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What are the Anthill Cool Company Awards?

The Cool Company Awards were launched in 2006 as a way for Anthill to acknowledge and celebrate Australian organisations that are doing things differently to bring about positive change. Cool Companies stay one step ahead of the rest. They breed leaders who are rule-makers and rule-breakers. They are trend-setters in attitude and action. Quite simply, they are … cool! More.

Vulture Street

Company: Vulture Street
Website: vulturestreet.com
State: QLD
Categories: Micro Business

Vulture Street combines a virtual, web-based conference room with smart, energetic consulting and a lean, mean company profile to help business develop innovative ideas in a short time and at a competitive price.

Its signature tool is the jam session, a web-based event that usually takes two weeks and gathers online all the key players and voices a client needs to hammer out new ideas and directions. Vulture Street adds guidance, facilitation and insight to keep the jam session on point. The goal is to come out the other end of the process with solid, actionable ideas.

The web-based environment works well for large or geographically dispersed companies, and for governments that benefit from community input.

“Our customers obtain not only a set of well-considered ideas and opinions about how to address their challenges, but also build engagement in their organisation, specifically in terms of developing cultural maturity with respect to ownership of ideas and opinions,” said Kate Morrison, founder and principal.

The jam is more effective than brainstorming sessions, which can wander or crumble under personal tensions, Vulture Street claims, and it’s superior to worker or customer surveys, which focus more on the past than the future.

And the jam can be less expensive. Vulture Street offered as an example a client in the Queensland utilities sector that was spending $30,000 per session on workshops that involved about a dozen staff for half a day. Vulture Street came in and organised 600 employees in a two-week jam that spawned several good ideas and cost about $28,000.

Vulture Street is the brainchild of Morrison, who brought to the table 12 years of consulting experience as an IT and innovation/strategic management specialist. A economics graduate from the University of Queensland, Morrison worked for IBM for many years. She was selected to represent Australia at the APEC Women’s Entrepreneurship Summit in the Japan.

A bit more than a year ago, Kate Morrison brought her sister aboard. Lisa Morrison had eight years of experience in event management and coordination, working for The Arts Centre in Melbourne, the Tate Museum in London and the Brisbane International Film Festival.

One of Vulture Street’s biggest challenges is isolation, with their customers spread all over the map. Lisa Morrison’s role is largely anchored at the Vulture Street office. To keep the stir-crazies at bay, the three person team decided Lisa needed an additional job outside the office. She found one as an part-time apprentice at a boutique German bakery in her Melbourne neighborhood. “All our work still gets done flawlessly,” Kate Morrison said, “everyone’s happier and we have access to very delicious pastries.”

“After only a year we have built a thriving venture being made to work by two sisters who prove every day their ability to punch above their weight and take on the big guys,” Kate Morrison said, “and we’re creating a lot of fun and learning for ourselves and our customers along the way!”

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