We just saw the movie Finding Neverland. I rented it with a Blockbuster Video Movie Pass. It was a lovely movie.
A movie for me has always been a short, compact reminder the importance of living life, of weaving an intricate tale, that glorifies the gift of life we have been given. It's a challenge to us to see human potential fleshed out a bit and to match that challenge with creations of our own.
Notice the patterns that lay out 2005. The economy of movies has been reduced to an all you can eat buffet, a torrent of challenges, a call for Americans to create. There are now several competitors that offer similarly priced subscriptions to culture.
The challenges must be laid out. They counterbalance the torrent of competition for our position of leadership in the world. We Americans must continue to be the leaders of imagination. We must always be able to produce implementations born from the best collaborations, The best solutions must be put out there. Anything less is a waste of energy.
I feel this situation at work. We are in a get big fast culture. Customers are expecting to partner with us and have us produce the solutions of their dreams. These solutions must be leveraged to reinvent themselves, to surpass their competition. They talk about get big fast. But they don't believe in you forever. They are a fickle lot when others are promising similar solutions and to do a better job. The secret is, you can't get big fast by piling on mindless hours of work and quick solutions. You get big fast by well planned out executions that bring returns in multiples of the energy that was put in.
In my case, the Blockbuster solution was a better proposition for me than Netflix. For me, I don't feel loyalty to Netflix the innovator. The Blockbuster solution was a cheaper, more convenient one for me. It also offered the social aspect of walking into the store and seeing people also interested in movies. People build a technical solution without realizing the social aspect. The need for human contact.
I have a bi-polar view of work sometimes. Sometimes I can see that we are moving towards the ideal of a solution that yields more than the energy that was put in it. Sometimes I see a bunch of people walking around like chickens with their heads cut off. All my best work has come when I suppressed the latter feeling and by shear force of will relying on the strength of faith believed that I would find a way to build the best solution and infect others with the belief that their efforts were worthwile and together we would find a way.
I am excited about the new economy of imagination. I look forward to having the options of picking from the best of choices. If the prices are comparable, I'm not afraid to spend a bit more (i.e. buying an Apple computer over a PC) because time is too precious to waste.
