Exploring Your Creative Genius: Episode 44
Last week’s episode of ‘Exploring your Creative Genius’ was an interview with Christopher Gergen. He talked about his work helping regions and cities build effective entrepreneurial support infrastructure, with a special focus on the historically under-resourced communities.
We both agreed with the Mitch Kapor quote that “Talent is equally distributed across all zip codes, opportunity is not.” Christopher has been successfully spreading opportunity.
This discussion made me think of the concept of Common Wealth. I have always sensed that Common Wealth existed and have relied on it time and again without ever examining it closely. It seems we all are well served by the existence of Common Wealth—resources established to hold in common and share individually—and that we flourish when there is more of it for all of us to share and for each of us to leverage and that we stumble in decline when there is less of it.
I am an advocate for Common Wealth creation and its importance.
1. I acknowledge that Socialism might be the word many would apply to the term Common Wealth so they can dismiss it without further thought or, at best, consider it from a prejudiced view point.
But if you asked 100 first-time entrepreneurs which they would choose, attempting to start and grow their new ventures outside a start-up incubator or inside one that provides easy access to other entrepreneurs who willingly share experiences and knowledge and networks and resources with each other—creating Common Wealth—my bet is nearly 100% of our first-time entrepreneurs would choose the incubator. Leveraging that Common Wealth while contributing to it greatly increases the likelihood of success for each and for all.
2. There is Common Wealth supporting most all start-up successes whether inside an incubator or, at first glance, going alone.
Research finds that those entrepreneurs who do go it alone who are successful in fact don’t go it alone—they tap into the Common Wealth of rich social capital networks and friends and associates, and apply the Common Wealth of a broad supportive community like the ones Christopher has helped develop.
The analysis is clear: the richer the legacy of entrepreneurial activity in a region the more likely it is that there will be more entrepreneurial successes among entrepreneurs in that region because of all the creative and entrepreneurial Common Wealth that has been established over the years.
3. The next example was denounced as Socialism when during the Great Depression FDR acted to create jobs by putting folks to work on useful national infrastructure.
The Lincoln Tunnel was one of those ‘Socialist’ projects.
Here the individuals’ benefits from leveraging our Common Wealth are abundantly clear while clearly incalculable: think for just a moment how you would measure the commercial impact of the Lincoln Tunnel since its completion in 1937. What about just one day in 2023, when over 100,000 vehicles use it, some delivering goods or supplies to make those goods, others carrying customers for those goods, back and forth between Manhattan, NY and Weehawken, NJ.
What has been the cascading impact of individual benefits from investing in that shared Common Wealth?
4. It will be grand when the high leverage and compounding benefits of Common Wealth serving each and all of us frames our conversation about the particular Common Wealth investment that drives growth more powerfully than any other.
And that’s the Common Wealth generated from a vibrant and vital Public Education system preparing an educated citizenry. The investment we make in Public Education that helps generation after generation to be the most creative and entrepreneurial citizenry we can be, more and more capable of creating advantage for ourselves and for our communities from the Common Wealth we find around us as we contribute to it, able to create advantage from the surprises and opportunities the future has in store, this is the highest leverage Common Wealth investment we can make.
By introducing Common Wealth’s proven power to serve each of us as it serves all of us in an entrepreneurial context gives us a better chance of engaging in productive discussion about Common Wealth’s power in Public Education.
Our nation’s health depends on steady strategic investments that continually grow our public service infrastructure Common Wealth.
“Exploring Your Creative Genius” takes an expansive view on what it means to be creative and entrepreneurial in an ongoing conversation led by Carl Nordgren — entrepreneur, novelist, and lifelong student with decades of experience growing his own creative capacity and assisting others to do the same in exciting new ways!
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