My Visualization of one future scenario in 2015

Entrepreneurs' Greenhouse
Basic idea--create a global pool of specialists/experts and logistics advisors to come into a community resource center to initiate screening and mentoring of small business start-ups. asecond pool of resources would provide venture capital.

    Esfahan, Iran, is the traditional cultural and artistic center of Persia.  It is also the home of Pars-rules, a high-energy small business incubator located within the ancient bazaar complex.  Tourists and street vendors swarm by the rows of stained glass windows of the Pars-rules office, not realizing that the products they are buying and selling are mere trinkets compared with the heady dreams of those inside.  Loud music, huge vats of tea and coffee, piles ofsweets, and ceiling to floor whiteboards contribute to an atmosphere of chaordic creation.  Unruly workgroups' brainstormings look like the chicken scratchings on the whiteboards, pointing and gestriculating, arguing and debating, laughing and shouting as they define the future.
What is this place?  It is a laboratory for business innovation and entrepreneurship.  Coached by wizened street fighters and cocky techie-wizards, the participants are challenged, coerced, coaxed, and cajoled into dreaming bigger dreams and bringing those dreams to life.

Pars-rules is one of eight such "Centers for Future Studies" that have been successful in training both intrapreneurs and entrepreneurs to revitalize the aging economies of traditional societies.  Intrapreneurs work inside of existing companies to launch new products, new workgroups, and new industries from the existing resource base.  Entrepreneurs begin new organizations with new approaches and new products to inject passion and innovation in competition with the status quo.   Intrapreneurs and entrepreneurs learn from successes like John DeLorean's GTO Project at Pontiac Motors (which eventually led to development of the Delorean Motor Car) and Apple Computer's growth from a garage business into leading the personal technology industry.
   
Centers for Future Studies arose from the dream of Jon & Valery Gresham, of JVTEAM, to provide localized platforms for innovation and creativity, building on mentoring multiple intelligences in multicultural environments.  Having spent years as consultants, project managers, and scientists in a variety of disciplines, they had always been busy coaching and training others as a way of life, beginning with homeschooling their own children who are now partners in the company. Because they believed that creativity is an attitude and that traditional education was not providing children with adequate problem-solving skills, they began expanding their training out of their homeschool and into the homes of friends and associates.  Their first customers were refugees, asylum-seekers, and immigrants who felt closed out of traditional job markets because of their language skills, their education, and their skin color.  These community newcomers were motivated to learn, to work, and to share with others what they gained.  They became advocates of their new attitudes even back into their homeland communities. Demand for training spread back into the these communities because of word of mouth and convincing proofs of lifestyle improvements
    The business strategy is simple:  coach by means of questioning and real-life experiences until a life benefit is proven; train in appropriate communication skills (mostly in verbal form since the majority of the world's poor are not print-literate); and then have coaches go to live with home families of the clients to explore what could be done through the natural family and friend networks.
    It works.  The eight centers, and dozens of satellite centers based in homes, trained 300 people last year, and through them began 175 small businesses.  Not all of these businesses will succeed, but most of the graduates from the program will keep trying, wisely, learning as they go, and they will succeed.  For life.
 

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