Rosi Lister: Reinventing A Creative Business

The new CEO of IVE, Rosi Lister, outlines some of the changes a creative business can make to adapt to new business challenges.

Rosi Lister came into post as CEO at IVE, then trading as CapeUK, in June 2016 and quickly identified a need for the organisation to create a more sustainable business model. Here, Rosi talks to BQ about the decision to overhaul the organisation’s business model and carry out a full rebrand.

“Over the last 20 years, CapeUK has been largely reliant on funding from Arts Council England and whilst we still value the importance of this funding, it was vital that we did not become over dependent on one source of public funding.

“Following discussions with the board, we made the decision to update our business model in order to future proof our business, enabling us to continue providing quality learning, training and development to inspire and nurture creativity.”

The process began with Rosi introducing a commercial consultancy, selling professional development training and bespoke consultancy packages which could be delivered to a wide range of organisations, both nationally and internationally.

Rosi continued: “We strive to be the go-to consultants for being trained to ‘think outside the box’ and our core aims of being a creative, innovative and supportive development agency have inspired our new name and brand – IVE.”

“Being creative is vital if we as a human race are to counter the technological advances of artificial intelligence and the potential worklessness or changes this will inevitably mean for many people. We need a creative, adaptable and resilient workforce who can innovate within whatever industry they are employed, so turning our considerable asset of a 20 year research base into a marketable training product seemed like an obvious decision to support the business community.”

The new consultancy and training packages aim to share knowledge of research undertaken into creativity and the creative process gained by CapeUK, now known as IVE, over the last 20 years. The commercial consultancy programme has been complemented by a restructure to better support business development.

She added: “We care greatly about young minds at IVE, and we will soon be launching a new philanthropy programme which will focus on developing the creative talent of young minds, particularly within hard to reach areas, and encourage both corporate and individual sponsors to show their support.

“Whilst public funding from organisations such as Arts Council England provides an amazing opportunity to do good work, we have learned that we should not rely solely on this and should rather utilise it to deliver higher impact on our charitable aims. With our developing mixed economic model, we hope to create a healthy mix of commercial income and philanthropic giving to demonstrate both a healthy return on public investment, whilst also ensuring IVE is a strong, resilient company.”

Arts Council England will continue to support the IVE cultural education programme known as ‘Bridge’, which sees children and young adults connecting with the arts and a variety of cultural organisations, nurturing and inspiring their own creativity throughout the process.

Article originally published on b daily.