This is a re-post of one of our oldest posts, but I like to be reminded of our purpose.  We would love to hear from you.

Is a painting finished by the artist or the viewer?  Is the poem finished by the poet or the reader?  Is a song finished by the writer, the singer or the listener? We live increasingly in an age where products are completed by the purchaser.  Essentially we buy products without knowing their intended purpose.  The initial developer did not and does not know their ultimate purpose.  The product is just a platform and functionality is an added property that completes it to a degree, but not completely.  It has always been true that other purposes and adaptations have been found for items beyond their intended purpose, but their intended purpose was not that other purposes or adaptations be found.  Indeed that is the purpose of the platform.

The Knowledge to Need blog promotes the idea as the platform.  We believe the idea is not the end, but the beginning and it truly is not even the beginning, but rather a synthesis of our collective experience and knowledge that precedes its formation.  I have often found in the middle of page that I am no longer reading, but that I have been derailed by an idea presented by the author and my mind is pursuing the course of that new idea rather than the written page.  I have often found myself wondering whether an idea was mine or someone else’s when the truth is likely neither or both.  Ideas, like paintings and poems, exist in two forms, as created and as perceived.  We don’t “own” an idea or thought until we have completed someone else’s idea or thought in our mind.  Only at that time does the idea become a part of the tapestry of thought that constitutes who we are.  We are not capable of owning another’s idea, because the filters of our perceptions and the bias of our beliefs inexorably alter it from its original form.  Only after this transformation of perception, does an idea become part of our personal dialectic, a platform, a basis for the further evolution of thought, a transitory phase in the evolution of an idea.

I believe we often don’t present an idea, because it is “half-baked”, not completely formed in our mind.   The “idea as a platform” concept accepts that the idea is not ours to complete, but to articulate and to allow someone else to add the next step in the process.  This blog seeks to develop a forum for the evolution of ideas, a forum to allow us to finish each other’s sentences.  Business ideas are the ones of most current interest to me, so we begin there.  If the process works, it is a near certainty that that is not where we will end.  Join us in the dialogue.

Often times through the passage of time or through lack of attention we are unable to return to a place even though we know generally where it is.  Such is the case with Flow.  Flow is the mental state of operation in which a person in an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and success in the process of the activity. (Csíkszentmihályi)  Flow is the way Michael Jordan played basketball, Michelangelo painted, Edison invented and Patton led.  My Dad, as an FAA flight traffic controller, would speak of days when he would sense the tap on his shoulder of his relief and realize he had neither stood up nor eaten lunch in his eight hour shift.  He was in Flow.  You could name your own examples and, chances are, you’ve been there.  I encourage you to think of that time when you lost track of time, what were you doing, what was the situation, the task, the motivation, the feeling, the environment?  Start to build the framework of your Flow experience, build a trail, leave bread crumbs so you can return.  Write it in your journal, share it with friends, tattoo it on your forearm, write it on your mirror.   Set goals and make decisions about the future regarding your Flow experience and how you can conform your current job or future job to the characteristics of your Flow experience.  If you're there tell us about it, if not, try to find your way back.  When you get there I think it will feel a lot like home.