That last post was something impressive to me...rather what peole said about it. Holy smokes it got a lot of responses. Too bad most were to my email or linkedIn page! Who would have known people read this. Thanks! But seriously people, please post responses here so others can benefit from them as much as me! There were several brainstorms that would be rockin' to have posted in response here.
I was asked several times what the heck I was doing and why I would write/"give away" ideas? The answer is pretty simple, Ideas without action don't matter. They don't matter at all. I have ideas. Everyone has ideas. If I don't do anything with them...if you don't do anything with them then they honestly don't matter. Also, I can give them away all day long because I post the one's I don't care enough about...or to say the ones that I am not all-in on. So far there are about three rock stars that I have the ability and resources to tackle. Priorities right!
Now think about it for a second. The entrepreneurial dilemna is similar to any prioritization routine that a person goes through when making personal decisions...or a company when funding strategic initiatives. I have X amount of bandwidth/time and X amount of resources. I have X amount of different interests and objectives. Now, what am I gonna do? I could sit around and dream up cool and innovative ideas all day long. In the end, if they are gonna matter you gotta do something with them. Ideas without action don't matter. Action costs. One thing I know from my day job is you can have more innovative ideas than time, money or market capacity to chase. Prioritizing what matters, is what matters. Having cash on hand to capitalize on opportunity when the moment stares you in the face...that is a different matter.
Ultimately, the real question is, are you (me, chad) gonna do anything with them? The answer to that is a complex one because any idea, business idea, requires a sort of "all-in" mentality or at least a great measure of personal energy and time. If your heart isn't in even a great idea then forget about it, keep your day job and in my opinion share them with the world so that someone somewhere might get inspired to create something and add value!
Now I slow down for a quick break. Think of this paragraph as a palette cleanser. I have been listening to various playlists on YouTube tonight. It is quite nice for me because it is basically a radio station of music I control. Here is a link from the playlist I am listening to right now, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gzC0RNkBXM0 the 2:54 mark break down just makes me smile for some reason. What a fun time in music history. Pure energy. That '87-92ish punk era was a lot of fun to partake in. Some people don't get this era or music and that is understandable, still, it was awesome none the less. Or this one which was a bit before my time (I was 8 or 9?) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvJhyJ-OXsU . I love noise.
Alright I owe you all a business ideation or value model from watching people do stuff. Here we go, it's not that great [and gets a lilttle ranty...sorry].
I live across the street from a school. This one to be exact. Earlier this fall when school was back on it was like another world. After a summer of no kids, no traffic and no crossing guard it was a surprise to see all the life that comes with school. Since it's an elementary school it brings out kids and parents and grandparents and baby sitters and every kind of person you can imagine. There is quite a bustle every morning. It is pretty vibrant, alive and refreshing actually. Neighborhood schools are good for neighborhoods imo.
So one day all the buses (plural for bus??? wow, I don't know) pull up. The crossing guard has stopped traffic for a bunch of walk-to-schooler's. That's right people, in Madison kids still walk to school and it's safe, and we have community based elementary schools. It's nice. Anyway the crossing guard has traffic stopped for some kids/families crossing Buckeye. There is a large bus full of retiree's on a trip to somewhere. They are stopped in the road as hundreds of kids run around, being kids. And the bus sat and the retirees watched on and people crossed the street and that got me thinking.. [insert sly chad smile]
All liberal socialist plots aside this idea is about community. Call it commune if you want but it isn't communist. I think this model would be a superb innovation for American education. Here it comes...First the retirees on the bus are all gawking and pointing and smiling about all the little people running around at the school. They (the kids) are cute, for real & honestly! Who can deny how captivatingly funny and strange kids are ...and funny too. Basically little kids are charming...especially to older folks who have had families and have memories of raising children and grandchildren, etc. And they all sat on the retiree bus and pointed and smiled and then the crossing guards white glove lowered and the traffic resumed and away the retirees went, probably on a trip to visit the HoChunk or something.
In that moment my brain jumped to a community development model, one that puts a priority on local planning and small, symbiotic neighborhood-based school systems where young and old share facilities, coexist and benefit each other mutually. This is.. "rather" than sprawling campuses shared by multiple communities that truck their kids miles to arrive at a shared place far away from the communities they serve and compartmentalized in tidy age brackets...somehow mega campuses and huge schools are more manageable/economically viable than kids walking to small schools and communities with strong identities based on strong community icons like elementary schools and diverse neighborhood systems??. Perhaps I am crazy for thinking different.
...some details of the model. Retirement is weird right? On one hand it is spinned as freedom for some. On another it leads to assisted living scenarios. For some retirement is about fulfilling dreams. For others it is about soul crushing, lonely realities. I know my pal Ted from Chicago would say, "hey that sounds a lot like school...some like it, some don't" There are a bunch of issues why that might be the case but still what if all that energy trapped in youth was shared with our elders? What if all the Wisdom trapped in age/experience was shared with the kids? And what if both were planned accordingly to enhance and leverage a fruitful symbiotic relationship? What if we built our affordable elder retirement housing around or adjacent to our elementary schools. What if we connected young and old quite literally!
This ideation is about a full circle of life in conceptual terms. The idea is to bring the circle together rather than separate it. Young and old having visibility to each other. It is sort of crazy how disconnected we have become from this circle especially in this modern world. People move all over the world now...far from family. In this we lose that sense of generations. We lose wisdom and perspective about the full circle. We also lose a sense of humanity...basic humanity. Think the hopeless sad reality of "assisted living" for some. These are so called communities that are built far from other humans...they are their own place and have only a certain slice of the circle. Peaceful living or "outta sight, outta mind?" Similarly we bus kids 40 miles to share resources between municipalities...we seek to streamline for economy not for better communities or better systems. Industrial age compartmentalization is unnatural! IMO it is counter productive and detrimental to healthy functioning/productive societies.
Likewise there's a lot of talk of new "Tribes"...micro cultures. Super, sure, you bet. There is a new community model for sure but the old one, the real community where people live, still needs cohesion to provide value and most important it needs age diversity and a depth of knowledge [wisdom]. The disruption of the circle, the dislocation of young and old is dicy at best. I think this is a big risk-loss for America and will be a huge issue to deal with as the million of Boomers creep closer to 80's and 90's and the tax balance of power shifts dramatically under the feet of parents looking for a good education as well as quality communities. When we compartmentalize and marginalize based on economy, no matter if we are talking by age, race, sex or religion we disrupt the circle, and I have a strong feeling that is a circle we don't want to disrupt for too long before it comes back to bite us hard.
Ok, back to the Circle, right! Imagine a plan to mix young and old strategically based on leveraging the power of the circle. Retirement communities require similar services that do schools...food service, lunch, security, structures/meeting places etc. Schools require wisdom, history, perspective and most important volunteers from the community who can help with before school programs, after school programs and weekend programs. Imagine if your volunteer labor pool lived on campus or around campus? Imagine if low cost senior housing/tax based incentives for elders were based on a social contract that supported the communities it served. The pay back would be huge for both. Kids need elders. Elders need kids. Parents need communities that align rather than disrupt and compartmentalize. Communities need the circle put back in place. I could expand this out to a detail level such as the elder community center designed to overlook the play ground or shared resource gymnasium so they could watch the kids playing and goofing off (seriously it keeps you young...kids are funny) but I will skip it. I will assume you can see it, the imagery or at least have enough ammo to debate me and tell me I am full of it! ...just don't call me unAmerican (socialist somehow?-bs) or AntiBusiness...I got that from a TeaParty friend and imo there is a big difference between planning for the future and taking care of neighbors and your community.
