Finding New Inspiration On Business Trips
Creative inspiration often strikes at the most unexpected times – in the shower, while out for a walk or lying on the sofa — and with depressingly less frequency at the office when workers are actually paid to generate it. But business travel can be fertile ground for discovering creative ideas for work or even a new business, many travelers say.
Eve Blossom was an architect in Los Angeles when she took a business trip that she says changed her life. She went to Russia in 1991 as a consultant as part of an exchange program of American and Russian architects and met a French couple who raved about Vietnam.
“I went to Hanoi and fell in love – I wanted to live and work there in any capacity I could,” Ms. Blossom said. She was impressed by the fine craftsmanship of the weavers there who made clothing from silk and natural dyes, and saw its potential for home furnishings. “Weaving is architecture – it has design, color, structure,” she said.
In late 2004 she decided that she and the market were ready. With the help of two American textile consultants, she started Lulan Artisans, a shop in Charleston, S.C., that sells textiles and rugs made by over 600 weavers, spinners and dyers in Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and India.
For Rosanna Bowles, a tableware designer in Seattle and owner of Rosanna Inc., Europe is her touchstone for inspiration, and she draws parallels between her scouting expeditions to museums, markets and churches and the designs that result. One collection was spurred by a visit to a Paris flea market in the Porte de Clignancourt, where she found gold, precious stones and pearl necklaces, brooches and earrings – “fabulous jewels,” she said. “But most women can’t afford them, so we put the jewelry on plates.”
“Travel is a very big part of the design process in my company,” said Ms. Bowles, who attributes her career path to a junior year abroad in Perugia.
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