“To pour forth benefits for the common good is divine.” — Benjamin Franklin
This was the motto of The Library Company of Philadelphia, America’s first subscription library. Founded in 1731, the Library Company was the brainchild of Ben Franklin and the Junto, a club Franklin founded comprising a dozen tradesmen who met regularly to exchange knowledge on business for “mutual improvement.” Books were difficult and expensive to obtain during Colonial times; only the rich and the clergy had easy access to them. Establishing a subscription library, where members could buy shares of the company in exchange for the ability to borrow its books, was a game changer. As the years passed, it flourished and even served as the first Library of Congress during the Revolutionary War.
All this because Franklin had the idea to collaborate with his peers.
This came to mind when I attended Informa’s first Exhibitor Strategic Dialogue Meeting in May. Informa is the company that puts on the annual International Pool | Spa | Patio Expo, and the purpose of the meeting was to obtain exhibitor feedback and hold creative brainstorming sessions about how to improve the show experience for both exhibitors and attendees alike.
And much like Franklin’s library, this meeting was a game changer.
The intense two-day gathering was led by a professional third-party facilitator, Dawn Rhine of Synergy Forces, who diplomatically guided us through the agenda. The 16 attendees were as diverse as could be — there were representatives from pool and spa manufacturers large and small from throughout the U.S. and Canada, along with key association leaders, and myself as the industry’s media presence.
While I can’t speak of the specific ideas generated during the sessions due to a non-disclosure agreement, I can attest to the power of collaboration. Indeed, not only was the meeting itself structured to encourage intense collaboration, but the topic came up organically as an opportunity manufacturers would welcome. That is, they desired the opportunity to collaborate with other manufacturers in the industry. They sounded almost wistful in imagining the possibilities.
Quite frankly, I was astonished.
I had always seen this industry, like many others, as protective of its interests. People are reluctant to share the recipe to their secret sauce, whether it’s best business practices, product engineering or the like. And in this age of fakes and copies, shrinking profit margins and increasing competition, who can blame them?
But collaboration fosters innovation. And it was clear to me that innovation was top of mind for many.
I left the meeting with renewed hope for our industry. If such a disparate group of people could come together for the industry’s greater good, there’s nothing we can’t accomplish.
As Franklin inscribed over the many institutions he founded, “The good we can do together exceeds what we can do individually.”
