By Casey Jones, CAPP

I met news that Martha Stewart and Snoop Dogg were getting together to do a cooking show with a raised eyebrow. I’ll bet some tuned in with car-crash curiosity to witness the interaction between a retail businesswoman, writer, television personality, and former model, and a Long Beach-bred rapper and media personality. Launched in 2016 and lasting three seasons, Martha & Snoop’s Potluck Dinner Party blew away expectations and proved to be highly entertaining and extremely popular. Those drawn to the show expecting it to fall flat quickly realized that the two superstars, though seemingly unlike in every perceivable way, actually have great chemistry and get along fabulously (and successfully). Martha and Snoop understood all along the power of “radical collaboration.”

We see similar marriages in our industry. Take Jeff Petry with the City of Eugene, Ore., and Glimmer Technology for example. Jeff wanted to bring art to his garages and joined forces with augmented reality tech start-up Glimmer to create something unlike any we’ve seen in parking before. What might have been viewed favorably as a “static” display of art turned into a dynamic experience through the use and integration of augmented reality. Read more about this cool collaboration here.

REEF’s Neighborhood Kitchen concept is another example of radical collaboration in our industry. REEF aims to partner with local and national restaurateurs to provide a “turnkey delivery solution for the preparation, distribution of food concepts” by making available parking facilities in a novel and impactful way. REEF’s genius goes beyond just offering up the physical space but collaborating on a whole new level, even to the degree of hiring culinary experts to lead the effort from within their company to make the project successful. Click here for more information about this collaboration.

It’s been said that uncommon partnerships allow us to see something new in ourselves, opening up pathways that couldn’t have been imagined before. Perhaps now more than ever we need to leverage radical collaborations to meet today’s challenges and those coming in the years ahead.

Casey Jones, CAPP, is senior parking & mobility planner with DESMAN. He’ll moderate IPMI’s last free, online Shoptalk of the year on December 16; click here for details and to register.