Trust Your Crazy Idea

Tim Williamson with Idea Village is igniting the entrepreneurial spirit in New Orleans.

Idea Village was founded in 2000 by five local entrepreneurs who were all from New Orleans and had moved away in the mid-eighties. We moved back home in 1998 and 1999 to start new businesses, but the collective feeling amongst us was that the city was fundamentally in decline. The problem, we felt, was there was an exodus of talent. The education system was declining, there were no jobs, and there was corruption — there was no reason why people would stay.

How do you create a better city? We felt it was by attracting, supporting, and retaining a new generation of leadership. If we could create a new generation of economic leaders, and new jobs, then those individuals would also pay it forward by supporting the next generation of businesses, but also supporting social issues. Entrepreneurs are the ones who create change. If you look at the founding of our city, or the city leaders, they all were entrepreneurs who were successful, and then they contributed back to education, the arts, and such.

We like to say the Idea Village is not an organization, it’s a movement, started by entrepreneurs who believe in the sense of possibility in New Orleans. We identify and support entrepreneurs with a team of professionals who have given 56,000 hours and $2.5 million to New Orleans entrepreneurs. We’ve seen some get very successful, such as the Imagination Movers, who now have a TV show on the Disney Channel filmed in New Orleans. “Trust Your Crazy Idea,” the cover story in the new issue of Entrepreneur magazine, is about Drew Brees and his partnership with Idea Village.

The day after Katrina, every person in New Orleans became an entrepreneur. We’re becoming a model city, showing the power of what individuals can do. We’ve learned that it’s OK to fail, you just try again. Before Katrina we were more scared, but now we know we can do it. Five years after Katrina, we’ve moved from “we need help” to “how can we help others?”

Every year in March we host Entrepreneur Week, a festival of the mind. People from all over the world come here to celebrate entrepreneurship. We set up downtown New Orleans like Jazz Fest with different venues. MBAs used to come here to help New Orleans, but now they come here to learn and to look for jobs and opportunities.

Brookings and the GNOCDC just came out with a new report that shows our entrepreneurism is off the chart. This is an opportunity to rebuild an American city — and with Mardi Gras, festivals, and the Saints, New Orleans can be one of the best places in the country to start your own company. We’re one of the most creative cities in the world. We create creators. We just need to keep them here.

This post is part of a series, “In Their Own Words”, that acknowledges the role that nonprofit leaders have played in the region’s recovery. Five years later, they’re still at work.