Cultural Creative Enterprise | A case study on Mubi and Airbnb

At its core, creative entrepreneurship is a marriage of introspective ideas with strategic actions. It is guided by sensory intuitions and executed with resourceful innovations. The goal is to bring together a community through imaginative solutions. 

It is a discerning quality possessed by those who understand that the questions and problems are not homogenously controlled or regulated by language and numbers, but by originality and authenticity. The creative process when applied to an entrepreneurial project, positively impacts market growth. It involves culturally transformative results to stay relevant in the current landscape of our times. 

No enterprise, whatever its background, its aims, or methodology, can currently ignore the role of entrepreneurial skills. In our contemporary society where isolation and loneliness have become the new normal, these skills are instrumental for facing risks and bringing crisis moments to a turning point out of which new possibilities can arise. 

The design, art, and culture industry has undergone a rapid influx of a fast-paced consumer culture. This is in turn has the increased the demand for individuals to be adept at the processes of reinventing and remaking to create new solutions to old problems. Passion for their work, managerial or leadership skills, dedication to bring an idea into reality are seen as desirable traits in any industry that thrives on creative entrepreneurship. 

Being human is being creative. Bringing a community together is to evoke an outpouring of collective belonging. The pursuit of creative arts has a long history in almost all civilizations, this act is what binds us all. Creative entrepreneurship is a reflection of this primeval need to seek, analyse, and produce as an individual, while resonating with the larger public ethos. 

The creative entrepreneur is someone who can read between the lines of socio-cultural discourses and employ enterprising attitudes to bring beauty and community closer. 

This transformative ability can be illustrated trough the business models of two 21st century brands that have changed the game when it comes to business models.

● Case Study 1: Airbnb 

The epoch-making hospitality company produced a unique, authentic, and novel way of connecting community in the tourism industry. By bringing hosts and guests together across the world, they transformed an otherwise impersonal hotel-booking platform on the internet to become a travel-based medium representing welcoming and friendship. 

Their business administrative mantra culminated into an exceptional creative output as a print magazine to celebrate experiential journeys, human connections, and local stories. 

Pineapple — “The inspirational magazine to capture the unique perspective of a global community” 

Instead of churning content on the digital space, publishing Pineapple was a bold move by a tech startup. The customized traditional medium requires people to stop and admire its beauty, turn its pages to enjoy the stories, and share copies with friends or fellow-travelers.

The magazine is a creative way of seeing the world through a local lens. Through this tangible solution, Airbnb has employed innovative strategies to fill a gap in the market and utilized the opportunity to alter perceptions about travelling in the era of globalization. 

About the venture, CMO Jonathan Mildenhall said, “Travel on Airbnb is about more than sightseeing and consuming, it’s about connections and community. Our new magazine, Pineapple, will combine the emotional and practical sides of traveling by giving a comprehensive guide to neighbourhoods and cities, as well as capturing the sense of belonging that comes from a memorable trip.” 

Thus, Airbnb is a true example to ‘ideas turning into actions’ with it’s core value being adding beauty and authenticity to travel. Adding value to the community is the spirit of the creative enterprise. 

● Case Study 2: MUBI 

MUBI emerged as a distinct streaming platform, by locating the gap between cinema lovers and technology. The project started when friends shared their love for independent cinema and the art of films. ‘Popular isn’t always good’ remains the core value at MUBI furthering the idea that the initial creative inspiration is the core of the enterpise. The audio-visual interactive medium is curated for film-lovers by film-lovers. What separates it from other steaming services is its loyalty to the community who are looking for culturally relevant cinema as an artform and not a source of entertainment. 

It has brought together a community of cinephiles by showcasing an array of movies from all around the world. Modern masterpieces to golden classics, combined with a personalized handpicked curatorial voice shared through the MUBI podcast, Notebook, its daily film publication, etc. 

Here, the creative and entrepreneurial spirit combines to add value to the community by bringing a tailored movie catolog to new audiences. The content on MUBI is solely dedicated to exploring the art of cinema in new ways. It employs film history, contemporary criticism, and aesthetic editorial policies. 

The founder, Efe Cakarel, started the platform after being unable to find Wong Kar Wai’s classic In the Mood for Love on the internet. Resilience and authenticity have helped the Turkish entrepreneur to create a beloved service, in a market dominated by giants like Netflix and Amazon Prime. 

Instead of focusing on quantity and mainstream popular content, MUBI focuses on quality and showcases movies by great artists like Kiarostami, Ray, and other cult icons. 

The above-mentioned case studies exemplify creative the success of creative entrepreneurship to deliver positive impacts in terms profit, growth, and development. Their business acumen, commercial awareness, and brand reputation has thrived by respecting the audiences or customers’ need for aesthetics while selling an idea. 

Creative entrepreneurship is a survival method in a constantly evolving culture affected by the integration of global markets. Airbnb and MUBI have molded creative ideas into strategic business frameworks. They are leaders in terms cultural and market

development. However, their lasting impression or legacy is the art of making a beautiful business. 

This theory of making businesses beautiful is largely expounded by artist, designer, and entrepreneur Alan Moore. 

In the book Do Design: Why Beauty is the Key to Everything, he invites us to rethink not only what we create, but how and why. He encourages the transformation of our thinking in producing a product, service, or experience and translate that into commercial success. 

The book offers a viable creative vision of what businesses can become whilst being authentic and true to its core values. The trick is to ask questions: Is it useful and imaginative? Is it a thing of beauty? 

His writing highlights the importance of beauty in everything, our work, things we consume, and the way we way consume. While beauty has been usually relegated to a non-utilitarian quality, in the writings of Allan Moore, beauty become the essential quality present in all objects and endeavours that arouse emotions of connectivity. In his book, he expresses, 

“What does the world need? is one of the most pressing questions of our time. Why? Because this question encompasses a number of other questions: Why are we here? For what reason do we exist? What values create the foundation of what matters most? What kind of world are we trying to make? We must transform our mindset, but to what end? 

The Coronavirus pandemic has brought us to a moment of transformation at great speed. It is a tragedy but one that offers an extraordinary space for us to reimagine what a better future might look like for us all. 

Now is the moment of opportunity. Business can do good. To remake our world, it can seek the good and manifest it in all that we create. If we are to build a future worth living in, we must try to achieve equilibrium between our economy, our ecology and our community. We need a reimagining of the very purpose of business, and the role it plays in regenerating our economy, our environment and our civilisation. That is what the world needs from business. That is what business needs to give the world.” 

The creative industry entrepreneurship is firmly entrenched as an attitude of conceptualizing, action-taking, and impact-making. 

Bibliography 

Moore, Alan. Do Design: Why Beauty Is Key to Everything. Chronicle Books LLC, 2019.

STORY DIRECTION AND CONCEPT Sayali Goyal

WORDS Sudeshna Rana

PHOTOS

https://mubi.com/showing

https://www.airbnb.co.in/