Opinion: How entrepreneurship and creativity combine to create ‘uncommon knowledge’

I have been an entrepreneur virtually all of my working life.

Other than the briefest of stints in the early 1980s working as a corporate lawyer with Baker McKenzie, and then some years in the United States as a consultant strategist working with some pioneering online brands, I have been a lone-wolf dreamer, designer and doodler — and the founder and builder of various endeavours that have served customers/members and contributed to the culture in one way or another: REMO (since 1988), the General Thinking network (2001), TEDxSydney (2009) and Bondi Observer (with my wife Melanie, since 2015).

One thing has led to the other, and the golden thread that continues to connect each chapter of my journey seems to be a deep desire to communicate and express a particular point of view — to entertain and inspire others, and build communities around those endeavours.

My current focus and passion is REMORANDOM, a biannual book series that is a printed curation of snack-sized stories, ideas and observations drawing on a diverse range of topics: culture, design, history, ideas, nature, people, science and things. Uncommon knowledge. Everything interesting.

A series of connections

The RR origin story itself is interesting and involves a series of connected dots that extend all the way back to my firstborn.

REMO, a storied retail endeavour that was born as a general store in Sydney in 1988, traded physically from the corner of Oxford and Crown Streets in Darlinghurst. REMO was famous for its mail order catalogues. They won international awards. People loved and collected them. US Catalog Age voted them “Best in the World” in 1993.

REMO, as a retail brand, always regarded the “things” being sold under the imprimatur of its curation and brand as just the tip of a large and very interesting contextual iceberg: How did the thing come into being? Who was responsible for its development? What’s their story?

Traditional merchants sell things, but REMO told stories about products and the people and passion behind them, selling souvenirs of those stories. So, the REMO idea was never just to sell per se, but rather to tell the stories that communicated the passion. Storytelling is baked into the REMO DNA.

The second dot was born of an insight. Renowned American graphic designer Tibor Kalman was an admirer of the REMO printed catalogues and said to me on more than one occasion “When are you going to realise that your sizzle is your steak?” … and by that he was suggesting that the narrative promoting the merchandise was a valuable ‘product’ in and of itself, and indeed more valuable than the merchandise being presented. The seed of the idea for REMORANDOM and REMO as a potential media brand was planted.

Connecting another dot, in 2014 I wrote General Thinker, a visual memoir of interwoven single spread stories. The templated design format for that book was liberating and inspiring, and I resolved to think of ways to use it again, but with different, less autobiographical content.

The final penny dropped in 2021 when it occurred to me to populate the book series with a diverse, random and ultimately community-sourced set of “fun facts”: uncommon knowledge.

So, like many tasty things, the idea for REMORANDOM has been marinating for a long time.

REMORANDOM has fast garnered a passionate and global following. There are already many enthusiastic reader reviews on our website, and literally 100% of them are five-star. Some of our favourite extracted phrases: “TikTok in print”, “cornucopia of curiosity”, “great social history and window into human creativity”, “insanely eclectic”, “endlessly illuminating”, “hilariously educating” and “best mind candy, ever”.

Media reaction has also been great. Caroline Overington, Literary Editor for The Australian, wrote in her review of RR1: “I’m not quite sure how to describe this book, other than to say it is unlike anything I’ve ever seen before, and exhilarating.”

Steven Heller, author and editor of over 200 books on design and popular culture, and a senior art director at The New York Times for 33 years, describes REMORANDOM as “full of wonderful!!!!” and “a tonic for our times”. Kim Hastreiter, co-founder of New York’s PAPER magazine calls it “a surprise ball filled with treats inside that will make you smile”.

Also, I recently asked Richard Saul Wurman, the founder of TED, and the original “information architect” (he coined the term), why he felt our books were resonating so strongly with such a diversity of people. Was it the curation, the design, the personality, or the novelty of it being a series? His answer: “ALL of the above.”

Best of all – and in keeping with my motto to “Do good work. Have some fun” – I’m having a great time collecting and curating the radically random content for each issue. Over half of the ideas are coming in from our engaged and global community of readers. That makes REMORANDOM a community-sourced curation of everything interesting … ensuring that there are literally no limits to what lies ahead.

Curious? Members of the extended SmartCompany family can enjoy a further 10% off the price of a REMORANDOM Gift Set that contains volumes 1, 2 and 3 by using the check out code SMART, or by visiting: REMOsince1988.com/SMART

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