Hammocks, Nature, and Family
I love hammocks. If you have ever been in a hammock before, you know it is pure bliss. Many students here at Grove City College believe in the great pastime of “hammocking”. Summer days in the shade of a tree with a book in hand… There is no other way to get quite the same feeling.
Naturally, I am also a big camper. I love to take to the outdoors and just enjoy nature. I am always up for a hike out in the woods, and I enjoy a good backpacking trip to find beauty in the remote parts of nature.
On top of it all, I also have a large family: eleven siblings, to be exact. As you can imagine, taking everyone on a camping trip can be a big deal.
Why does this all matter? Well, more often than not, innovation is found in the most unlikely of crossroads, and I found an amazing crossover between my needs recently as I sat in Professor Sweet’s Grove-famous Entrepreneurial Mind class, and he introduced us to the most amazing of inventions….
Hammocking, Family Style.
Professor Sweet discussed an invention in class called the “Crazy Tree Hammock Tent”, by Tentsile. Put simply, it is a hammock-tent. Imagine an entire tent suspended over the ground, and you are imagining the tree tents created by Tentsile. When I saw the product, I was floored. There are so many things right with this product: they do all that any hammock-family could want, they are beautifully designed, and they are incredibly adaptable. It is on my bucket list of things to buy.
Can Anyone Say “Innovation”?
Beyond my fandom, why is this product so great? The reason people like me love this product so much is that it meets two needs in one mind-drooling product. This product also points out a very important concept of innovation: innovation is rarely a purely original thought. Ideas come from a mashup of different, existing ideas. In fact, when people take different things, and put them together to create a mashup idea, it is those ideas which people call “original”.
I will get a Tree Tent someday. But as an entrepreneur, I am also looking for those great ideas, and I will continue to mash up ideas and share them with people until I hit on one which is (hopefully) as genius is Tentsile’s Tree Tent.