Light Storm
Bill Backer's book, The Care and Feeding of Ideas, glittered with useful insights when I read the first few pages this morning. The ideas that he wanted to explore and that interested me belonged to these groups:
1. ideas that moved me in the direction that I would like to be going
2. ideas that provided fresh responses to the wants or needs of the world, of consumers, or of a particular group in which I am interested.
In terms of creating a business, I am interested in how to generate ideas and to how to identify which ideas to execute that would meet needs in potential consumers that they'd want to pay me for my services or products. It's more than marketing, earlier in the process but in a way if I can do this marketing would largely take care of itself. I want to create products that I would enjoy creating for people I would enjoy creating them for.
I spoke to my sister last night. Her boss, the hospital administrator, asked her incredulously if I was retired. My sister's answer delighted me. Her answer indicated she was finally accepting the idea she fought so vigorously when I first told her about it. She told him I was not retired. I was working on "his second career." This is in fact what I am doing and two years later I feel I'm past just "attempting" to do this. I have made the transition even if I have not yet made significant money from my endeavors. For one thing, I am clearer about what I want to do and why I want to do what I want to do.
Two years ago my motivation was more just to get out of what I was doing, of what I had done for the last 30 years: working as a psychiatrist. The secondary motive was a hypothesis that I would enjoy working with people in a different fashion, not as a medical expert but in a more creative and personal way. I enjoyed it when I could come up with a prescription that relieved the emotional discomfort of my patients but what I enjoyed more was listening to their stories. Hearing them talk about their lives, their relationships, the journey they have taken, what brought them joy, their inner conversations and debates: this was what I enjoyed most of all.
Backer wrote that the richest source of ideas was popular culture—movies, popular songs, mass products, and especially advertising. I've found this to be true. When I use the treadmill at the gym I watch music videos. I get inspired by how the videos are created, the packaging, but the content being packaged intrigues me, too. I am especially drawn to the new ideas of young people or people just emerging into success in the lines of business or career they have chosen. Thus I enjoy the interviews of actors, singers, directors, and writers by Terry Gross in her NPR program, Fresh Air.
Backer writes: "Advertisers today are quick to substitute a new film technique for a new message, and manufacturers are more prone to redesign the package than improve what is inside it." I think this is true. There have been few truly innovative, revolutionary ideas. Apple's iPod is one such idea. It took over the world that Sony Walkman tape and CD players used to dominate but raised the ante considerably. Instead of being limited to the 13 or so songs on a CD, iPod users can have thousands of songs at their fingertips. Thousands! In addition, they can even watch videos on these tiny gadgets thus impacting the creation and delivery of movies, both entertaining and informational. I listen to Terry Gross's interview as podcasts on my iPod.
Products like laundry detergent or toothpaste have not changed in decades, maybe not since they were first introduced and marketed. Manufacturers market new tastes or new fragrances, sometimes adding new ingredients that supposedly "improved" the product but the next slew of products boasted new ingredients, suggesting that the additional ingredients are like the taste or fragrance is just new packaging.
As someone interested in creating photographs and videos I am obviously interested in packaging. I am still in the stage of climbing the learning curve and have not left the ground behind me much. But I think sometimes the packaging is the revolutionizing idea.
I read David Pogue's iMovie '08 & iDVD yesterday. iMovie, he contends, has revolutionized movie-making that ordinary folks can make movies now that are not tedious but truly creative. With the accessibility of video-making, animated visual presentation is taking over what used to be static, non-visual media. Even photographs now are more effectively displayed as slide shows or outright videos set to music, the elements of Hollywood-style movies. In a society where ADHD is rife and attention spans have grown shorter because the visual or sensory stimuli can be delivered with great speed, people now crave dynamic, faster-than-life presentations.
Faster-than-life and we can collapse our very experience of life (being composed of thoughts and sensations) and feel we are living more, living richer, more profound and wide-ranging lives.
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