If you think all CEO’s are synonymous with power suits and MBA’s, you’ve got some catching up to do. Check out how two CEO’s have merged their artistic personalities with solid, yet unconventional business sense to craft the next generation of businessmen.
» By Jack Busch
Chug, chug, SQUEAL! Hear that? Chugga sliiide. That’s the sound of Metal Tuesday – the day of the week when all Electric Owl Studios employees are required to rock out to heavy metal for the entire day. Stuff like this isn’t exactly standard operating procedure in a typical office – but it is for the next generation of start-ups and young entrepreneurial firms. How does anyone get any work done in an environment like this? Well, it takes a special breed.
“If you can’t handle a Nerf rocket flying at your head when you are trying to code…” says Fred Gallart, CEO of Electric Owl. “…then you might not be a good fit.”
I won’t say that it’s not all fun and games at Electric Owl – after all, they do design video games – but that certainly doesn’t mean that nobody’s taking care of business. In just two short years, Electric Owl Studios has raised funding from Idea Foundry, bagged a tidy contract from the Childrens’ Hospital of Pittsburgh and, in a way, helped the Pens win the Stanley Cup.
While Electric Owl has its own unique personality and niche market – they create high-tech toys to keep kids entertained in waiting rooms, called the Kids Interaction Creation Kiosk (K.I.C.K., partially inspired by fellow Pittsburgher, the late Fred Rogers) – Electric Owl’s style is notably representative of the changing skill sets needed to be a successful entrepreneur in the digital age – characteristics that are, in some ways, starkly contrasted to the go-getters of yore but in other ways, just the same. A DIY-attitude, resilience in the face of risk (and failure) and adaptability – especially adaptability – are still as important as they ever were. Stuff like donning a three piece suit, organizing high octane power lunches and nabbing an Ivy League MBA – less so.
Take a look at the education background of the team at Electric Owl Studios – they have three masters of entertainment technology from Carnegie Mellon University, a couple bachelor of science degrees and some bachelors of fine arts. Conspicuously absent from this list: MBAs, business school alumni and management majors. Which, if you think about it, isn’t particularly peculiar. In this age of innovation, qualities like creativity and collaboration are far more valuable assets than the ability to read a balance sheet and tactfully layoff an employee. For the folks at Electric Owl, that very creative spark was fanned into a flame at CMU’s Entertainment Technology Center (tagline: “The graduate program for the left and right brain…”) and carried over to their offices in East Liberty, Pittsburgh.
“CMU is different from many schools in that they encourage interdisciplinary study rather than setting up barriers to prevent it,” says Gallart. “The ETC itself is a very unique animal in that it is a ‘melting pot’ of people from backgrounds ranging from music to psychology to computer science. When you have access to such a broad range of talented people, the chances that dynamic teams can form dramatically increase.”
In the office, Electric Owl continues to favor the melting pot layout over the cubicle catacomb. In fact, the mezzanine level of 6101 Penn Avenue is home to both Electric Owl Studios and another ETC venture, Interbots. Like the ETC program, the workspace is notably barrier-free. It’s an open floor plan loft in a renovated bank building – a no wall productions property – which provides apt opportunities for ideas and innovation to spill over.
“You have this amazing collaboration between two entirely different companies/teams. It allows for very open communication, and keeps everybody very honest,” says Gallart. “Everybody’s personality is on display.”
Coincidentally, on the sixth floor of the very same building is another CMU spinoff: Deeplocal. Deeplocal is a “software design, development, and strategy studio” that brings together “artists, designers, and technologists to solve complex communication problems with a focus on usability and simplicity.” Like Electric Owl, the curriculum vitaes at Deeplocal are markedly free of 
business school degrees. “Above all else, Deeplocal is a culture of innovation,” says Nathan Martin, Deeplocal’s CEO. Like his downstairs neighbor, Martin also has a penchant for collaboration, passion and pinch harmonics – he screamed on behalf of the mathcore band Creation is Crucifixion until 2002. He also served a stint teaching courses with names like “Parasitic Media” at a college level – but he’s not particularly fond of teaching by the book.
“I don’t believe in teaching skills,” he says. “I believe that great people will teach themselves what they need to know and school is about fanning passions and allowing great minds to explore and experiment.”
Martin first attended art school at age 16 and now holds two fine arts degrees – a BFA and an MFA. And he is nearly evangelical about the virile merits of studying the arts – even for those who want to start their own business.
“Business school is not where you learn to be an entrepreneur,” Martin says. “I think that, right now, university arts programs are the one institutional place where people seeking to become entrepreneurs can learn the most necessary skills to being an entrepreneur.”
Essentially, Martin seems to be saying, the driving force behind a successful business isn’t technical knowledge or business savvy – it’s passion, something that’s difficult to teach. Coaxing out your true passion is a matter of exploration, not regimentation. “I think that everyone should just take courses they think sound interesting. Ignore grades and degrees as much as possible,” Martin says before adding a call to action: “Take more art classes and fund the arts!”
Read more at Primer Magazine.
