• The future is not what it used to be (1,850,000 Google results as of this writing);
• Things are not like they used to be (1,470,000 Google results as of this writing);
• We live in a brand-new world (2,460,000 Google results as of this writing);
• The Internet has changed everything (505,000 Google results as of this writing).

And so on, and on, and on.  Everyone has a smart sounding readymade phrase to offer as a commentary to any headline or social conversation (online or offline).

And here’s my contribution:  I disagree.  The future is exactly as it was to be expected.

Fundamentally, nothing has changed or is new in the world as we’ve known it for the past 6,000 years or so, give or take a handful of centuries.  The only observable and finite variable which clocks at a different measure than previously recorded is the speed of change, not change itself.  Alas, observation for any period of time demonstrates that such speed has always been increased speed, so any formulaic expression would have to take into consideration acceleration as a variable, and not speed as a constant.

Where once a Blue Chip company could live off the power of its own inertia due to its sheer size for decades, with one of the by-products being lifetime employment for many people; nowadays a 10 year cycle is beyond Long Term. At the end of the present decade, in the year 2020, not one established company in existence today will be alive, and if they are, they will  look nothing like what they look like today.  Not even Facebook.
Ask AOL or MySpace.

As kids, we have all heard grownups telling us:  “Question Everything”, but now as adults, when it is our turn to pass on the Question Everything wisdom, it’s a good exercise to reflect on when did we ever Question Everything.  And I mean Everything!
Discussions with your boss who wouldn’t let you do that brilliant paradigm-changing idea don’t count. Nor do your discussions with your significant one, let alone your in-laws.  Talk with no action is just noise, no points there.

Let’s face it, you never started with a blank slate and questioned everything, as in Everything.  A part of you was either brainwashed or had a conflict of interested with the status-quo, or a subset of it, so that you haven’t pioneered any game-changing ideas, no new paradigms, and no disruptive technology either.  And the jargon gets really boring too.

And now for the good news:  There’s a Revolution underway. Smart individuals the world over are truly questioning everything, for the very first time.   No attachments and no anchors to any assumptions whatsoever, re-thinking and re-defining what it means  . . . .  with it being everything that surrounds us.

One of the businesses that epitomizes such a change is: outstandinginthefield.  Let’s start with the name.  Does it mean “Outstanding in the Field” or “Out, Standing in the Field”?  To me it signifies both: it’s clever, brilliant, fun . . . .
It’s a about food.  Is it?  Surely it’s not a grocery store, but . . . is it a restaurant?  It sounds more like a party.

This is how I imagine the brainstorming went:
What is a restaurant?  It’s not food.  A restaurant is an experience, a multi-sensory experience centered about food.  And centered about the people you share the meal with.  What does it mean to go to a restaurant with someone important in your life to celebrate a special occasion?  To have a good time celebrating . .  life?  What’s a special occasion? What if the meal per se . . . the experience of the meal per se becomes the special occasion?
And how can we make it a win-win-win-win proposition for everyone, for the field owners, the local farmers, the local winery, the local town, the diners, their guests . . . .
The trend in restaurants are: temporary restaurants, slow food, local ingredients, pop-up restaurants, celebrity chefs . . . put it all together and  . . . what have you got?

Outstanding in the Field is one answer.

Dinner in the Sky is another answer.

Of course, it’s easy to play Monday Morning Quarterback.  And yet the principle remains the same.  Now more than ever the Art of Entrepreneurship is about taking a NEW approach to everything, re-think it all and re-define what it means to _____ .

What is a charity? What is the function of a conference? Is graffiti the new art?

Answers are boring, stick with the questions; better questions are the sources of pure innovation.

ReThink + ReDefine Everything = inNEWation

How’s that for a formula?

___________

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