Guest editor ’ s comment spreadsheet . What matters is this year ’ s profit and whether it meets the budget . And there lies everyone ’ s bonus . And if a company works on several pyramid layers , each layer is responsible to the one above for making its budget . At the very top , the creative potential of one existing event of many rarely takes up much Boardroom time . So , if an event is not hitting its sales targets – maybe for very good reasons and not to do with the essential integrity of that trade show – then the inevitable response is to look at the bottom right-hand corner and to try to cut costs so that the budget is achieved . That rarely improves the product . Rare is it that there is a detailed interrogation of whether the best route is to accept a lower profit this year and re-invest for the future . In the magazine world this would not be the case . The only way to combat declining sales and the predations of competitors is to invest more – to change people , to change writers , to change editors – to improve the magazine to compete .
Phil Soar , EN guest editor
“ This is why Darwinian innovation works – no one inside a bubble necessarily knows what unlikely ideas might pop up given the chance ”
Who really owns our leading trade shows ? That is not a rhetorical question . It is a problem which venues often face . They can encourage innovation and change , but they cannot enforce it . By and large they cannot instruct organisers to improve what they do . There have been times when venues have become irritated by this – certainly in the 1990s ECO told one or two organisers to improve or risk losing their slots . And it also brings into question the interesting philosophical debate about where the ownership of an event really lies . In general , organisers assume they own the Intellectual Property – but that does not extend much beyond several words , which can be easily superseded by small changes in nomenclature . This issue has rarely been tested but the best recent example was in 2015 when UBM tried to move ‘ Interiors ’ from the NEC to ExCeL . ( Interiors had originally been called The Furniture Show ). A combination of NEC management and the Manchester Furniture Show team simply moved into the Interiors slot and renamed the event ‘ The NEC Furniture Show ’.
Autumn — 13