Ideas Drive the Success of Our Market

There are solutions to our problems out there—you just have to aggressively look for them.

by William C. Donohue (editor@clubandresortbusiness.com)
April 2008
 

Since this is the third anniversary of the launch of Club & Resort Business, I thought it might be worthwhile to look back on the last three years of publishing, and what we have learned.

The genesis for this magazine came about during the summer of 2004, when we were looking at markets to enter, and trying to determine what the magazine needs for those markets might be. Once we settled on the club market, we embarked on a professional feasibility study, and also conducted interviews in and among clubs across the country. 

One of the people I talked with—John Foster, General Manager of Birchwood Farms Golf and Country Club in Harbor Springs, Mich.—made a comment that reverberated through every interview we had. He mentioned in passing that when he has weekly staff meetings, he asks all participants to bring at least one new idea with them.

An old mentor of mine once said that “Creativity is simply the synthesis of all that you know.” When you think about that comment, there is an appealing logic to this. Einstein excepted, new ideas generally don’t bubble up from the grey matter and protein that is your brain. Rather, they come from re-jiggering all of the things you have learned and putting them together in a different way until, voilà…something emerges that looks like a new idea.

Another wag once said, “The definition of creativity is the first person to steal an idea.” And Harry Truman offered that “the only thing new in the world is the history you don’t know.” These are not cynical observations; they recognize that there are solutions to our problems out there, and that you just have to aggressively look for them.

We heard this desire for ideas on virtually every interview we did. Additionally, when we attended CMAA conferences, the Idea Fair and seminars were clearly the best attended, and what created the most excitement.

This led to our decision to craft Club & Resort Business around the entire concept of useful ideas that work in the club environment. Our whole approach to every story we write and edit revolves around making sure that they all contain useful ideas that can be applied to common, everyday problems.  That frames the entire magazine, and your response as readers has validated that this is exactly what you wanted—and have received.

It is our firm commitment to search for, investigate—even steal if we have to—every good idea that is relevant to you and the rest of our market, to make sure that Club & Resort Business is filled to the brim with ideas you can use. 

Even though all of our issues are idea-driven, we annually devote our April issue to the entire concept of ideas.  We gather and catalogue some of the best ideas we have garnered over the previous year, and present them here in special features.  We hope you enjoy and learn from this issue—and then contribute your good ideas to future ones.