Small Town, Big Ideas, and the Power of Sharing

I attended a locally sponsored, sustainability themed business plan a couple weeks ago in my relatively new hometown of Hood River, OR. It was incredible how diverse the ideas were, how each contestant incorporated the idea of "sustainability" differently into their business model. And it also reminded me how ideas are a resource that is hard to waste, but it is still possible.

There is a magical thing about creativity and ideas - for me it is represented most accurately in Chef Gusteau's motto in Ratatouille, "Anyone can cook" and his true meaning of, "not everyone can become a great artist; but a great artist can come from anywhere."
Ideas are the same. People are amazing. All over the world, in big cities, in little towns, in hot climates, in cold weather, people are coming up with innovative ideas that can change the world. Whether you define that world as the giant globe we live on or your own tight knit community.

And these ideas, in this new interconnected, somewhat democratized world of social media and the Internet and so on, can be shared. And can grow. It is amazing what you can do with an idea.

And these ideas come so easily into your head. Some are tossed aside. Some wake you up in the middle of the night, and convinced you'll never forget such an epiphany, you decide to not write it down only to wake up sadly unable to remember. But the power of ideas is in sharing. As I saw at the business plan competition.

Sharing ideas is not additive. It is not even multiplicative. Sharing your good idea with the right people is like adding an exponent! And who are the right people? You don't know! Everyone who knows someone who knows someone who knows something about exactly what you are trying to do. The power of great ideas comes in new perspectives and pressure tests and disagreements. And that is a very exciting thing, to live at a time when our ideas have greater access to all these things than ever before.

And while each contestant stood up on stage, and her or his plea in one way or another for the prize money, I realized as each person stepped off stage and were bombarded by people with feedback and networking connections, the power of that night did not exist in the winnings, it existed in everyone being there. Listening. Sharing.