No Litmus Test? And Clean-Up on Aisle Four
This is part two of TTLA's 2009 interview with Matt Harrison, founder and executive director of The Prometheus Institute, an upstart, Gen Y, think tank headquartered in a downtown L.A. loft.
TTLA: Did you set out to work for one of the established think tanks?
MH: I don't think so, because I've always had an entrepreneurial streak. It's always been my dream to do this. It's funny "? people think I'm joking. But in my high school job, working at the grocery store, pushing grocery carts, I was dreaming about starting a think tank. I was sixteen, so it's been my dream as long as I can imagine.
TTLA: How'd you get from there to here? From "clean-up on aisle four" to founding your own institute?
MH: In college, I had very supportive mentors. [Harrison went to Miami for undergrad and USC for grad school.] I told them what I wanted to do and they gave me the best advice I ever got. Which was: "If you have that dream, do it follow it, don't let anyone tell you you can't."
Read, "Meet Prometheus," Monday's part one of the interview.
It's true that a lot of failure would probably have been mitigated by working for somebody else during our initial years, like when I was writing grants and getting rejected so many times. (Laughs.) I probably should have tried to work for somebody else but I didn't.
I would say, then, that I've always wanted to work with those other organizations, in terms of Prometheus partnering with them. That's something I'm very passionate about. But in terms of going to work for one of them, I don't think that's something that ever seriously crossed my mind.
TTLA: How much of your grocery story daydreaming has been realized, how much remains unrealized, and how much have you altered that early vision?
MH: In terms of the visualization, it really was what I saw as my talent at the time, being able to put creative approaches into a form that appeals to people and is thought of as something a little clever, interesting, a little bit avant garde. That's how vague the thought was at the time. Thinking of private sector examples might be better. Think of Apple's great "1984" ad. Or other marketing efforts that affect the public mindset in a way where you become the topic of conversation and become cultural phenomena that really influences people and gets people thinking and gets people looking at something in a different way.
I saw Prometheus as being an organization that would have that affect. Originally I saw Super Bowl ads "? so we're not there yet. But when I look at our work now, I do see a lot of things that I envisioned early, especially in terms of our art director and the graphics he's able to do. That's why everything you see is so beautiful, that's his work. I [fore]saw a lot of aesthetic innovation. So in terms of what we're doing now, I see a lot of congruency. I saw some things differently "? I saw us being huge and having millions of dollars. That part is not there yet, but we're getting there.
TTLA: Do you have a vision where you'd like to be, if not here in the loft?
MH: We want a dedicated office. We've wanted that for a while. This works nicely now because we could work and live at the same time while we were in school. We'd like an office. We'd like full-time staff. And then eventually, we'd like to do is many different issue oriented initiatives. Like "People for the American Dream." That's on entrepreneurship. We'd like to be working on civic engagement, globalization, and third world aide. All these issues that have appeal. We'll craft innovative marketing campaigns to find unique niches within each one of those issues. Use unique marketing methods to get the ideas out, and really, to provide a diverse array of thoughts, perspectives and ideas on all these different issues and promote those in ways that really just keep expanding and keep marketing the ideas the best ways we can.
TTLA: What do you mean by, "a diverse array of thoughts?"
MH: With vis a vis the existing libertarian organizations, a lot of times it's, "You have to agree with our entire platform or you're not one of us, you're not a peer, you're not on our side, you're against us somehow." That's something we really repudiate and we want to avoid at all costs. And so 'diverse' in that sense means ideologically diverse, personally diverse, diverse in interest, diverse in level of engagement, political knowledge, all those kinds of things. Because we want people even if they agree with us on one issue. If they like what we're doing on that issue so much that they see it as a value-added provision into the marketplace of ideas, that they find our work of value and they'll support us, then we're happy to have them even if they disagree with us on nine out of ten other issues.
That's a big paradigm shift in what the public policy industry does, especially the think tanks. They have their array of issues. "You must support all our issues or you're not with us." I think that's wrong. And I break it down to economics, to the law of demand. If the cost goes up, the demand goes down. When you have 75 issues you have to agree with, that's a big psychic cost to a person. Odds are, they don't entirely agree with you, anyway. They have to give up a lot of their deep-seeded perspectives in order to abide by your platform. In doing so, that raises the cost of adherence to your platform, which reduces your demand, which makes you unpopular. I say, if people want to identify with your perspective, let them do so on any issue, appreciate that in and of itself, and don't try to get more.
TTLA: So there's no litmus test to join Prometheus?
MH: Exactly. No litmus test.
COMING WEDNESDAY: Sports, USC, and When To Stop
The Week
Monday: Meet Prometheus
Tuesday: No Litmus Test? And Clean-Up on Aisle Four
Wednesday: Sports, USC, and When To Stop
Thursday: Jay-Z & The Statue of Liberty
Friday: Snowboarding & Social Technology
Photo Credit: The image accompanying this post was taken by Flickr user hospi-table. It was used under Creative Commons license.
