Cultural Creativity: The New Brand of Esoteric

03/07/06 00:30

Since the idea of the Cultural Creative inspired this business network, it seemed natural to include the term in the title. Since then, I've found I need to explain everything from the beginning -- the book, the authors, their findings, the value set -- before I can even get to the point of the network, which is to connect Cultural Creatives in business and to explain how building meaningful relationships is at the forefront of our business world today.

It's quite long winded. Especially for those who see themselves falling toward the Modern or Traditional subcultures. The wind typically pays off after my mini thesis. Only in my own circles, I am delighted to learn that someone has actually read the book, Cultural Creatives: How 50 Million People are Chaging the World.
I was grateful to meet Leif Utne, Editor of Utne Magazine (formerly known as the Utne Reader) at our winter networking mixer, who has also struggled with the usefulness of the term. After rebranding their press kit classifying their audience as Cultural Creative, Utne was met with raised eyebrows of advertisers and consequently went back to selling ad space as they always had. He wondered if the Cultural Creatives Business Network, using that term, would really draw Cultural Creatives together.

All I could do was shrug.

I'm quite certain Leif and I share this common wrinkle around Cultural Creatives because the term is so new. Not enough people know about it to use it as a marketing or communication tool.

The National Science Foundation notes that when people use new and emerging terms, they are effectively driving language change:

The vocabulary and phrases people use depend on where they live, their age, education level, social status and other factors. Through our interactions, we pick up new words and sayings and integrate them into our speech..... Some of them spread through the population and slowly change the language. (Mahoney, Nicole. Language and Linguistics, Special Report of the National Science Foundation.)

I agree that the term Cultural Creatives is indeed of little use to anyone. Like an infant, it requires constant nursing to keep it alive. This changes the question from "Should our network use the term Cultural Creatives to express our identity?" to "Are Cultural Creatives in general committed to the idea of the Cultural Creatives subculture? Are we willing to identify ourselves as Cultural Creatives --Are we willing to spend the time to propagandize it as liguistic change requires?"

Only time will tell.

Cultural Creatives in Tampa, Florida

04/05/06 16:05

While visiting some friends in Tampa, Florida last week, I kept an eye out for evidence of Cultural Creativity. "Artistic" creativity was abound in the small art galleries, but evidence of the Cultural Creative lifestyle was difficult to spot.

At the beach, I enjoyed a bottle of mango spritzer I purchased at a local convenience store selling mostly fresh vegetables. I found myself spinning around like a dog trying to find a comfortble position to park herself. I sorely missed the public recycling receptacles next door to every garbage can -- as I can expect in Minneapolis. My hand hesitated to let it drop in.

Natural beach settings were not as popular as the recreational ones. I'd say that the day's population on Egmont Island, a shelling beach, snorkeling site and location of war ruins was about 1/8 that of the others where retirees, vacationers, honeymooners and locals laid out to bronze themselves in the noontime sun.
The Clearwater area where I lodged and spent most of my time is very much a retirement community. New housing developments are plentiful all over, however, and many of those include track, cookie-cutter-type designs. That's not to say that these homes do not contain Cultural Creatives. In fact, Nelson, one of my two delightful hosts lives in such a retirement community, and I found many aspects of his lifestyle familiar: an interest in the Science of the Mind and expressions of spritituality, his desire to see women empowered, great taste in restaurants, and an open mind.

Lenore, my other host, a singer and storyteller by trade, shared her apartment with my brother and me.
Nelson and Lenore were kindred spirits on this adventure.

Makes me wonder where other Cultural Creatives in Tampa might be hiding...

Socially Responsible Crossroads

04/13/06 08:54

As I look for goodies to pack into our member benefits, I am finding myself at an interesting crossroad.

One of my goals is to find a wholesaler of webcams and headsets so our Cultural Creatives in business can connect and interact remotely, affordably and conveniently. My first action is to check my member database to see we have a member who already does this, but I found no matches.

I got a cold call one day from a nice gentleman who gave me an excellent price point on a small volume, but I've been holding out for a Cultural Creative to step forward who sells such things.

And this got me questioning my own conscious procurement:

• What if the manufacturer were on the up and up -- providing livable wages, using recycled materials, etc. -- but the wholesaleer/distrubuter/retailer was not?
  
• What if the manufacturer who had socially responsible internal practices (volunteering, active in a citizenship program), bought materials or parts from other suppliers that are not socially reposonsible? It's possible that some of those parts are created using a method that might harm our environment or that the supplier did business with sweat shops.
  
• What if I'm presented with a really great product, guaranteed with eco-friendliness and responsible workforce initiatives, but the folks selling the product are operating under a Multi Level Marketing scheme, or some other questionable practice.
  
• How does one determine whether to work with a business if some of the people who work there are behaving conscientiously and others are not?

On what can I base my own conscious buying decision with so many contraditions -- with so profound a crossroad?

How does one really walk away from Omelas?

Recreating Business and a New World

Cultural Creatives shift the paradigm of business to something the whole world can profit from

(Written for The Twin Cities Green Guide 05/01/06 14:58)

Business has a bad name.

Let’s face it. When we think of business, don’t we imagine stuffy white men in business suits doing whatever it takes to make the extra buck? Don’t we imagine laying off workers to preserve middle management, reducing wages to the point where they can barely sustain an individual let alone a family, dumping waste wherever it’s convenient? When we think of sales, don’t we picture the slick grinning used car salesman who can’t wait to take us for a ride?

There’s a reason we have these images of business in our minds. It’s because this is how business has been done for centuries, even millennia. A new group of consumers and entrepreneurs has been identified who have something different in mind. They’re called the Cultural Creatives.

Paul Ray and Sherry Ruth Anderson evaluated American surveys and identified three subcultures: Traditionals, Moderns and Cultural Creatives – and at the heart of these subcultures is a common set of values, or “what would make the world a better place” and result in certain lifestyle characteristics.

In a nutshell, Traditionals are nostalgic of the past, believing we’d be better off with stay-at-home-moms, religion and more conservatism. Moderns are very present focused, engulfed in work-family-work-family-work-family – a sort of non-stop, rigorous attempt to climb the corporate ladder to make their lives more secure with the car, the house, their retirement and material possessions. The Cultural Creatives, while operating in a society dominated by these two lifestyles – and sometimes with one foot still inside one or tiptoeing both subcultures -- are creating a new ways of living: one that is generally more sustainable, healthy, soulful and beneficial to every living thing on the planet.

Paul and Sherry estimate that there are over 50 million Cultural Creatives in the United States alone. That’s over ¼ of our adult population, a healthy slice who live right here in the Twin Cities Area.

And they’re ready to make a difference. Here’s how:

Cultural Creatives are willing to spend more on products and services that are ecologically sustainable.

Cultural Creatives insist on relationships are authentic in all aspects of life: in friendships, at home and at work.

Cultural Creatives emulate and support the more feminine forms in the workplace, such as communication, nurturing and balance.

Cultural Creatives are interested in the big picture of how business is conducted and are not satisfied with the information they see in commercials, in the news or in other popular media.

Cultural Creatives have made the connection between spirituality and their work – which makes them very powerful, influential movers and shakers in the business world.
Contrary to what we have imagined about business, Cultural Creatives are not satisfied with success being measured from the bottom line – but instead, from the triple bottom line: people, planet and profit. The sheer size of the Cultural Creatives population has already affected the way we’re conducting business, such that they are both creating socially and environmentally responsible businesses and driving the demand for products and services created by such businesses.

So get ready for some exiting changes. The Cultural Creatives are becoming aware of one another through publications like Yes!Magazine, informational sites like GreenBiz.com and grassroots gatherings like those sponsored by The Cultural Creatives Business Network, the national association-style networking group based on values instead of location, gender or industry.

In the end, the real bottom line is about relationships: between each other, between our planet and ourselves and between our awareness and the choices we make. Our life on this planet depends on it. And Cultural Creatives are going to give their relationships center stage.