Creative partnerships and innovative solutions at The Innovation Hub

It is an aptitude for alliance and cooperation that has led Trydian Interactive and Blueberry Creative, new tenants in the Enterprise Building at The Innovation Hub, to form a partnership that enables both companies to explore synergies, increase their expertise base and access complementary skills.

Managing directors Donrich Jordaan and Janhendrik Oosthuizen of Trydian Interactive.

Marius Erasmus together with Collen Mtshali of Blueberry Creative.

Blueberry Creative was born out of an alliance between publication house, Blueberry Projects and graphic designer, Collen Mtshali who joined the company a year ago. Established six years ago as a part-time venture, the company has increased its workforce to a compliment of eleven full-time employees. "As a graphic design and multimedia studio, we provide a comprehensive below-the-line service to our clients, with a view to expanding into above-the-line in the near future," says client relations manager Marius Erasmus. Mtshali, who left a career in advertising to join Blueberry, shares this vision and is confident that the company is well positioned to break into the advertising industry.

Trydian Interactive's core service is e-learning courseware development which involves transforming conventional, and often complicated, training material into stimulating and interactive e-learning modules. The company's vast range of internal expertise enables them to develop courses that are engaging and stimulating, yet provide clients with the assurance that the course material is SAQA accredited and NQF aligned.

Clients range from education institutions to private colleges and industry bodies. According to managing directors Donrich Jordaan and Janhendrik Oosthuizen, respectively a former law lecturer and prospective actuary, their own partnership has created the foundation for establishing and nurturing client partnerships that enable them to identify and respond to new and exciting training opportunities, while maintaining strict standards of courseware quality and credibility.

"The positioning in a Science Park such as The Innovation Hub has also opened up avenues to explore synergies between ourselves and other technology-rich companies at the precinct," says Jordaan. Confirming this, Blueberry Creative's Erasmus indicated that they are already involved in some creative work for BioPAD and AgileWorks, also tenants at the Hub.

According to Oosthuizen, the focus that the Hub places on innovation was a definite "pull" factor in their decision to locate at the precinct. "Our core business, by its very nature, requires constant innovation," he says. This is demonstrated by the training package developed for trustees of South African retirement funds, which has been accredited by INSETA. Oosthuizen points out that although the training content already existed when course development started, the challenge for Trydian lay in deciding "how to convey the pages and pages of information in such a way that it had immediate impact for the learner". For this they had to reflect content with creative flair, interactivity and the effective application of knowledge to produce training modules that would communicate effectively to the layman. Trydian's instructional design capabilities are further demonstrated by the Quality Management Toolkit that they developed recently. This toolkit assists small and medium enterprises to implement an ISO9000 quality management system in their organisations.

And for Blueberry Creative, their unique 24-hour "open office" policy ensures that creativity is not only limited to office hours. With one of their designers already a recipient of the 2004 Design Achievers Award, Blueberry strives to consistently incorporate fresh concepts and ingenuity with professional service delivery.

For more information on these companies, contact Janhendrik Oosthuizen of Trydian Interactive on +27 12 844 0265 and Marius Erasmus of Blueberry Creative on
+27 12 844 0266.

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