The wind, the salt pans and the flamingos as one coastal business: kitesurfing schools and camps in the windy months, walks through the salt pans where the flamingos feed in winter, and stays sold for both seasons, wherever the coast has the wind and the wetlands

A first step

Find one kitesurfing instructor with a recognised qualification on a windy stretch of coast, and a guide who knows where the flamingos feed in winter. Agree with a salt-pan owner to allow guided walks. Offer two packages, one for each season, and test them with the guesthouses nearby. The proof is ten paid bookings in the first season.

Who pays first

A visitor who comes for the kitesurfing wind, or for the flamingos in winter, and stays a week rather than a night.

What leaves today

The wind, the salt pans and the birds earn little now; two seasons of visitors turn them into a living for the coast.

The idea and the mechanism are from the book. The first step was written for this site as a suggestion; if you know a better one, say so.

The test

Does it keep value that now leaves the island, or build the proof that lets somebody else do so?

The only test any idea on this site has to pass. The four rules that go with it are here.

In the book

• Ch. TwoAn Island Nobody Has Counted
  An ocean eight times the size of the land

More from cluster 13

• 251Sailing charters and a yacht marina at Galle or Trincomalee, with the crew trained here
• 252Diving schools at the wrecks of Trincomalee and the reefs of the east, certified to international standard
• 253Sport fishing charters with catch-and-release, sold to the Gulf and Europe
• 254Sea-cucumber and seaweed farming in the northern lagoons, for the buyers in Hong Kong and Singapore
• 255Tuna graded, loined and vacuum-packed at the harbour for the sashimi market, not sold whole
• 256Crab and prawn from the lagoons as a branded chilled export, with the lagoon's name

All 20 ideas in this cluster