As mentioned on the Gangplank blog “What Exactly Is Gangplank?“, we recently went through the exercise of answering that question. It seems stupid. It seems simple. It may even seem worthless. The truth is that it was liberating. Carrying a ton of thoughts in my head about all what Gangplank is to me left a jumbled mess. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t have all that potential and can’t do those things, it just means that now that energy is centered and focused. The thoughts are no longer fleeting and dashing. The worrying has subsided and the revelation is starting to surface.
Gangplank is hard to explain, because we don’t currently have good examples of pure collaborative workspaces that challenge the very definition of what innovation is. Where a fundamental organizational shift is being played out. The focus is not on the product, process or output. It is focused on how the people within function and collaborate opening new doors and unifying people and companies in ways that set in motion things greater than what we are used to seeing. Unlocking chunks of serendipity between organizations that have never been thought about. Never would I have expected the following statement to be so freeing.
To innovative companies and creative people, Gangplank is the collaborative workspace that provides infrastructure and community that creates the new economy.
More from Derek Neighbors
- Gangplank in Downtown Phoenix
- Coworking is a commodity. It is a race to the bottom.
- Arizona Economic Development Can’t Seem To Get It Right
- What Do You Spend Your Time On?
- Dysfunctions of (Agile) Teams
You Might Also Be Interested In
- An Open Letter to my Two Mortgage Companies (Stealthmode)
- Serendipity in the city (Matthew Petro)
- Interview: 20 Questions with Linda Gomez, co-owner of Inza Coffee in Scottsdale (Arizona Coffee)
One thing I think is pretty interesting is that to some of us (I can only really speak for myself), that statement is how I already defined Gangplank conceptually in my mind. I hadn’t put it to words, but it definitely describes the way I think of Gangplank.
If I may – some advice.
I think you have to ask yourself who that definition is for. While I’m sure that sentence is meaningful and compelling to those who already consider themselves part of the Gangplank family – I’m willing to bet people who are not will have no idea what it means.
Two concrete points:
1) The first part is exclusionary. You’ve basically set up two subjective litmus tests limiting who should care about Gangplank (and by extension who Gangplank cares about).
2) The “new economy” part should get dropped in favor of a concrete statement that tells us what the outcome is. New economy is really subjective…
This is probably far to “corporate” but it might help:
Gangplank is a structured location designed to unstructure the way people think and work enabling community, collaboration, creativity and innovation with an emphasis on fundamentally altering the greater Phoenix economy.
Gotta say, I really like Brian’s version of the statement. It seems more…guided? Certainly clearer meaning.
Brian,
That statement is really raw form to internally build on. This is not necessarily something we put out as the gangplank “elevator pitch” or “mission statement”. This just allows us to get our focus to create those types of things.
1. Absolutely exclusionary, but that is where the freedom is. We don’t have to be all things to all people. We have a sharper focus. It doesn’t mean that anyone outside that litmus test isn’t welcome, just that they are not our ‘target’.
2. New economy is somewhat nebulous and mission statement/elevator pitches will word it differently. For the purpose of this exercise everyone was on same page for what that term meant.
I don’t like “structured location” as I think it mis-represents some of the chaos that makes gangplank as a place work, but I do like the rest of the statement quite a bit. We might borrow liberally.
Thanks for the awesome feedback!
Derek -
Borrow away – my only goal was to help. And I agree about “structured location”…
B
The main goal of positioning is to create a simple definition of Gangplank that appeals to people in outside world you care about. By definition, it can’t contain everything you want to say about Gangplank, and it also has to be understandable.
I’m still learning about what Gangplank really is and how the collaborative ethic operates when people are all doing it in one room. You can’t communicate very much about the approach in a quick description to others who don’t know about it. It’s a two step communication. First, it’s a place for innovation and collaboration where cool things are happening. (Stop by and see it.) Second, it’s a place where the more complex thing happens – the collaborative, participative, unstructured thing.
I have found that people I know who were not Gangplank devotees were completely confused and negative about Gangplank. The new simple “front end” story gives them something to understand and get interested in. I can get the heads nodding now. They have to visit Gangplank and participate to really get it, but they have to be interested and stop by to do that.