DAY 22
INDUSTRY CHANGE By Jeff Shinabarger Founder of Plywood People and author of More or Less: Choosing a Lifestyle of Excessive Generosity. @shinabarger
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e started Plywood People because of the quantity of people who started having coffee with me, that had an idea they wanted to share. After hundreds of conversations, I realized I was encouraging people in the same ways and asking the same questions. Don’t just have an idea, create a significant change around something that really matters, create a social innovation. Social innovators are leaders who are working to address the world’s greatest problems in new ways. These creative solutions take the form of many different shapes and social concerns. They can be for profit, not-for-profit, or a hybrid of solutions. The spectrum of social issues are broad, like bringing clean water to the world, attracting customers to restaurants in a down economy, creating micro-loans for the working poor, making fresh food available to all people, creating jobs for unemployed, ending homelessness, restoring workers caught in modern-day slavery, and on and on and on. These leading thinkers see what is unseen and reveal it to others. They do what others find unthinkable. Sometimes the solutions start hyper local but even at a small scale, creative solutions have the opportunity to influence an industry. True social innovation is the combination of addressing a great need and changing how an industry operates forever. If you and I had coffee today, I would ask you three questions to challenge your creation.
1) What is so unique about your social innovation that it will change the industry in the next 5 years? Making something that is relevant for today’s culture will not last. It is essential to reframe a conversation for the future. As an innovator, you must look far enough into the future that you are meeting culture where it is headed, but not so extreme that everyday people can’t comprehend your creation in the mean time. Innovators play the valuable role of creating progress because society wants to see it. Not everyone likes change, but they know change is needed. As you create, dream for the future. Imagine a solution that will shift industry. Consider making something that changes how people engage the issue in a new way. Change the conversation, disrupt the industry. 2) How can you create a low-cost experiment to determine the viability of your creation and get feedback from a test market? Before you quit your job and put your family security in jeopardy, please do an experiment first. Choose a time period and dollar investment that you are willing to evaluate the market potential. At the end of the experiment determine if you can sustain the idea and if the problem actually has the potential to be solved in a new way. Don’t pursue an idea that you think is an idea, you need affirmation
Get Stuff Done
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