Jonathan Sands OBE, Decoding Creativity to Drive Growth.

Jonathan Sands is Chairman of Elmwood, “the world’s most effective brand design consultancy”. Far from an audacious claim it is one substantiated by the fact that Elmwood have won more design effectiveness awards than any other design business ever…and by a country mile.

Elmwood were voted the UK’s number one elite design business and number one in the minds of our peers in April 2014 according to a poll organised by the trade magazine ‘The Drum’.

A past Chair of the DBA, past council member of the RSA and Design Council and Visiting Professor of Innovation at Huddersfield University Jonathan was awarded an OBE for services to the Creative Industries in 2011.

Jonathan joins us at TEDxBedford armed with the alarming fact that today UK plc is ranked 152 in the league table of GDP growth! This means 151 countries are growing faster than the UK (with the USA not faring much better at 157!). The western world has lost its creative mojo. Not because we lack creative design talent, but because consumers and businesses increasingly see design as a subjective aesthetic. Hold onto your hats as Jonathan decodes creativity for the cynics and proves that design is the most powerful tool any business or any nation could embrace. Expect to hear new thinking, new tools and techniques and to be inspired to embrace creativity and design.