SHANGHAI, May 17, 2024 /PRNewswire/ — Natalie Lowe, CEO and founding partner of award-winning, The Orangeblowfish inspired China’s future business leaders to embrace creativity as a guest speaker at TEDx NYU Shanghai. The Shanghai-headquartered creative agency boasts high-profile clients that include brands from the hospitality, retail, and corporate industries. Seasoned thought-leadership speaker Natalie was invited to give a TEDx Talk and take part in a panel discussion about “Unfolding Entrepreneurship” at the organisation’s 7th Annual Conference. The independently organised TEDx event was held on April 13, 2024 at New York University Shanghai. The theme of the day was “Unfolding Apex”, exploring how individuals choose their paths and follow them boldly.
Titled, “Leadership sucks…now what!?”, Natalie told the auditorium, mainly filled with future leaders, to look beyond their textbooks concepts of what real leadership means. To the business professionals in the audience, she suggested experience alone is not enough to deal with the lows and reach the peaks.
Natalie highlighted in her speech that leadership is an unfolding journey. Her advice was that you need to be competent at what you are doing to start with. Then, you need to channel your creativity by activating your charisma (a.k.a “rizz”) and your EQ. That way, you can find your individual style. To be a true leader, you must welcome real-world learning, put in the effort, and adopt a creative, more emotionally developed approach that fuels your “WHY”. You then need to put these qualities into action.
“Evolving creates momentum to keep going and it’s creativity that nourishes us as we reach new heights. It’s this creative ethos that runs through the DNA of The Orangeblowfish projects,” Natalie adds. Since the establishment of The Orangeblowfish in 2012, the agency has been instrumental in consulting local and international businesses on how to grow their brands in China. “Chinese consumers are well-educated, affluent, and world travelers. This makes them curious about brand truth: the vision and mission behind them, and crucially their brand heritage. To ensure authenticity, creativity is vital. It creates a narrative so that brands from within and outside China can resonate with these markets.”
TEDx NYU Shanghai President, Adriana Gimenez Romera believes that Natalie’s call for greater creativity in business is motivating for would-be leaders. “Natalie’s journey on how her creative apex unfolded to find a dynamic vision and how that impacts China’s corporate landscape is inspiring. Ideas about the future of business, brands, and the human beings who lead them is an exciting world. And in her TEDx Talk she gave us the touchpoints to guide us along the way.”
The Orangeblowfish brings together Natalie’s brand strategy skills and experience within creative industries with her co-founder’s visual, multi-media artistry. Their mission is to “bring brands alive” in unique and engaging ways.
During the panel discussion, following Natalie’s speech, she enthused to the TEDx audience about what a spectacularly creative community Shanghai is. However, she highlighted how creativity in business is not appreciated enough in the region. “Leadership needs to be fluid like water so that creativity can flow through it. In Asia, the focus is on math and business languages. In the workplace, creativity is right at the bottom, along with the Arts and communication. It is not a skill that is highly respected, encouraged, or understood. Creativity is about putting your own EQ spin on team dynamics.”
Check out The Orangeblowfish at the TEDx event here.
About The Orangeblowfish
The Orangeblowfish is an award-winning creative agency with its headquarters in Shanghai, and teams in the United Kingdom, North America, and Australia. Our vision is to create experiences that connect and enrich people’s lives. Our mission is to unleash the power of creativity by leveraging art, storytelling, space, and technology to help our clients’ brands, employees, and communities reach their full potential. Our belief is that creativity has no boundaries. We partner with Fortune 500 companies and local brands to produce uniquely crafted creative branding strategies, customized brand installations, brand experiences, digital marketing campaigns, and more. For more information, visit www.theorangeblowfish.com.
About TEDx NYU Shanghai
TEDx NYU Shanghai is a grassroots initiative led by NYU Shanghai portal students. Dedicated to TED’s mission of researching and discovering “ideas worth spreading”, TEDx NYU Shanghai builds upon NYU Shanghai’s unique multicultural spirit to create a platform for diverse ideas to meet and inspire a new generation of innovative thinkers. Organized by passionate club members, TEDx NYU Shanghai events seek to uncover new ideas and share the latest research, sparking conversations and bringing the spirit of TED to university communities.
About TED
TED is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization dedicated to discovering, debating and spreading ideas that spark conversation, deepen understanding and drive meaningful change. Our organization is devoted to curiosity, reason, wonder and the pursuit of knowledge — without an agenda. We welcome people from every discipline and culture who seek a deeper understanding of the world and connection with others, and we invite everyone to engage with ideas and activate them in your community.
TED began in 1984 as a conference where Technology, Entertainment and Design converged, but today it spans a multitude of worldwide communities and initiatives exploring everything from science and business to education, arts and global issues. In addition to the TED Talks curated from our annual conferences and published on TED.com, we produce original podcasts, short video series, animated educational lessons (TED-Ed) and TV programs that are translated into more than 100 languages and distributed via partnerships around the world. Each year, thousands of independently run TEDx events bring people together to share ideas and bridge divides in communities on every continent. Through the Audacious Project, TED has helped catalyze more than $3 billion in funding for projects that seek to make the world more beautiful, sustainable and just. In 2020, TED launched Countdown, an initiative to accelerate solutions to the climate crisis and mobilize a movement for a net-zero future, and in 2023 TED launched TED Democracy to spark a new kind of conversation focused on realistic pathways towards a more vibrant and equitable future. View a full list of TED’s many programs and initiatives.
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