Project Examples

New Orleans — the film and music economy

In 2001 the music and film industries of New Orleans were convened for the first time in their history to define a shared future. The state’s film incentive followed in 2002 — and, critically, a production company was persuaded to put up $1.5 million as a test case, taking every aspect of the new legislation to judgement in six weeks. An untested statute became a known quantity. One film was shot in Louisiana that year. By 2010, 118. Between 2001 and 2007 employment in the state’s motion picture industry grew 22 percent annually, reaching 6,230 jobs and $763 million in annual economic impact.

New Orleans — who carries it after we leave

Six industry clusters were convened: biomedical, music and film, petrochemical, shipping and logistics, ICT and coffee. In petrochemicals, two leaders sitting side by side discovered that one was shipping a material at great expense from the upper Mississippi that the other produced next door as a by-product. Five competing ports on the lower Mississippi agreed their specialisms and stopped fighting over cargo none of them was best placed to handle. Coffee importers who had guarded their market intelligence for decades pooled it and found they were not, in fact, competitors.

The biomedical group’s recommendations to the Louisiana State government led to a $47 million state-funded facility that has since supported more than 225 companies and created over 650 high-wage jobs.

The music and film strategy document was quietly shelved by the auspicing body. It did not matter. A lead had already been recruited for every pathfinder project — one person at a time, over a coffee that became lunch, that became dinner — and everyone who mattered had a copy and a project they had chosen for themselves. All but two action items were delivered before Hurricane Katrina.

Milton Keynes — a strategy a divided council could vote for

Milton Keynes was preparing to double in size. The first draft cultural strategy put to the council was contested — and the push-back was legitimate. I had been asked to attend a council meeting at the last moment, on my way to watch England play in the World Cup, and was assured I was there simply to support the Councillor for Culture. I was not. I was what is formally called a witness. Ill-prepared and dressed for a football match, I was rightly challenged.

It was not a moment to stamp my foot. It was a moment to start mending fences.

Three years of community-led development followed, beginning with an inaugural event at The Stables with Jude Kelly as guest speaker. The people who would have to live with the strategy shaped it from the first day. By the time the work came back to the chamber in 2007, the council was hung and no party held control. All three strategies — public art, heritage and culture, the first two incorporated within the third — were adopted unanimously.

The same principle governed the royal visit. I chose the hosts of each section for what they represented rather than for rank, and each of them hosted in my place. When I was instructed to drop a young prospective Paralympian from the programme so that councillors could have more time, the answer was no. On the day, Her Majesty and His Royal Highness delayed their itinerary to speak with those young people — and stopped to receive a bouquet from the sister of one of them, on day release from hospital so that she could be there when her brother met the Queen.

The distinctive design of the strategy document, and the wall of history created for the visit, were the work of Prospect Design — Anja Klüver and Richard Eisermann.

UK Fire and Rescue Service — planning for risk

Development of the Community Risk Management Planning Framework, now part of National Resilience Guidance. The design problem was making one framework genuinely usable by any service, from the London Fire Brigade to the Isles of Scilly. Forty-five of the forty-nine services were represented at the launch, with every nation of the UK present — a reach the national body had not previously achieved at a meeting of its own.Separately, a costing methodology developed for the sector was accepted by the Home Office as a complement to its own, and is now in wide use helping fire and rescue services decide where resources can be deployed to best advantage.

Led the development of what is believed to be the first rigorous, statistically sound methodology for establishing the social and economic benefit of the Fire and Rescue Service. The Home Office accepted it as a complement to its own methodology, and it is now in wide use helping services decide where resources can be deployed to best advantage.

Camperdown, Victoria — winning work against an offshore alternative

A town that had lost its abattoir and then its clothing plant. The national data centre operator asked a fair question: why would he site an operation there? The answer was not a grant or a tax break. It was that rural Australia is full of well-credentialled, under-employed people who will stay and do solid work, against a revolving door of city temps. A portfolio of resumes was left on his desk overnight. He gave the town the QANTAS ticket reconciliation work — around forty jobs, won on retention and accuracy rather than on price, against a business that already ran offshore facilities in South East Asia.

Purdue and Fraunhofer — a platform for bringing IP to market

An objective framework for bringing intellectual property to market, a curriculum for the next generation of engineers, and a collaboration platform between Purdue University and the Fraunhofer Institute in Germany. Operational, and forming the basis of the Agile Strategy Lab.