Hive Health

We are ready to go now. We have had enough of Wardour Street. She has been good to us – vivacious, wild and at times a little weird.

Our new office was completed yesterday bar snagging, the annoying complexities of bringing the ‘internet’ across from the other side of Piccadilly  to Oxendon street and the worktops being refitted on the bar (my mistake).

It’s been a project I have held close to my heart.  Jas and Ian have kept a healthy distance, either in text book delegation or just scared to get embroiled in midnight discussions on rubber floors, iroko, oil painted car bonnets, fabricated steel and suitable adhesives for false glass eyes. I have been working with wonderful contractors in Spruce and working day to day hand in hammer with Wayne, our excellent project manager  who has dealt with me with the patience and understanding I can only hope to achieve with my clients. It has been a full-on 4 week build. Not just as we have been ploughing to get in as early as possible, but the enforced budget, has made me search high and low for the interesting and cool without spanking it all down at Vitra, which isn’t really ever going to be our style. Anyone who knows us, will know that we like a deal, and the chance for a huge treasure hunt is too good an opportunity to pass up.

The driving force behind this obsession with materials, space and interior design has been the brief. A few months ago we did a hackathon, which has influenced the very nature of  a huge number of elements of the office. Alongside this templated ride, sits the weight of having nearly 60 of the best waiting politely for their new home.

We kick off with our first monday in a few weeks, until then the lid is tight on this baby. Visits strictly limited. All that research into the concept of the modern office, space as facilitative collaborator, relational aethetics, and a penchant for school laboroatory worktops has culminated in 7000 square foot of what I hope one and all will consider blinding.

We have a a new phrase that popping up all over the place. Its as much a summary as a mantra. ‘Hand it over proud’. Whether ‘it’ be a brief for a mailer or a piece of copy it’s got to be you-right. Hand on heart I am pretty comfortable that Haymarket House, 1 Oxendon Street fits in with this. I cannot wait to hand it over. Nervous, expectant of everyones views, but proud nevertheless.

The picture above is where it all started. In the ‘research’ phase way back in June. In a freezing shed in Hatfield I discovered a job lot of salvage  iroko lab worktop from a local school. Four schools later, calls and trips to Merseyside, Hertford and Enfield and a little bit of folded here and there. We had gathered 30 square meters and enough of this most soulful of materials to start making some furniture and get the backbone of our new office.

When we kick open the doors I will  flickr a stack of photos for you. Wayne described  the space this week ‘an office with Soul’. By far the best complement I think I have had for a while. I hope that if you fancy it, pop in or come along to the tea party we are having once we are in an settled and everyone has got to grips with the quooker.

Despite what I can only consider to be one of my finest puns. This is a more serious blog that usual and one that comes after my biggest absence from blog writing in almost 5 years. Its time for a resurgence and as I am on holiday from tomorrow, I have vowed that I shall get back to the keyboard and get word-pressed again.

Sitting in The French House with a Change Consultant I met at Central St Martin’s, we got chatting about the respective reputations of the industries we have worked in. My company had worked across oil, banking, Microsoft and a much more diverse corporate world than I have to date.  When we got into The Hive Group,  the conversation typically shifted to pharma’s reputation, selling life and of course the usual Constant Gardner discussion.

It was only when we started to discuss the drug development cycle, was it apparent that the model, whilst far from perfect, has been successful when it comes to bringing patient benefit to life in our very real world. From CML drugs to new surgical proceedures, the profit motive and doing good by doing good has delivered a stack of life.  The fascinating part of the conversation was the proximity we both had to people who had needed those innovations – notably in cancer. When discussed those close to ourselves, and crisis requirements, then the profit motive seems to be more acceptable. Move away from our own families to a societal level  and the conceptual approach and a desire for a utopian world was in my drinking partners view morally much more acceptable. Clearly, keeping Society away from an individual level is permissible mist a solid session of half pints!

With recent news of huge fines and further coverage of us evil drug pedlars it’s been interesting to see the impact that this has had. It certainly increased the number of conversations I have had with friends and ‘bumpers’ about what we do as an industry.

For the last 4 weeks I have working closely with a team of contractors, builders, carpenters and associated trades on our new office (more to follow) Mid way through a on site morning meeting, there was some concern voiced that our business was going to be impacted by the news of the fines being paid in the US. Their concern was about the impact this would have on the people they see in our agency – the real world of healthcare business people. People not across the Atlantic or in corporate towers, but in the same postcode – local people who do good by doing good, or earn profit whilst making people better – depending on your view point.

Where the bubble of ‘anti’ has risen is in the more recent candidates we have interviewed for entry level postions. The news clearly lessens the supply of graduates who through in my view is a misguided moral view, would rather not work for a equivalent of Barclays Bank. Regardless of the naivety of this. It does prevent us from having a conversation about innovation, models of developing medicines and past performance of the sausage machine of health.And the simple fact is that is reduces down the talent pool for an industry that desperately needs young thinking and fresh perspectives.  I still feel the industry should be confident and cynical enough to be exploring new sustainable drug development methodologies whilst not being shy to admit that profit is a motive in the purest sense if you believe that without it the system can be efficient enough to be as life saving as it has.

A delight of a rage has set over me this morning after reading an article in Timeout. The article outlines the current wrangle between a favourite haunt of ours Dream Bags and Jaguar Shoes, and car manufacturer Jaguar. Who are locked in as dispute over copyright and intellectual property.

DBJS is a boutique bar, exhibition space on Kingsland Road, Shoreditch who have for years now championed art, design, creativity, events and exhibitions. The unusual name of this founding business is comes from the two 1980′s bag and shoe wholesaler signs that hang on the buildings original shop front. The venues hosts Jaguar Shoes an arts organisation born in 2002, which the bars owners have been trying to protect by registering the name as a trademark. The application has resulted in Jaguar contested the filing, saying that this could cause confusion between the two brands.

Nick letchford, (co-owner) said in the Hackney Citizen last Sunday “We just hope that Jaguar will see sense and we can come to an agreement that both sides are comfortable with, and we can both have our brands and co-exist,”. All sounds very sensible and tremendously mature.Two brands doing different things in the world. The final ruling from the patent office comes in on the 6th of June unless they can reach a compromise with the giant car firm. .

What strikes me as ridiculous is Jaguar’s position in all of this. I can understand the imperative to protect their marque. But surely considering any usage of the name confusing is bordering on the ridiculous. I don’t order Tiger in a restaurant and worry that I am getting Kelloggs frosted flakes. Or sit at a bar and not buy a car. Why? Because I’m capable of holding two things in my head at once.

The irony is provided 1 mile down the road where the car giant are seeking to add cool/design/cutting edges to their brand equity with their sponsorship of The Clerkenwell Design week. Hoping to be seen supporting the “60 showrooms and a multitude of architectural and creative practices” in Clerkenwell. A case of the legal team not speaking to the marketing/sponsorship department? Or an example of a cynical brand hoping to milk some cool with one hand, whilst suppressing a boutique arts collective with the other?

A delight to read that “Design has always been at the heart of Jaguar and we are delighted to be the title sponsor of this exciting design event” alongside “A spokesperson for Jaguar said the company did not comment on ongoing legal matters”

When you compare this to the need for Jaguar, ”to reach a new and enlightened customer base that is rightly demanding of the cars it buys.”

It does rather suggest that this new enlightened customer base might just respond to you not being such a dick.

http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/jaguarshoes/

We moved from the Festival Hall to Regent Street in January 2008, October 2009 saw us get into Soho and now June 2012 see us hop again. This growth needs homing. Each time we bolt in space, resources and capacity to get us all set to achieve plan. This is our 3rd move and one that should see us chill for a year or or 5.

Way back when we were on Regent Street we dedicated a wall to the 2,000 sq. Ft we were moving into here in Soho. Asking the 12 of us to input. Well its that time again, except now there 53 or us around and about. We need a bigger wall!.

We are midst the legal stuff, on 7,200 sq. Ft about 200m or 4mins (cheers google)  from where we are now. 7.200sq ft is a big area. (Rural folk; 0.16 acre = enough to feed a vegetarian for a year, Greek; half an Olympic swimming pool, Devon; detention centre sized), so we are midst two hackathons to get everyone’s input in the features, fun and stuff our new home needs.

We kick off with a list of problems for the office to solve, and a list of assessment criteria for the ideas we are going to solve these problems with. Last night amidst Princi Pizza and tarts the ideas kicked off at great pace. Dozens of them. From the simple to the extravagant, to the coolish to the foolish, all up there for everyone to vote on.

With one exception all ideas are up for grabs. All of us early bees when looking around offices in the early days noticed one consistent feature. Every office we had visited which had housed an agency that had gone bust had a table foosball. Usually with one leg kicked off as a last rebellion prior to handing the keys in. This icon of misplaced budget and Toy-town business snuck up on us in every dusty, paper strewn depressing office. They are the early warning tremors for clear financial downfall and as such categorically they are banned – never never never.

Once we have got to a list following Mondays final session I will ping it up here to hopefully encourage you to input in the usual way.