I’ve been thinking a lot lately about this old folk tale I learnt from Peter Diamandis — Stone Soup. It’s about a traveller who turns up in a village with nothing but a cooking pot and a stone. He tells the curious locals he’s making “stone soup” — which sounds absurd, but one by one, people come out of their homes. One brings a carrot. Another, a potato. Someone adds salt. Before long, that stone’s swimming in a rich, hearty soup — made possible only because everyone chipped in.
It’s a lovely little parable, sure, but lately it feels more relevant than ever. We live in a world obsessed with individual achievement — billionaire business leaders, influencers building empires, solo creators hustling late into the night. And yet, most of the meaningful things get from people pooling what they have, even when it seems like nothing.
I’ve been in rooms where the “stone” was just a half-formed idea, or a PDF mock-up of a dream. But someone said, “I’ve got a connection,” or “I can give this a quick edit,” or even just “That’s brilliant, we could use that, keep going.” And slowly, the idea becomes a movement. The mock-up becomes a plan. The dream starts to hold water.
We underestimate how powerful it is to contribute something, however small — and how often the thing someone needs isn’t cash or code or clout, but belief. Generosity, even in modest doses, can be catalytic.
It’s easy to dismiss “stone soup” thinking as naïve — we’re all busy, stretched, protecting our time and energy. But I think there’s something quietly radical about the idea that nobody needs to bring everything. Just a bit of what you’ve got. That’s enough. That’s how the soup gets made.
3D5G 