Last year I was approached by two professionals with an interesting idea for a social experiment with retirees.
One of the men was a serial entrepreneur named Bob Ahmann. The other was a retired engineer named Darryl Solie (I say “retired,” but he’s always involved in some big project). Both had retired from careers at IBM and knew many other ex-IBMers who, frankly, were bored in retirement. Engineers are “meddlers” and problem-solvers by nature, and when they no longer have any problems to solve, ennui can begin to set in.
Bob and Darryl knew that I’d be interested in their idea because my book The New Retirementality had been warning people for the last two decades about just those kinds of retirement woes. So here’s the original idea that Bob dreamed up:
He and Darryl had located a local medical technology business that needed proprietary software to be developed. “What if,” they pondered, “we could get some retired engineers to develop the software?”
The novel idea was that instead of taking pay for their labors, they would give the proceeds to a local charity (in this case, the local Ronald McDonald House).
There were three clear winners in this idea:
1. A local business not only acquired a much-needed technology upgrade, but also reaped the benefit of being able to help its community.
2. The retirees got a fresh challenge on their hands—one that they could work on as little or as much as they wanted to each week.
3. The charity got a new income source—without having to solicit the funds.
After I joyfully accepted their offer to join the cause, we knew our first task was to find an identity. After much wrangling with words, we settled on the name “ExperiCorps.” Our aim was to help the world capitalize on the untapped experience sitting latent in the retirement playgrounds.
When we approached people at the medical technology company, they liked the idea of making a donation in kind (equal to what the project would have cost them otherwise). When we approached the crew of retired engineers, they loved the idea of breaking off some cobwebs and taking on a new challenge. They ranged in age from their late 50s to early 70s and had plenty of vigor and perspicacity to spare.
The engineers met with the company to get a clear understanding of what kind of software was needed and then got right to work on the project. Within two months they had a prototype in place.
Eventually, the business wrote out a check for $11,000 to the Ronald McDonald House, and we all had a merry time presenting this gift to the charity. Later on, checks for $34,000 were presented to Ronald McDonald House and other local charities as the software got some updates.
The initial project was a success, but then we faced a dilemma in deciding how to bring the project to other parts of the country—and that was figuring out where business opportunities would magically appear. The idea falls apart without local businesses knowing that such opportunities exist. The first project came from friendships and brainstorming. Where would other projects come from?
That’s when Bob had a second epiphany and added a new element: We could use the concept to help inventors bring their ideas to market. Millions of inventions never see the light of day, even though a good percentage of them have commercial potential. Inventors are not necessarily experts at marketing and sales, so their brainchildren end up gathering dust and rust. Bob was a successful inventor himself and had been looking for a company to sponsor his own intellectual property. He wondered how many other people had this problem.