Candle or Pie

I’m about 77% of the way through Tim Sanders’ Today We are Rich (why % – well, just borrowed my daughters’ Kindle (future post) and that’s how they do the count progress through the book).

Tim brought up a very interesting analogy comparison – candle and pie – related to information distribution. It’s similar to my philosophy – although I never really thought about terms – and Tim’s are a pretty good way to describe the differing approaches.

Pie

Think about having a pie – and wanting to distribute that to as many people as possible (but you still want to have some as well. You might start to cut up some pieces, hand them out and bit-by-bit – you start running out of pie. You still want to hold on to your piece. Eventually – the pieces that you offer up with be small – bit sized morsels.

Candle

Now think about a candle. Eventually a candle will be finished burning a bright light, that’s just the way it is. But until that point-in-time – that candle may light as many other candles as possible – without ever diminishing it’s own flame.

So, when it comes to knowledge and information distillation – are you the pie or the candle.