case studies

“Art allows you to understand that there are no limits. There are no rules when doing a new painting or when composing a new music piece, and this can be translated to the ways we use creativity in our business” – Sebastián Stranieri, VU’s Founder

Context and Challenge

VU Cybersecurity is a tech company that has incorporated a creative mindset as part of its organizational DNA. They are avant-garde cybersecurity providers, thriving at innovation competitions such as the Visa Every Where initiative, winning the Acelerar España Prize, Microsoft Partners Award, and NTT Data Innovation Contest.

Reflecting on their achievements, the company’s management highlights culture as a key differentiator: in a context where everyone is rigid, having an art-based culture has been a keystone. To continue differentiating culturally-wise, their CEO raised two fundamental questions to The Artian:

How can we maintain employees’ creative spirit alive and how do you instill this spirit among the new ones?

How can we nurture a transdisciplinary workforce and make it become conscious about the practical applications of transdisciplinary thinking?

The Artian’s solution

The Artian was invited to the company’s yearly gathering, where Nir Hindi provided an interactive keynote designed to take participants out of their comfort zones – The Renaissance of Renaissance Thinking.

By highlighting art as a source for innovation and showing examples of artists working with cybersecurity, Nir Hindi showed participants new paths of thought and execution that are usually not present in the business world. The session was followed by an in-depth discussion between Nir Hindi and VU’s participants, where the day-to-day applications of meshing art with cybersecurity were discussed. Participants reflected on non-traditional ways of performing as professionals, allowing VU to face one of its main challenges: being different.

Results

New innovation practices and processes were developed: “The Creative Challenges”

The Creative Challenges are sessions held every month, where the entire marketing team gathers in a formal meeting to foster the idea development process (read in our blog, why is it important). The monthly activity isBy learning about the value of art in business, participants at The Artian’s activities learned that adaptability and flexibility of thought are key to develop such a mindset and brand. And in making use of this more adaptable mindset, employees at VU began to reflect on new and non-standard ways of finding the uniqueness of the brand.

Promoting a more holistic business profiles-The value of Renaissance Thinking

Marketing professionals at VU are now increasingly willing to incorporate art as a practice in order to communicate ideas better to the customer. For instance, artistic appreciation led participants to understand that individuals make widely different interpretations of one same creative piece. This has led them to sharpen the understanding that it is not optimal to provide the same marketing content to different countries, for example. In the same way interpretations of one same piece of art vary from person to person, the regulation and the approach to cybersecurity also vary from country to country. As a result of this sharpened understanding, the marketing content is increasingly tailored to the characteristics of each country.

“I arrived at my house and I started to look for painting courses. Why? Because The Artian’s talks allowed me to realize that creativity facilitates being a more open person, which in turn facilitates communicating ideas to the customer. Art allows you to be more open, and that leads to the generation of insights in a business context”

Juliana Muñoz, Marketing professional at VU.

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