Practical benefits of "studying" Bucky?

Some people do wonder and ask me. “Joo Hock, what can anything one “learns” from Bucky have any practical application in one’s work? Or in one’s life?

These are question often in the back of our minds, and I’ve often been confronted with them.

So I asked myself: "What is Bucky about? How can his philosophy help me in my life? Can anything that Bucky shared or taught be useful today?...... in the real world, in real life, where as Stephen Covey said, the rubber meets the road?"

Good questions. . . . tough questions . . . . My answer? An emphatic YES!

Why?

Because Bucky is a wellspring of Ideas.

Today the currency of the new economy is IDEAS! Isn’t that right?
Today the capital that we are talking about is not physical capital. Today it is metaphysical capital or what we call Intellectual Capital, which is our real asset, our real Property. That’s the real Wealth.

The world’s richest men, like Microsoft’s Bill Gates, what does he own? Intellectual Capital. Technology as software systems.

Alan Grove's (of Intel) Wealth, I understand, is also in Intellectual Property Know-how, found on a tiny piece of silicon microchip, about the size of which can fit into the palm of your hands, or perhaps even the size of your thumb.

Ideas!

In 2000 – 2001 when I was President of my Rotary Club, I had the privilege of being Guest of Honor at the Installation Ceremony of the Board of Directors of their Interact Club. At that event I met the Principal of the Institute of Technical Education, a Mr. Mak.
I took the opportunity to share with Mr. Mak a little about Buckminster Fuller. He found it interesting.
When Mr. Mak left his Institute to run his own Workshop and Seminar Business, teaching Innovation and Creativity, he asked me to join his idea brewery.
I have high regard for him, his sharpness of mind, his relentless pursuit of excellence, and thus I have great respect for his openness and willingness to ask for and accept feedback. He’s a very entrepreneurial person. Feedback was critical to his work.

Mr. Mak who had been researching into Entrepreneurship shared that he had intended to write a book on Entrepreneurship. He asked me what I thought?


In my feedback, I told him that I believe there were many such books in the market. "What makes him think that his book is going to sell? (He could take negative feedback)

Mak asked me what would I do? I replied that if I were him I’d invent an Entrepreneurship game. Like a Board Game. I shared that it would be a useful tool to teach Entrepreneurship, in a fun way, as learning such abstract concept of Entrepreneurship should be made fun.

I produced the prototype copy of the Game, it was refined and fine-tuned, through play testing and as they say the rest is history. The Entrepreneurship Board Game was produced, and it was played in many schools, bringing the various concepts of Entrepreneurship to our youngsters, hopefully igniting the Entrepreneurial Spirit, giving then a headstart
.
More importantly is the question: “How did this Idea of Game come to me?”

I’ll give the credit to Bucky. Thanks to Bucky’s World Game!!

Bucky felt that instead of War Games exercise by the world’s military, to find ways to fight and destroy the imagined enemy effectively, Bucky thought it would make sense to initiate World Game, which would find strategies to “Make the world work for total humanity, without ecological offense and disadvantage to anyone.”

I wanted to invent a Bucky Game that teaches Bucky’s thinking, his philosophy and ideas.
Thus in trying to give the participants powerful thought tools, to solve complex problems they faced in their lives, their work, the challenges they encounter, instead I invented my Bucky workshops Games, and of course this Idea of Game, helped Mr. Mak invent his Board Game.

Like I told Mr. Mak, “ He provided the Egg, I provided the sperm.”

But that’s really “Bucky,” a multi-purpose “Swiss Army knife”, a tool, a "zoom-lens" of re-framable perspectives, and thus a Wellspring of fresh Ideas.

As Bucky himself put it, “ I did not set out to design a house that hung on a pole, or manufacture a new type of car, or invent a new projection map of the world, I started out with Universe, I could have ended out with a pair of flying slippers

Are these not the practical benefits of “studying” Bucky?