How the Amazon Innovation Accelerator helped Ghostwriter bring its team behind a bigger vision

How the Amazon Innovation Accelerator helped Ghostwriter bring its team behind a bigger vision 

Seeing where your business needs to go is one thing. Bringing the rest of the team with you can be much harder, particularly when everyone is busy delivering the day-to-day.  

Vic Smith, Finance Director of Ghostwriter, knew the live music business needed to embrace innovation, but while it was firmly on her radar, it wasn’t yet part of the wider team’s day-to-day thinking. 

She joined the Amazon Innovation Accelerator to find a better way to make innovation a shared focus and bring the whole team into the conversation. 

Bringing people with you 

Ghostwriter was created by a group of people with backgrounds at some of the biggest companies in live music, including Live Nation and Academy Music Group. The 15-person team promotes and operates venues across the UK and provides consultancy, supporting independent live music and strengthening the industry. 

Before Amazon’s programme, Vic found her attention pulled towards keeping things moving each day. At the same time, she could see new technologies changing other industries and felt Ghostwriter needed to be more deliberate about innovation. 

As a smaller business, we're constantly chasing our tail. But times are changing, so we need to be innovating more. That was something I had picked up on but didn’t know how to communicate to the team.

The accelerator gave Vic an opportunity to step outside the day-to-day environment and challenge how she was approaching the business. What stood out was that the ideas being shared weren't theoretical, they were tried and tested. 

On other accelerators I’ve been on, you can tell the course isn’t coming from evidence. With Amazon, the things we were taught have been tried, tested and found to work. The team are sharing real experience.

Putting new approaches into practice 

During the accelerator, one method that challenged Vic was Working Backwards: 

Amazon’s Working Backwards model was tough. It was so different to how I work. I had to push myself not to fall into old habits. But once you crack it, you see how powerful it is and how much it can help across your business. 

Since being on the programme, Vic has shared the process with her team and it is already being put into practice. For example, Ghostwriter had spent weeks struggling to decide what to include in a teaser video. By working backwards, the team found a clearer direction and identified what to pull out for the script. 

Ghostwriter is also experimenting more, testing ideas, discarding what does not work and moving forward faster rather than trying to perfect everything first. 

The Amazon Innovation Accelerator has given me more confidence in passing on knowledge to other team members. My aim was to get everyone on board with the vision of innovation, and it really did help us with this. 

Building confidence to grow 

Following the accelerator, Ghostwriter is now hiring for two new roles. 

Vic puts that decision down to a combination of greater confidence from Amazon’s programme and changes in the wider environment. One role is focused on growth, while the other will strengthen its administration and free up leadership time. 

Perhaps the biggest change is that innovation is no longer something that Vic is pushing forward alone. The team is becoming more aligned around where Ghostwriter wants to go, with greater confidence to experiment and invest. 

The change I am most proud of is being able to pass on the knowledge and confidence I have gained, steering my colleagues to be more aligned on innovation. We’re hiring more people, investing in our direction and pushing innovation forward instead of taking the safe route all day every day.