Just came across a link to this article at CBS Interactive Business Network, Craft a Killer Elevator Pitch in 6 Easy Steps:
I know a guy whose elevator pitch turned a chance meeting at a wedding into an opportunity to get funding his new business idea.
The guy is now worth almost a billion dollars.
I am a media person. I analyze marketing and communications strategies so anything I say about an Interactive Business Network will not really be informed by my knowledge of economics (I have little of that) but by the narratives and story telling of current business strategies. With that said, I have had enough of this paradigm that promotes that “your idea can make you billions!”. First of all, we live in a world of limited resources. There aren’t billions for everyone. There are billions for some and sadly, that group tends to remain difficult to access and not really open to someone who learned how to craft an elevator pitch in a tutorial run by the CBS Interactive Business Network. And most importantly, this constant pushing of “new ideas that can make you rich” only leads to fragmentation and lack of cooperation. Everyone feels entitled to their billion and so, most people are reluctant to share and cooperate in someone else’s “idea”. An idea that might not be worth millions, maybe not even thousands, but could potentially improve the lives of those involved, even if it doesn’t make them a dime.
I attend conferences and presentations regularly. Mostly related to new media, communications and the intersection with new business and/ or non profit. The inanity of the majority of these “new ideas” can be staggering. However, practically nobody would be willing to let go of a bad idea because they too, believe they are entitled to their billions. What happens is twofold: people are terrified of sharing their “idea” for fear that it will be stolen; people do not wish to cooperate in someone else’s project because their “idea” is where they will focus their effort (self interest tends to prevail). What we get is a multitude of half finished projects, that for the most part go nowhere, whole bunches of people trying to re-invent wikipedia (for a fee, naturally), cupcake geolocation services being pitched as a necessity and the ever present “next Facebook”.
Whatever happened to dreaming? Whatever happened to earning a living through doing what you love? In the current world of business development, that has given way to the “make your billion” utopia. A utopia bred out of the worst of financial speculation and “networked isolation”. We will make our billion alone, in half baked “ideas” that we keep to ourselves out of fear. We fear both the foreign terrorist that speaks other languages and looks different but we also fear the business partner that can steal our genius. It is obvious that the narrative of fear is not limited to airports. The price tag for your dream of billions seems to be the freedom to cooperate as well.
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