From the course: Creative Inspirations: Dale Herigstad & Schematic, Interactive Design Agency

Creativity and the economy

Dale Herigstad: In my career on the planet in digital media, some economic upturns and downturns have happened in the last 20 years and that have really affected how I approach running a business and participating in the adventures that we call a business. For several years, for about two or three years that was the rise and just about the burst of the Dot-com bubble. During that time I watched a lot of my competitors just disappear. They went out of business and I kept asking myself the question do I...? I am really on the verge of bankruptcy. Do we keep going here? Do we stop? What do we do? It was a rather severe downturn, as we all know. Sometimes the pressures of scaling back, becoming more efficient, I use the word efficiency where I think that it's lessons that we have for ourselves now as companies in digital media, to tighten up our bootstraps a bit and be able to be more efficient. What that taught me is that, it's obvious right now, we are now in '09 and everyone is looking at this coming year as a difficult year financially and I think based on what I have been through, I am prepared to just go in there and keep creating new things, because the lesson is if you hang in there with that, what rises at the end of that, maybe that's in the year, maybe it's in six months. The deeper thing is kind of inside you, what do you really like doing and I think for me I was able to keep going. You sort of get in touch with what you really like doing and I really like invention. I really like pushing things forward and that's what I did then and kept doing it and kept it us alive and I am fully prepared to do that now. I think it's looking to the future and saying that this downturn isn't forever. There will be an uptick at some point here and at this point in history for those of us who have been through the long history of digital media and interactive media, where that's gone, it's pretty clear there is a sea change that's about to happen. It will be happening now and it will happen. The audience is already beginning to move from massive consumption in traditional television to picking up that media in other places. I mean these things are just happening whether the downturns on or not. I mean people have the devices, it's happening. So our ability to stay ahead of that and to keep addressing where the audience is moving is essential. It's just at point time right now. To me it's unfortunate like this downturn is happening right now, because if it wasn't for this downturn, this would be a terrific year. I mean there is really - it's really - we're just on the verge, you can just kind of see it. But that's not going to stop. That's going to slow down or whatever it does but I think we have always been a company that stays ahead of things. So we need to just think about that. We are often five years ahead in terms of with some of our clients. With a good portfolio, continuing work, but kind of struggling along and almost losing the company. Got through it and on the other side the lesson in that to me was to hang in there and to keep creating great new ideas and keep innovating. Those are the things that I like to do.

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