Ideas for Sale #31 #cong18

Some of us don’t know when to stop, when tempted to give life to yet another enticing idea.  We ignore the fact that above our heads are enough spinning plates on sticks already.  So, we end up with more than we can cope with.  We watch in deperation as some of the plates begin to wobble.

Passing on each plate (like a baton to a relay-runner who stretches out an upturned hand) is what we dream of.

Is there a way to “sell ideas”, to hand them over, to ensure a legacy we can proudly leave behind?

1. It ain’t easy to restrict our creativity, to focus.
2. There may be no such thing as a “successful handover” of one of our ideas to someone else
3. Waiting to be rescued (from a surfeit of good ideas) is not to be recommended
4. ‘Licensing’ may be the only viable means of ensuring our tried and tested innovations have an impact – out there in the world as well as in our bank accounts

Alec has emigrated five times from his native Ireland.  He currently splits his time between a house in the north of Portugal and a flat in Vienna.

He has worked in Radio, TV, Corporate Video, Now he concentrates on Coaching/Training/Consultancy in Communication Skills and Creativity, mainly in Europe.  He works in the private and public sectors, with NGOs and politicians.

He believes we are all multi-talented and can benefit hugely by igniting our hidden talents. He also believes we need – all of us, now more than ever – to become politicians in our own way, to hold communities together rather than let them be divided, to close the wealth gap (not allow it to be widened further), to actively promote and spread the practice of open, inclusive democracy.

You can contact Alec by email or view his work on AlecTaylor.

By Alec Taylor.

Welcome to my greenhouse.  All the potted plants you see around me represent ideas that have grown from a seed. The plants are healthy.  I keep them watered.  They’re already through R&D.  The trouble is that they will soon outgrow the pots they’re in, or they will shrivel and die.

That’s the challenge for those of us who – in our sixties and seventies – were flooded with ideas that beguiled us, sat outside the door and wailed at us until we let them in, seduced us in their boudoir of delights until we embraced them.  It was heady stuff.

Now, we’re stuck with them which is less heady, but deeply satisfying nonetheless.  The challenge is to engage a younger generation, to entice them into the greenhouse.  To leave behind a legacy.

On a personal note, for some of us, these ideas represented candles in the darkness.  We kept lighting them to balance the sadness and the isolation.  It turns out that trauma can be a potent fertilizer of ideas which, in turn, provide a powerful therapy.

Every idea starts as a vision of what could be.  Sometimes, I call it ‘the prize’.  It’s visible, a scene in a movie.  There’s nothing more thrilling.  It’s not quite an hallucination. Unreal and real at the same time.  Graspable.

In my greenhouse there are nine potted plants right now.  Ten if you count the networking event called “K18” (bringing together people from as many different sectors as possible and running innovation workshops in between the chat, amidst the food and the drink, in a basement in Vienna’s 18^thdistrict).

Three earn money, good money, already:

• a training, coaching and consultancy company called “Alec Taylor Learning” (offering Communication Skills and Creativity),
• a video-production company called “Memoirs On Camera” (personal and corporate video-memoirs as well as knowledge- transfer memoirs),
• a property-marketing website called “Hidden Sunshine” (‘online dating’ for property-owners and prospective buyers).

Two years ago, another project called “Field-grey and Khaki” almost shot through the roof of the greenhouse when a leading person in the Film and TV industry in London asked me: “Have you got the next seven years of your life to devote to this?  We want to see a movie made about this German man who served in the Kaiser’s army in WW1 and the British army in WW2.”  The leading person’s subsequent ill health sadly left this plant in its pot, waiting to be discovered all over again.  That’s showbiz.

What would I do if I won the lottery? I know what I’d do.  I’d take the potted plants out of the greenhouse, find a building and call it THE IGNITION INSTITUTE.  I’d fill it with multi-talented people and give them each a potted plant to tend, to grow.  I’d turn up from time time and sit around….until someone came over and asked for advice about getting the best out of the plant in their particular pot. I’d be glad to help them.