Creative Leadership : Buzz

The Midtown Global Market in Minneapolis is being used for inspiration in turning around a Memphis building, according to the Memphis Daily News.

The co-directors for the Sears Crosstown building in Memphis toured other cities to come up with a blueprint to make the Memphis building an urban arts village.

It reads, "While Minneapolis' Sears building is anchored by a major 400,000-square-foot health care tenant, the progress of the Phillips neighborhood and its dramatic transformation is the piece Crosstown Arts wants to bring to Memphis."

In the story, Crosstown Arts co-director Todd Richardson says, in reference to the Midtown building, "Nobody thought that was possible. It was in the worst neighborhood in Minneapolis, and in large part because of that redevelopment, it's been a catalyst."

The Secrets of the City website has posted a mini-documentary about a large-scale international work from a couple of Minneapolis stencil artists who go by the name Broken Crow.

The artist duo recently left their mark in Mexico City, with a mural at the Antique Toy Museum. In the short video from Brooklyn Street Art, which local blogger Eyeteeth shared with Secrets of the City, viewers get to see the artists in their element: The pair is shown scaling scaffolding, wearing gas masks and spray-painting their original stencil designs on a huge wall.

Also, viewers get to watch the final image come together, and hear from the artists.

A local chef and restaurateur was chosen by the James Beard Foundation as the best chef in the Midwest at a New York awards ceremony this week, the Star Tribune reports.

Props went to Isaac Becker, who is a chef and co-owner of a couple popular spots, including the 112 Eatery and Bar La Grassa in Minneapolis.

The Star Tribune notes that Becker is the third Minneapolitan in a row to receive the honor, which is considered by many people to be the "Oscars of the food world," it states.

Another Minneapolis 'who's who' among foodies, Sameh Wadi, the chef and co-owner of Saffron Restaurant & Lounge, cooked for the event's 2,000-plus crowd, the story adds.        
 
The story quotes Shay Goetzman, the general manager for the 112 Eatery: "We had people watching for us and texting us," adding,"Isaac called, too, and said to put the champagne on ice. We'll celebrate later. It's crazy busy here."

Working Mother magazine named two Twin Cities corporations to its list of "best companies for hourly workers."

The magazine cited Best Buy's "deep discounts" on store product and company stock, tuition reimbursement, financial aid and time off for adopting parents, and 401(k) offerings to 20-hour-per-week employees.

Likewise, Working Mother lauded Carlson for its tuition aid, 401(k), choice of three health plans, maternity leave (with six partially paid), child care, and benefits for adoptive parents.

The "hourly workers" category is one of several "best companies" lists the magazine puts out.

The locally-based Utne Reader magazine, which speaks to independent ideas and alternative culture, got props for its March-April cover from Business Insider magazine's "13 Coolest This Month," Minnpost's media writer David Brauer reports.  

It's a distinction that puts the Utne Reader alongside other nationally and internationally known periodicals such as Vogue, The Hollywood Reporter and The Economist, among others.

The cover depicts Donald Trump being burned at the stake under the line "Fire the Rich."

Brauer states, "Even if you disagree with the, ahem, uncivil sentiment, it's a pretty great piece of art."

He also notes that despite raising its newsstand price, the Utne Reader has recently increased sales.

Brauer includes comments from Utne editor David Schimke, who adds that the covers have fared well in big urban settings on the East Coast, especially New York City.

How does a creative executive manage more than a dozen external creative partners and a $35 billion brand?

Tim Murray, creative director of the Creative Vision Group at Target, gave a five-point lesson at an AIGA/NY event held at the New School in New York, reports Fast Company's Helen Walters in an April 18 article.

How does Target produce "deceptive simplicity from unfathomable complexity" and "successfully [manage] collaboration and complexity," as Walters writes?

Be transparent, play nice, be open, stretch the work, and talk talk talk.

(There's a bit more explanation in the article.)

A recent economic development publication touts 54 innovations from Minnesota, but only four of them come from this century.

Former U of M Humphrey Institute policy fellow Eric Schubert says in a Star Tribune opinion piece that Minnesota has no shortage of ideas for economic development, but we're struggling to turn those ideas into reality.

Schubert proposes a Minnesota Innovation Fund, a sort of political action committee that would support "pragmatic political candidates" who support policies and funding for Minnesota ingenuity.

Read his argument on the Star Tribune's Opinion Exchange.

At the American Library Association's book awards ceremony in San Diego earlier this month, five authors and two publishers from Minnesota received numerous prizes in various categories, which are tallied by the Star Tribune.  

Author Laurie Hertzel quotes Alison McGhee, who, along with Kate DiCamillo received the Theodor Seuss Geisel award for best book for beginning readers for "Bink and Gollie," saying, "The Minnesotans are ruling!"

McGhee describes the phone call about the news: "It was an unfamiliar number and I thought it was a marketer, but instead it was Julie Roach from the ALA and there was a roomful of people clapping and cheering in the background, so I figured it had to be good news."

As the news made waves on Twitter, Hertzel says in the article, Andrew Karre, editorial director of Minneapolis' Carolrhoda Books, tweeted about the Minnesotans' "stunningly good" performance."

MinnPost.com's Steve Berg recently spoke with Bruce Katz, head of the metropolitan policy program at the Brookings Institution, for an outside view of  Minneapolis-St. Paul's economic competitiveness.

Katz tells Berg that the region needs to go beyond planning and infrastructure and pursue a higher national profile, as well as show greater focus and energy in attracting and retaining jobs.

"The economy that got us into the recession isn't the same one that will get us out of it," Katz said. "Metros should know what they do best," he said, adding, "It's not about what the public or private sector does; it's about a partnership of both."

Read the rest of Berg's Cityscape post here.

When Target announced a set of environmental sustainability goals last week, its press release was largely ignored. But GreenBiz.com took a closer look and sees the potential for Target to leapfrog Walmart and go transform from  "Tarjay to Targreen."

Writer Dara O'Rourke notes that most of what was in Target's announcement isn't worthy of hoopla. It's playing catch up with Walmart, which set more ambitious goals a few years ago. "[I]n 2010, pledging to eliminate waste is like pledging to close the refrigerator door."

But where Target now has a major impact is in the products it chooses to sell. "Based on an optimistic reading of the company's announcement, Target may now be positioned to do for sustainable products what it did for well designed, yet affordable, consumer products." Read the rest of O'Rourke's piece at GreenBiz.com.

Twin Cities med-tech exec Hawkins leads a Fast Company round up of what corporate social responsibility and non-profit leaders are reading. Hawkins is chairman and CEO of Medtronic, and also a board member at the Minneapolis Institute of the Arts and the University of Minnesota Foundation.

Tops on his reading pile these days: Start Up Nation, by Saul Singer, and Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard, by Chip and Dan Heath.

Start Up Nation is "a truly inspiring book on how nations and their culture can directly influence innovation." Switch describes how change is necessary, but "also not altogether natural. "The authors demonstrate how we can harness the power of subliminal thought to enact profound, sustainable change," Hawkins tells Fast Company.

GOOD magazine sees a good idea in the Hennepin County health and human services department's flexible work schedule.

The county department is among a handful of employers to adopt a results-only work environment, or ROWE, in which employees can work when and where they want, as long as the work gets done.

"This is just clearly a good idea. After all, what could an employer possibly care about beyond results? And in Hennepin County, there is some initial evidence that ROWE has made things much more efficient. They used to have a two-week backlog of public support cases to process. Now that's down to five days. A ROWE program would also save employers money on everything from printing paper to electricity."

Jody Thompson and Cali Ressler came up with ROWE while they were working at Best Buy. They now help companies make the transition with their consulting firm CultureRx. More at GOOD.is.

The Star Tribune's Neal St. Anthony reflects on the legacy of the Sierra Bravo Corp.'s late CEO, Luke Bucklin.

Bucklin, 40, along with three of his children, were killed in a plane accident last month in the mountains of Wyoming.

Sierra Bravo Corp. and its Nerdery web-design business have been among the Twin Cities' fastest-growing companies in recent years. (We spoke with Bucklin in September after the opening of The Nerdery's Chicago office, and he joked then that the company's plans for global domination were well under way.)

"He always said if you do the right thing, trust people and spread the leadership, that the right things would happen," new CEO Mike Derheim tells St. Anthony. "We would succeed."

Also: "Remembering Luke" from The Nerdery blog.

Minneapolis-St. Paul is witnessing a proliferation of D.I.Y. organizing around technology and innovation issues, The Line's Dan Haugen writes in this month's Twin Cities Business magazine.

From meetups and happy hours to competitions and unconferences, a new generation of institutions is rising up to support entrepreneurs and innovators in the Twin Cities. Enabled by social networking, these new efforts reflect the sensibilities of a generation that's grown up using the web to share and create. They're informal, usually free or inexpensive, and more about conversation than lectures.

Read the entire story here.

Minneapolis innovation guru Uri Neren has a post on the Harvard Business Review blog about the Mayo Clinic's track record of successful innovations and the conditions that helped it occur:

"[I]n the case of The Mayo Clinic, the right conditions were in place at the very beginning. While the word 'innovation' has not always been attached to its work, the habit of developing better ways of treating patients and running its operations has been a signature trait since its founding in 1889 by brothers William and Charles Mayo."

Neren goes on to write that three key factors that have enabled innovation at the healthcare center have been diversity, connectedness--and, perhaps surprisingly, limited resources.

Read the entire Harvard Business Review post here.