Pivot

We’ve always been impressed with American entrepreneurs and particularly tech and design creatives, to whom a key measure of success is embracing failure. There is an old saying in start ups that says if you haven’t been bankrupt twice you haven’t been trying hard enough.

This is really the opposite of a lot of firms we know in Australia, and probably of us at CODA – the fear of being seen as a failure, of changing tack, of downsizing, of down-grading, going backwards. These are all seen as some kind of diminution of practice, and there is a genuine fear of what the perception of this will be to the outside world. This fear of change, this conservatism is somewhat at odds with our perception of architecture and design practice as innovative, and of designers as optimists and change-agents.

The start up community is particularly instructive here – with the idea of the “pivot” replacing the notion of “failure” – this opens up all kinds of possibility, and re-frames an approach to business and to life.

TheFulcrum.Agency should be an organisation that embraces (and actually chases) risk, is open to genuine change, and importantly doesn’t have a goal of being around In 20 years….we should be open to pivoting now, and again (and maybe again…)