writer and loved her view on ego, creativity, struggle and the role of hard slog and luck.

A report today by the BBC confirms what many of us have been expecting. The NHS has a big problem looming. Now I’m not an economist and my understanding of the financial levers required to prop up the economy in a downturn are pretty non existent, but I do understand what has happened before. Recessions hit tax revenues (less people working) and so the Government has less to spend. Even if we ignore all the other stuff like quantitative easing and budget deficits the simple fact remains, money is tight, and its going to get tighter. Add to this an ageing population, the threat of pandemic viruses and a grossly over-administered system the impact on the health service has no choice that to be considerable. Inevitably the spectre of large scale cost cutting, drug tariff pressure and even new drug prescription caps become the norm. There is no doubt in my mind that our industry and our clients business are in for difficult years as soon as the election is called. The policy maker the BBC interviewed called it 7 years of pain from 2011 . In my humble opinion the industry future requires us to be more innovate in the way we plan and launch new treatments, more cognisant of who needs to have meaningful relationships with medicines and more accommodating of the multiple layers of influence that will become normal. It’s true that innovation normally is more prevalent in crisis and whilst no one welcomes what is going on, I am confident that through adversity will come opportunity. We need to mirror the radical reform that our principal customer will undergo, recognise that doing what we have always done will not change anything and embrace the need for new thinking. Thankfully, that’s sort of why we set up…

The word is civil, a very English display. We were ready, leaning out the window to see real “anarchists”. A peaceful, orderly, if noisy parade. I particularly liked the man on his chitty chitty bang bang bike with wings, kites and sign saying “love your mum”.

Printing guilt. When a simple web document inexplicably turns into tens of senseless, almost clean pages spitting out of the Laserjet. When the last page of your print-out is a single URL or a useless banner (Streetmap.com – sort it out!).

Until now, those with a conscience have tried fiddling with printer settings (e.g. choosing “Page 1 only”) or ditching hard copies altogether for downloadable PDF views. Now there’s freeware that does this for you, and more. GreenPrint analyses web pages and allows you to bin those with insubstantial content, saving on paper, ink and time. You can also choose which pages, images etc. you want to build into a PDF version of your document. GreenPrint even keeps track of what you’ve saved in terms of pages, cost (in USD) and number of trees. Also, anything that reminds us to print double-sided and on waste paper, is a good thing.

It’s not preachy, it’s practical. Result: Big thumbs-up from Hive. Click on the banner below to start printing green.