Lazy Town

Lillehammer Kunnskapspark hadde hovedprosjektledelsen for et samnordisk prosjekt i regi av Nordic Innovation Center der hovedmålsettingen var å se nærmere på hvordan kulturnæringene i større grad skulle kunne tiltrekke seg investorer og privat kapital. Hovedfokus var Intellectual Property Management og hvordan man strategisk kunne bygge en forretningsvirksomhet basert på immateriellretten. Prosjektet ble starten på et langt og fruktbart samarbeid med Chalmers Tekniske Høgskole i Gøteborg omkring kunnskapsparkens satsing på IPR.

Brief outline of project:
Activities of entrepreneurs in the creative industries are undermined by investors’ lack of understanding and willingness to invest in the sector. National research in Sweden, Denmark and Norway show that the growth rate is often higher in the creative industries compared to the average national economic growth rates. Despite relatively large in economic terms and regarding growth rates, the firms populating the creative industries have problems getting investments for product development.

Underinvestment means the sector is failing to achieve its full potential. For investments to increase, investors and creative industries companies need better knowledge about each other’s needs, capabilities, business models already in use in some parts of the industries and move towards a common ground.

Nordic Innovation Centre (NIC) has identified some of the barriers investors and creative industries face when they wish to work in a goal-oriented manner to realise the potential for generating wealth in the Nordic countries. With this project, we aim at developing concrete tools that influential individuals in the Nordic creative and financial industries can use to increase their knowledge about this area.

Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) has been the area of main focus and exploration. The project members has from the very beginning of the project considered exploration of IPR to be the most important way to “bridge” the gap between investors and entrepreneurs.

Method and Implementation:
The partners involved in this project are dispersed throughout the Nordic countries. Due to the fact that resources available in large have been designated to the production of the material we have tried to keep physical meetings to a minimum. The partners as a group has possessed large variety of skills and experiences which has enabled us to be hands on in all the processes and production leading up to the final results. We believe the project has profited from this both concerning the use resources and retaining focus and continuity throughout the project.

Tools:
The workshop is based on material generated in the CMC project. The participants should by taking part in the workshop get a good idea of the possibilities and limitations of IP as a tool for business creation. The pedagogy is built around a role-play in a laborative setting where the participants will be put in challenging situations based on a case, and by handling these situations the participants should get an understanding of how different IP-constructs can be used in relation to the creative industries.

The DVD focus on creative industries with special focus on entrepeneurship, financing and investment and intellectual property. The DVD contains a best case study of Lazy Town, now a TV children programme sold to 78 countries, in Iceland and an interview with Heikki Masalin of CIM Funds in Finland and are reflecting the following topics:

Financing the Creative Industries:.
The Iceland Bank has played a key role in the development of Lazy Town and LT is by far the largest project within the creative industries they have been involved in. For the bank and for investors in general, IPR are the cornerstone both for investment and to create a financial backbone for any project. For the Iceland Bank, Lazy Town has been a financial adventure that has involved a lot of risktaking because it all depends on one man more or less. Nevertheless the bank put a lot of trust in this project because of it’s strategies towards businessdevelopment, IPR, the complexity of the project and the strong characteristics of the entrepreneur, Magnus Schieving. They have participated in the development of ideas, to make an adaptable concept towards aquiring more capital and to develop spin-offs. For any involvement in such projects there need to be a financial reward and Lazy Town has throughout the project fulfilled its commitments.

The Entrepreneur:
According to Lazy Town lawyer Tomas Torvaldsson, Magnus Schieving is the ultimate enterpeneur. From day one there has been a fixed goal and a roadmap leading towards this goal. A roadmap that contain analysing your competitors, strategies on concept development, sales, distribution, other products, IPR, financing. Stategies on organisastion and how to build your team, picking the right people and the right timing. There is a time for everything and it is bad to be right at the wrong time. Therefore , aquire as much knowledge on all aspects of your business as possible, know and trust the people that surrounds you and most of all, know where you are going.

Protecting your properties:
Taking control of your intellectual properties from the first day is crucial in order to exploit your ideas commercially and to avoid complications along the way. Insight in tools and mechanisms of IPR, agreements, trademarks, designrights, protection of copyright, patents and patterns are as important as a clear vision of where you’re heading. So is the knowledge you aquire during the development of your project, your know how, procedures, structures and strategies. These are all part of the properties that has to be protected and because Lazy Town handles more than 500 agreements around the world , these needs to be taken care of by professionals

Recommendations:
The partners involved in the CMC project acknowledge the need to elaborate on the issues addressed in the CMC project and to bring the issues further by establishing a wide variety of practical tools and profound knowledge on structures, education and strategy.

As for other knowledge-based industries, the creative industries are challenged by the persistency of the industrial economy. For the society to benefit and prosper from the creative industries we need to enhance the understanding of how to create business and capitalize on cultural inventions. IP, IPRs and contracts are very important tools enabling both business creation and capitalization. Through the use of different IP constructs cultural inventions can e.g. be licensed, pledged, and even be represented in the balance sheet etc. Therefore:

-Strengthen the position of the creative industries in the Nordic countries by empowering the entrepreneurs with IP tools in the dialogue with investors and other financial actors.

-Strengthen the incubators be giving them better tools to select projects with the greatest potential, and then being able to help them develop into strong actors within the creative industries.

-Enabling and strengthening the possibilities to trade with cultural products through objectifying the result of creative efforts by the strategic use of IP.

-Strengthen educational efforts to reach a broad audience with a minimum understanding of how to strategically use IP.

-Develop stand-alone education modules that can reach a broad audience to raise the level of understanding of IP in the creative industries.

-Develop evaluation tools to be used be e.g. incubators and other business promoters to ensure the vitality of creative ideas.

-Develop strategic tools that can be used to strengthen the commercial potential of ideas within the creative industries.

A project based on these objectives would have a good starting point as many of the participants have been part in the NIC-project Capital meets Creativity, and the experiences from that project will have a great impact on the design of such a project.

Furthermore, educational institutions will be brought in so that educational programmes may also be used both toward young full-time students and those involved in post-graduate studies.

The financial institutions can use the educational material in their motivational work in-house and towards private investors. The innovative environments will be brought into the project so that entrepreneurs will be able to gain access to this expertise. The project will generate flexible educational packages, including the communication of success stories using new media tools. It will be the responsibility of the educational institutions, the financial institutions and the innovative individuals that are drawn into the project to adapt the educational material to their own target groups and educational programme in the respective countries. There is a tremendous interest on the part of educational institutions in using this type of educational material as part of their all-round educational curriculum throughout the Nordic countries.