1. 6. Idea Generation

2. This chapter focuses on 6. Idea Generation

3. This chapter focuses on

4. Skills

5. Skills Intellectual property

6. Skills Intellectual property Development

7. Skills Intellectual property Development Source of ideas

8. 6.1 Creative skills are the hardest to find – and easiest to lose

9. One in eight companies has experienced difficulty recruiting design/creative personnel.

10. The danger of losing design and creative staff to overseas firms was also very real.

11. “ The best talent always wants to work on the best project. There is a risk that if we cannot source interesting, cutting edge things to work on – or that Australia cannot attract those kinds of project – we will find it increasingly difficult to keep talent here. ” - Animator, Sydney

12. Good creative people enjoy working as freelancers.

13. The freedom, flexibility and creative variety offered by freelancing was attractive to many artists.

14. 6.2 Creative people are hardest to manage and most resistant to Processes

15. Process is not the enemy of a `fun’ and dynamic workplace culture.

16. “ We are struggling with putting formal processes in place at the moment. We started out as a company of young people and we prided ourselves on the fact that the environment was relaxed and that ’ s how we wanted to work. But we have outgrown that approach, and we are coming up against some internal resentment to new systems. ” - Interactive advertising company, Melbourne

17. University and TAFE graduates required intensive input from employers to understand timelines and quality requirements, as well as specific software packages in many cases.

18. University and TAFE graduates required intensive input from employers to understand timelines and quality requirements, as well as specific software packages in many cases. This imposed a considerable burden, particularly on smaller companies .

19. Only 20% of survey respondents said there were no job roles requiring further training.

20. 6.3 Ideas are generated internally, and generally not supported by formal processes

21. Figure 11 Source of ideas reported by companies in the survey

22. Several companies mentioned that working with customers on new ideas was potentially problematic,

23. A Perth post production company said that collaborating with one of their customers on a project ended poorly.

24. Conversely an Adelaide interactive multimedia company described the idea generation process as “a series of common client requests”. Client feedback was sought before ideas were taken to the next level.

25. Companies in focus groups and interviews spent considerable time on new idea generation. “ We try to spend about 20% of our time on non-client work. ” - Focus group participant, Perth