The great whirlwind of Richard Florida and Kirk Watson — who visited Greensboro a few weeks ago, and Winston-Salem last year — has passed among us. The professor and the mayor did a great job.
They bore witness that creativity drives the new world economy, not the access to materials or labor. Creativity is not imported; it is not commanded into existence; it simply manifests itself where diverse groups of people talk and tolerate each other. We, too, put forth many ideas, some big, some small, to change our regional culture.
What we do with our ideas will tell the tale. Will the big ideas or the little ideas attract us? A cautionary reminder: In the creative ecosystem, a lot of “small” is more important than a few of “big.”
Big ideas are great, like a Greensboro downtown baseball stadium. Big ideas mobilize a lot of people; therefore big ideas are more efficient. But big ideas are not nimble or fleet of foot. If the weather changes, big ideas are not quick to seek shelter; they die from the cold like dinosaurs.
We still have life on this planet because little furry mammals and insects crawled out after the big reptiles died. In short, we are not going to be saved by big ideas.
The economic weather changes quickly these days. Now that China, Southeast Asia and India are becoming more market-oriented, we have several billion more people participating in the world economy.
If the Piedmont Triad is to have a prosperous and creative economic ecosystem, we need a hundred little ideas for every one of our big ideas. We need a portfolio of little projects to test. Some of these little projects will be successful, some will fail, but they will not consume large dollars and talent to test their efficacy. We will scale up the ones that succeed to get more bang for our buck.
The Piedmont Angel Network (PAN) has invested in seven early stage companies. PAN has put the same level of due diligence into every company and truly hopes that every portfolio company will succeed.
But PAN members also know that some will fail despite all their help. The few that succeed will redeem the entire portfolio. A few successful little ideas will jump-start our regional economy.
Lou Musante, on Richard Florida’s consulting team, suggested that focusing on the graduate students rather than the faculty may be more productive in taking technology out of the universities and into the market. Hobbled with its teaching and research responsibilities, the faculty is less likely to push new ideas beyond the walls of the university.
The graduate students, however, are less encumbered. If grad students were to get involved in local startups, they would be more likely to stay in the region. We would be solving the brain-drain problem as well as creating new companies.
Perhaps we should be searching out the energetic grad students and getting them involved with the CEO Roundtables so that they see how the entrepreneurs create biotech and software companies.
This idea may not work, but it is certainly worth a small test. If it does work, it can be scaled up. If it does not work, it can be scrapped or modified. These little ideas should bring one group into contact with another group that under normal circumstances would never meet.
There is one last important element: Every one of these little ideas will need a champion, someone with the passion and talent to develop every idea. Champions are everywhere, but they are camouflaged because they come in all sizes, shapes, sexual orientations and colors.
Champions are not necessarily well-known CEOs of big companies. Champions have to be asked to the party and this party has to tolerate many kinds of people. Champions are like little ideas themselves, worthy of a test.
Nurturing creativity is terribly inefficient. Creativity is not predictable; it is not a process we can optimize. It is a flawed human enterprise that happens serendipitously when humans are face to face. As Florida noted, when urban density rises, so does creativity.
This is not an either/or proposition. We need big ideas. But with a portfolio of small initiatives, we will be more resilient to the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. If we can tolerate a diverse group of champions for each small initiative, we will survive and prosper.
Failure to do either will mean more job losses.
Original Post by Charles Tuttle of The Business Journal. Charles Tuttle is president of the Piedmont Entrepreneurs Network and a member of The Business Journal’s Editorial Board of Contributors.