An increase of pie

When I first got the idea for Geniocity.com, I was pretty strictly focused on figuring out exactly how I should set it up to answer what I saw as urgent social, media-industry and individual-consumer needs. It didn’t occur to me until later, when I was trying to find the best way to describe the project to friends and colleagues in my community, that they might perceive my embryonic company as competition. 

That made me uneasy. The whole point of Geniocity.com has always been to encourage a force for good – creativity – that can and does benefit all of us in every way relating to quality of life. It’s never been about stealing business from other news outlets or arts- and innovation-related enterprises.

But I’ve noticed, over my many years of writing about the arts, that creative-community reaction to any new organization always breaks into two camps: those who fear and resent the upstart because they think it will make the slices of economic pie smaller for everyone; and those who welcome the addition because they think it will stimulate community interest in, and demand for, creative services, thus expanding the size of the pie.

I’m a fervent believer that more services mean more pie, especially because knowing you’re not the only business in town keeps everyone in the local industry alert and striving to improve. And that serves the community.    

But I still find myself taking pains to make sure that the local creative cohort understands that Geniocity.com will fill an available niche, not one that’s already taken. 

The major daily paper reports what happened yesterday; the alternatives report what there is to do this week. Geniocity.com is about the world of tomorrow being developed right now.  The community papers and magazines and TV stations focus on the local and regional. Geniocity.com plans to cover what’s going on in brains, labs and studios around the world.

Though we sell creative work, as do many galleries and stores, the types and sources of our merchandise will be increasingly different from other shops. And perhaps more important, Geniocity’s pro-creative mission means we’ll constantly try to develop collaborations with other organizations that will help all of us.

I guess I say this to reassure myself as much as my community colleagues, because I’m determined that Geniocity will do well by doing good. I think that’s the only way to do well. Call it big-pie-side economics.