Interviews to shortlist 20 candidates who will attend the Creative Future School at the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore were held on 12, 13 and 14 June 2006 in Chennai and New Delhi.

The panellists on the interview board are Professor Ramnath Narayanswamy (Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore), Lee Corner (Creative Industries Expert, UK), Sanmit Ahuja (Head of India Affairs Commonwealth Business Council), Anamaria Wills (Chief Executive, Creative Industries Development Agency, UK), V. Balasubramanian (Director - Finance & Operations, Asian Heritage Foundation, New Delhi) and Andrew Senior (Acting Head - Arts & Creative Industries, British Council India).

The interview will be for a duration of approximately 40 minutes.

Guidelines for interview

Prepare a ten minute presentation which gives us a deeper understanding of the idea you presented in your application: what is the idea; how is it likely to impact the creative sector; how it might generate employment and create wealth and how society will gain from it.

We will be looking for the following:

• Quality of thought process - how did you come up with this idea; how have you developed it so far
• Awareness of context - how/where does your idea fit in its sub-sector; is anyone else doing something similar

Kindly do not use PowerPoint, flipcharts etc but you may leave handouts.

The presentation will be followed by a short interview conducted by Ramnath Narayanswamy, Anamaria Wills and Andrew Senior in Chennai and Lee Corner, Sanmit Ahuja and V. Balasubramanian in Delhi.

Your answers will enable us to evaluate your openness to development and receptiveness to other perspectives.

We will also be bearing in mind the Competencies for Creative Entrepreneurs which have been developed by CIDA in the UK.

Click here to view the Creative Future Longlist.

The shortlist of 20 has been announced.


Lee Corner

Lee Corner is an independent consultant specialising in organisational development and human resource management. She has worked in the creative and cultural sectors for more than 25 years, and has devised specialist programmes of training and professional development which she now runs for individuals, groups and organisations across the UK.

Her recent clients include the Arts Councils (regional and national); The Artists’ Information Company; CIDA; darts; East Street Arts; Hull Time Based Arts; the NUJ; Public Art Forum; Public Art South West; Sheffield Media & Exhibition Company; Youth Music; and many city, unitary, county and district Local Authorities across the UK.

Lee was elected Chair of Media Centre Network in 2003 having joined the Board in 2000. She also serves on the Creative Industries Advisory Panel of the British Council.

Her work internationally has taken her to Mexico, Poland and Finland. She regularly works as an advisor to the Performing Arts Environment Forum in Japan, and is currently developing a network of support services for creative sector SMEs in Colombia. She is also undertaking development work for the British Council’s Creative Industries Unit in Albania, Kosovo and Macedonia, and in India.


Ramnath Narayanswamy

Ramnath Narayanswamy is a Professor in the Economics and Social Sciences Area in the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore. His areas of interest include Business and Society, Spirituality and Self Development, Embedding Evolutionary Excellence and Creativity and Innovation.

After securing a First Class First in Political Science from the University of Poona, he secured his doctorate from the School for Advanced Studies in Social Sciences, in Paris. He was Visiting Research Fellow in the Center for Russian and East European Studies of the University of Birmingham (supported by the Rockefeller Foundation) and was Reader in the Center of Eurasian Studies of the University of Bombay.

Fluent in several languages, a frequent contributor to professional journals in India and abroad, Dr. Ramnath has published extensively in his domain. He is the author of Gorbachev, Economic Reform and Eastern Europe (Himalaya Publishing House, Bombay, 1988) and The Soviet Economic System, 1989 (translated from the French).

Current interests include creativity and innovation, spirituality and leadership. He is a Research Associate of the Chair in Ethical Management at HEC Montreal. He is part of a worldwide research initiative on Integral Leadership profiling the lives of one hundred leaders supported by the Chair. He is currently working on a book on Mahama Gandhi with Professor Thierry Pauchant of HEC Montreal.

He authors a bi-monthly column on spiritual matters for the The Deccan Herald. He is part of the Editorial Board of the Journal of Human Values (IIM, Calcutta) and the Journal of Management, Spirituality and Religion, (Edinburgh).


Sanmit Ahuja

Sanmit currently heads the India Division at the Commonwealth Business Council that entails increasing India's trade and investment flows with other nations in addition to providing policy inputs to various Governments. He started his career in India in the technology sector before moving to New York in the nineties where he spent number of years working in the Commercial Insurance industry. He got an opportunity to locate to London in the year 2000 to work with all the music majors in the [seemingly glamorous] world of Music Publishing. His professional interests include globalisation, investment flows, government relations and diplomacy and a rather keen eye for branding organisations & nations.

He holds an engineering degree in Electronics from University of Pune (India) and an MBA from London Business School. He also sits on the International Alumni Board of the school and advises on engaging with and mobilising professional networks worldwide.


Anamaria Wills

Anamaria Wills is the Chief Executive of the Creative Industries Development Agency (CIDA) which she co-founded with Lee Corner in 2000. CIDA aims to provide artists and creative entrepreneurs with professional development and business support, helping them to maximise their potential for earning from their creativity. Prior to that, she had worked in the creative sector for over 25 years, ranging from arts officer in Essex to Head of Marketing at the National Theatre. She was awarded the Theatrical Management Association national award for Outstanding Contribution to Theatrical Life in 1992. She is a founder member of Yorkshire’s Digital Cluster Steering Group; Chair of Skillscene, the national organisation developing a competency framework and work-based qualifications for people in the live arts; and is a member of the UK Government’s Task Group for Skills and Entrepreneurship in the Creative Industries


Andrew Senior

Andrew Senior is the Acting Head Arts and Creative Industries at the British Council in India. In this role he is managing the arts programme across the country and developing the new Creative Future project. Andrew will be in India until the end of August 2006.

In September he will return to his substantive post as Head Creative Industries at the British Council. Whilst this post is based in London, the creative economy work of the British Council regularly takes Andrew to many of the 110 countries within the British Council’s network. The creative economy programme includes groundbreaking initiatives in technical assistance, around young creative entrepreneurs and in policy development. Programmes operate in Albania, Argentina, Bahrain, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Brazil, Bulgaria, China, Colombia, Croatia, Estonia, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Jamaica, Kenya, Kosovo, Kuwait, Latvia, Lebanon, Lithuania, Macedonia, Mexico, Morocco, Nigeria, Oman, Philippines, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovenia, South Africa, Thailand, Trinidad & Tobago, Turkey and Venezuela.

Before joining the British Council in 1999, Andrew worked as a consultant project manager and producer within the theatre. His clients included the Royal Shakespeare Company and the West Yorkshire Playhouse. His projects included writing two annual reviews for the RSC, undertaking a feasibility study for the RSC Academy and creating and organising the Culture, Business and Society international conference. For the West Yorkshire Playhouse he produced the European premiere of Jar the Floor by the American playwright Cheryl West and Arthur Miller’s The Crucible with a Georgian creative team.

Andrew read law at university and practised as a commercial solicitor for eight years. His experience in both the commercial world and in the arts meant that he was well placed to develop the British Council’s programme of work in the creative industries.

In April 2006 he was shortlisted for the 2006 VISTA Award for Industry Achievement at the British Book Awards. Andrew was nominated for his work with young publishers from developing, emerging and transitional economies, specifically the creation of the International Young Publisher of the Year (IYPY) award which is now in its fourth year.