Why We Need Creative Scenes

The clip above is a short look at Guy Laliberte', the founder of Cirque du Soleil.  Cirque is one of the many creative scenes I've worked at, and the most amazing.  It's also the best run business I've ever seen.

It's late January of 2017 and tens of millions of Americans need a new and better way to make a good living. 

Our new president and his cronies are going to town to make the U.S. a better climate for multi-national corporations.  They say they're going to bring back "the factory jobs."  They're attacking the problem with a 20th century Industrial Age mentality.  But there's a problem with that, we're no longer in the 20th century and the Industrial Age has ended.  How can I say this?  Am I smarter than the politicians running our country?  No.  (Well...maybe.)  I've just read these books:

Revolutionary Wealth by Alvin and Heidi Toffler
The Rise of the Creative Class by Richard Florida
The Flight of the Creative Class by Richard Florida
The Great Reset by Richard Florida
The Long Tail by Chris Anderson
Free by Chris Anderson
Purple Cow by Seth Godin
Tribes by Seth Godin
Linchpin by Seth Godin
CTRL ALT DELETE by Mitch Joel
3@%&*#$!!! Gary Vaynerchuk

I've read these books, and many others, written by experts in the future, economic development, the effect of technology on business, and 21st century marketing.  Because I've read these books and the politicians haven't, I'm working with a much more up-to-date worldview than they are.  If you read these books, you , too, will have a better picture of today's working world than the people running our country. 

The Fortune 500 companies are not going to create the tens of millions of good paying jobs in the United States to replace the jobs they've sent overseas and the jobs taken over by new technology. 

To be brutally honest, we don't even need millions of jobs.  What we need is a way for tens of millions of Americans to do meaningful and fulfilling work, and make a decent living doing it.  Richard Florida says we need to make the service jobs into better jobs.  I agree.  But I don't think that will happen fast enough.

The more I look at the issue of jobs, the more I think that millions of Americans will have to create their own jobs.  And not just "jobs" but meaningful work. 

So where does "meaningful work" come from?  Dreams.  A person, like street performer Guy Laliberte', in the clip above, has a big dream.  He and his performer friends wanted to create a new kind of circus.  That dream led to brainstorming and new ideas.  Then, the magic part... they took action, brave action, and brought the dream into the physical world.  Cirque du Soleil (Circus of the Sun), was born.  A dream in one guy's head was shared with a creative scene.  The scene worked together and pushed each other.  They worked and shared their dream with other creative people in many disciplines.  Progression, as we call it in the action sports world.  Cirque du Soleil now employs about 4,000 people from 40 or more countries, and has 15 or 20 different shows around the world.  One man's idea turned into 4,000 jobs directly, and probably thousands more indirectly.

in the late 1950's, surfers built boards with wheels to surf sidewalks when the waves were flat.  Skateboarding now happens around the world, and employs thousands and stokes millions.
Tom Sims wanted to surf on snow.  He built a snowboard in 8th grade shop class.  It sucked.  But he kept with the idea, and now snowboarding is a worldwide activity, sport, and industry.  Personal computers.  Video cameras.  Cell phones.  Cable TV.  BMX and freestyle.  Video games. Mountain bikes.  Laptop computers. Kite surfing.  Wakeboarding.  The world wide web.  Social media.  Smart phones.  Tablet computers.  Rat rod cars.  Custom motorcycles.  Drifting cars.  Wingsuit flying.  Cross Fit training, Mixed Martial Arts.  The list goes on and on.  These things didn't exist when I was born 50 years ago, and now millions of people make their living in those industries.

This is why we need to build creative scenes.

The common threads in all those things is people with dreams, creative scenes, and hard work.

 The unemployed and underemployed people of the United States don't need more minimum wage jobs.  We need meaningful work that also pays well and contributes to our world.  So... let's get to work.

If you don't have a good job... create your own job.  Build your creative scene.  Progress.  See where that leads.  You may find a good living doing something you enjoy.  You may end up employing thousands of people.  Who knows?  

Got an idea?  Get to work.