Nicholas Roope London is the most frustrating city in the world. There’s a clear link between frustration and violence but I think there’s one between frustration and creativity – creativity as a way of dealing with living in a fucking stupid city where everything costs so much and nothing works. It’s not a great lifestyle city, either. But creativity and the arts have traditionally been very strong here. People say it has the best interactive schools, but they’re rubbish compared to what’s outside. The reason we’re able to turn out talent is because of frustration, and people thinking, “Oh, I’ll do it myself”. If you look at the rising web talents, they’re not trained, they’re self-taught.
Iain Tait I don’t see the evidence in my industry that we’re at the leading edge of global interactive innovation. Certainly London is creative in terms of design and advertising, but doesn’t tend to innovate in really important areas like social applications – things like Flickr, del.icio.us and Technorati all originate from the US. They’re much more about an inventive, entrepreneurial spirit. Unfortunately we’re often stifled by a very British fear of failure.
