Eden project

Creativiteit in ondernemerschap

• Kreeg idee bij oude tuin in Cornwal– vond verlaten kleiafgraving– ecologisch verantwoord

• www.edenproject.com

Ten years ago, Tim Smit was unknown. He had a degree in archaeology and anthropology from Durham; he had been a lousy busker; a goodish music producer and rock 'n' roller; and he was restoring Heligan, an old garden in Cornwall. A good guy but hardly one of Europe's leading thinkers, entrepreneurs, businessmen or creative artists ? and certainly not someone to whom ministers and foreign governments made beelines for tips about social innovation.

TIM SMIT: GEBOORTE IDEE: 1994

2004: Day of Inspiration

• jaarlijkse prijs innovatief ondernemerschap• CBE & Royal Soc. of Arts' Albert Medal

• innovatie - verandering– potentieel mensen aanspreken

Smit will be at the Albert Hall in London in 2004, lecturing 3,000 people at a Day of Inspiration on how to change the world and realise people's potential. He has achieved minor celebrity status and has been showered with awards and Honours, including a CBE and the Royal Society of Arts' Albert Medal, which is awarded to only one person in the world each year; previous recipients include Louis Pasteur, Marie Curie and Ralph Vaughan Williams.

* Somehow Smit has invented himself as Britain's motivator, a radical thinker who has proved that it is possible to make social and environmental change happen in the most unlikely ways.

• In five years he and his team have turned what most people believed was a worthless, polluted site into Britain's fifth-largest tourist attraction. It has drawn in 2 million people a year, raised $215m and is thought to have pumped $890m into the local economy. Now employing 500 people in a job-starved area, Eden has, almost without wishing to, become one of Britain's most successful regeneration projects. Which is not bad for a man who once produced the Nolan Sisters and Barry Manilow.

in 5 jaar tijd

• eerst vervuilde afgraving• Nu 5e toeristische attractie• 2 m. bezoekers /jaar• $215m opgebracht• $890m locale economie• 500 mensen werk

organisatie achter droom

• verschillende mensen & disciplines SAMEN BRENGEN

– kunstenaars– zakenmensen– architecten– wetenschappers– constructeurs– onderwijskundigen– botanici– ecologen

organisatie van verandering

• But Eden is more interesting than its statistics, or even the hundreds of thousands of plants growing under its emblematic domes. It is, say people who know it, becoming a great experiment, a test bed for ideas about how you can make change happen and unlock individual or national potential.

• Smit's secret, if there is one, seems to be that he can bring people of very different disciplines and skills together, get them to brainstorm and collaborate, and come up with the extraordinary. The Eden Project, he says, has attracted locals by the score, but also high-flying artists, businessmen, architects, scientists, engineers, educationalists, horticulturalists and ecologists from all over Britain.

organisatie van verandering

• brainstorm• samenwerken• implementeren

…..wat niet mogelijk leek!• "It feels like a renaissance organisation," says one woman who left a

senior management job to work there as a director and has been amazed both at what gets done and the way it works. "It's attracted a critical mass of people, and there's this passionate belief, right through the project, that it belongs to everyone who works there, that it's a team thing. I guess it demonstrates that you can have an organisation that is highly effective financially, environmentally and socially. It's a kind of experiment to show that you can work in different ways."

COMBINATIE VAN

- HORTICULTUUR– KUNST– WETENSCHAP– EDUCATIE – But his underlying point is always that change comes when

people think differently and take risks. He says: "We challenged a lot of people to say 'no', to say that Eden could not be done. But hundreds of people said 'yes'. I think the fear of losing paralyses people. The key to making Eden work was daring to lose, and the realisation that millions of people feel inside themselves that there is more in life than what they have done. There is a massive hunger in our generation, a feeling that people are not putting their talents to best use."

•HET WATER•DE AARDE•DE PLANTEN

• HET WATER– 22L/sec (20000 x badinhoud– opgevangen & wordt gebruikt voor irrigatie

• DE AARDE– 85000 ton aarde recycled afval– 2000 ankers 11 m lang

• DE PLANTEN

DE PLANTEN :

– 5000 'gewone' planten; – > 250 000 plantsoorten!– ca. 6 voedsel:

• graan• maïs• rijst• Aardappelen• bananen• peulvruchten

Katalysators:

• Smit says he has been greatly influenced by people such as Ricardo Semler, the maverick Brazilian socialist who runs a large manufacturing business and lets his employees set their own hours and wages ? but gets long-term loyalty and phenomenal growth.

• "He read about the kid who hacked into a defence system, and offered him a job," Smit says. "He told him just to walk around till he saw something that interested him, and then ended up with a free computer system. He realised that the establishment is miles off the pace of what's really going on. Eden is a bit similar. People make it their own. It's what they want it to be."

Eden is just a start, a platform for wider social and environmental change, says Smit. He wants to address local problems such as housing, much of which is priced beyond the means of locals. "We have to be radical," he says. "For too long, we have associated affordable housing with cheap building. But analysis shows that building on the cheap is ridiculously expensive in terms of energy consumption and maintenance in the long term. We must produce attractive, sustainable, affordable housing that people will be proud to own."