The Power of Inclusion – Conformity
This is the third post in the Power of Inclussion series. My wife told me this story year ago and I am not sure of the origins beyond that. However, I think that this is an excellent example of the detrimental effects of exclusion and imposed conformity. The story told here is an excellent example of what I referred to as group think in the previous post.
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There was a young boy that had moved to a new school and was attending his first art class in grade 3, he was full of excitement and anticipation because he loved art.
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The art teacher said to the class “I would like for everyone to draw a flower please.”
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The young boy thought to himself, I love to draw flowers and he drew a picture with fields of daisies and daffodils and purple and blue flowers. He was really enjoying drawing the flowers. It was a magnificent picture. The teacher walked by and the boy proudly displayed his art.
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The teacher said “that is not the way we draw flowers here. We draw a red rose with a long green stem and three leaves. That is how we draw flowers here.”
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The boy was crushed and noticed that all of the other students had drawn a red rose with a long green stem and three leaves. The flower drawing exercise happened many times over the course of the year.
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At the end of the school year the boy and his family were transferred to a new city. The boy took art again in Grade 4 and went to his first class.
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The new teacher said “I would like everyone to draw pictures of flowers.”
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The boy drew “A red rose with a long green stem and three leaves.”
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Creativity and innovation blossom when teams welcome new ways of thinking and encourage free thinking.
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Ian Graham
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The Longtail is highly relevant to the broad and diverse nature of marketing on the internet. Instead of having the traditional normalized curve of the life cycle what you have today is a much different distribution. The range of selection and options open to consumers and businesses is approaching infinite options. The number of bins along the curve is large and the bins are shallow. Hence you really need a highly selective method of targeting your market rather than riding the lifecycle wave. Today’s market is the Fortune 5,000,000 or even 500,000,000.
Andrew is part of the team that manages the day to day operation of a suite of three equity investment funds; Seed Fund (up to 200k), Co-Investment fund (200k to 2M) and Venture Fund (1m to 4M [in the Venture Fund we will invest from £500k to £2m into a company in deals up to approx £10m)). Because Scotland is part of the EU a portion of the money in the Co-investment Fund comes directly from the national government (Scotland) with a contribution from the EU’s European Regional Development Fund, with any investment into a company being at least matched by funding on parri passu terms from approved private sector investors. The first two funds; Seed Fund and Co-investment Fund can have up to equal contributions (50/50) from the private sector and government (though the public sector element may be less than 50%). The third fund, the Venture Fund may invest from $1m to $4m into a company in funding rounds of up to $20m, the balance to come from the private sector . The fact that government contributions scale back as risk is removed is brilliant. I have always been a huge fan of matching contributions with respect to getting government money, shows a form of commitment and that way the investor has some skin in the game too.
If you are serious about starting a profitable tech-based business in the National Capital Region during the current economic situation, we invite you to apply to Lead to Win (LTW). 
The Monk from away, it goes knows more than the monk from at home. In Ottawa Derek is the monk from at home but, elsewhere in the world he is that knowledgeable monk from away. I have seen Derek present at a CapCHI event here at TheCodeFactory not that long ago. Certainly a very insightful and entertaining presenter. If you have the opportunity I recomend you check it out:
