Creative Times

How To Sell The Intangible, Valuing your creative assets

Published by Creative Times, Creative Times, 28.04.08

Our topic is the intangible. Thin air. The concepts, ideas, thoughts that many of our businesses are based on.

With the help of Jayne Barrett - Elmwood and David Ward - Glu (formerly of Ocean Software and iFone) we explore how we value our intangible businesses. Maybe we want to cash in on our endeavors, sell on our company to another and go buy an island in the Maldives? How do we put a price on what essentially is invisible? Or instead maybe we want to build value into our company, to help us grow, become more financially stable and more profitable?

David Ward, Chairman, EMEA With more than twenty years of experience, games industry veteran David Ward is known to many as a pioneer of electronic gaming. Before joining Glus management team in April of 2006, Ward was responsible for founding the highly accredited mobile entertainment publisher, iFone which was preceded by service as a board member of Infogrames, Europes largest publisher of interactive entertainment. Prior to merging with Infogrames in 1996, David founded Ocean software in the early 1980s, where he pioneered many of the precedents in the emerging video games industry, migrating entertainment brands from traditional media to build gaming franchises and establishing the concept of publishing and content aggregation as models for a new market. Wards colorful history in the gaming sector has recently been recognized by being inducted into the Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Associations (ELSPA) Hall of Fame, for outstanding contribution to the games industry.

Jayne Barrett, Head of Learning, Elmwood Jaynes career in communications spans continents as well as disciplines. It began with advertising in Seattle, USA, at Cole & Weber (part of WPP group) where she directed the Boeing Commercial Airplanes and Weyerhauser Wood accounts. Returning to England in 1990, she worked as a brand consultant at several leading consultancies where her corporate b2b and investor relations experience includes, on the client side, running Hansons corporate affairs department. In 1999, she moved back to her native Yorkshire to join Elmwood, becoming Managing Director in November 2000. In October 2006, she became Head of Learning at Elmwood. Her role is now to promote and foster a learning culture, and to deliver a programme of personal and professional development initiatives within the business.