House of Genius Brings Entrepreneurs Together to Solve Problems Through Community

Innovation and entrepreneurial issues are some of my favorites  and House of Genius is a great volunteer organization that incorporates innovation, community and networking is a unique and powerful way.

Recently I attended the one-year anniversary of House of Genius. Not surprisingly, I wasn’t invited because I’m a genius, but to offer me an opportunity to help create genius with others.

House of Genius is an entrepreneurial community service that assembled 380 professionals from various fields to assist 57 entrepreneurs in 2011. The founders, Tim Williams, Toma Bedolla and Collin Adair, recognized an opportunity to create an ongoing community event where the contributors could share their expertise for a greater good. Beyond this, they are also more engaged with a small group and get value out of their time rather than a typical networking event where attendees can rarely engage and walk away with valuable or actionable new connections. If you attend House of Genius, you have to participate!

After attending three of these crowd sourcing sessions in 2011, my takeaway was that this unique structure is very special in how it benefits the volunteer participants as much as the presenting companies. They assemble smart, diverse groups of people to focus their collective creativity and experience to explore, discuss and solve important problems. Contributors gain value by applying the lessons of presenting entrepreneurs and other contributors to their own life or venture.

As Tim Williams describes it, “The genius really is in collaboration. We find the consensus of a diverse group of professionals is accurate almost 95% of the time, whereas insight gained from a one to one meeting shuts the door to innovation and other points of view — thus resulting in a higher rate of error.”

Read the full article on Huffington Post