Gregg Fraley

It’s time to innovate how start-ups raise capital. Everything is in place to do so — crowdfunding is a revolutionary change that levels the playing field. But currently, the technique is hamstrung by government regulations. This is a USA focused post, but there are similar challenges in the EU. Dave Knox (@daveknox) tweeted a link taking me to a page to sign to support the Jobs Act (aka Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act H.R. 3606).  Americans reading my post here — I urge you to click through and Sign The Letter. Did you know that start-up companies in the USA are forbidden to: Publicly discuss that they are raising money Raise money through crowdfunding Receive services like standard docs from incubators

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Ran across a facsinating article this morning in Mail Online India. It features three inventors who each have responded directly to some market need with a new device or product. The actual products are interesting, but what strikes me about this at a different level is that India might be a hotbed for new innovation. This is an emerging trend. Why? India has a goodly number of educated people with deep interests in engineering and math. It’s a free country, so people can pursue their interests. They have a grass roots innovation program that helps find and fund inventors and entrepreneurs. Think micro loans and such. And most importantly there is desire, a deep motivation to create something new. The

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I don’t plug a lot of videos on this blog — how many video’s are all that relevant to creativity and innovation? This is the exception, I have one I’d really like you to watch, after you read this Jay Leno style “set up”. Growing up in anti-communist America the world was black and white. You were either pro-democracy capitalist, or a commmie pinko. There was no middle ground (gee, not so different than now). The “Domino Theory” had the USA fighting a communist insurgency in a tiny country in south east Asia that had no strategic value. The Vietnam war tore the country apart. I’d also rather forget the McCarthy era and blacklists. Which is what makes this new

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I’ve been reading Steve Faktor’s Econovation, The Red, White, and Bllue Pill for Arousing Innovation. It’s been out since November, but I’ve avoided it because Steve’s an economist and I have bad memories of nursing hangovers in my 8:00 am Economics class at University of Cincinnati. I wish I had picked it up sooner because it’s a fascinating, erudite, bitingly funny, well researched, and I think important book. Americans — Buy one now and send it to your Congressman. Tell him or her that if they don’t read it you’ll lash them with wet Chinese noodles at the door to their office. European readers, there’s plenty to learn from Faktor’s manifesto about how to reinvent an economy. As the title

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Occupy Wall Street (OWS) is a creative and innovative endeavor. OWS has reinvented the concept of a protest. This post is a look at the creativity and innovation aspects of OWS, and not a political commentary. Public protest did need to be reinvented. As a brand, protests had lost shelf space — media attention. Protests of the last, say 30 years, have been decidedly ho-hum and almost completely ineffective. Between permits, gates, fences, and area exclusions, they were useless as means of democratic self-expression. The media hasn’t seen protests as news for years, but now that’s all changed. OWS is a big story and it will only get bigger until something — the conditions, government, authorities, laws, change. How did

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  Sir Richard Branson, the uber entrepreneur of Virgin fame, contributed a provocative editorial to Sunday’s edition of The Independent. Essentially Branson is making some strong suggestions about how to put the 1 million unemployed young people in the UK to work. Radical ideas Sir Richard. They make so much sense it’s almost guaranteed they won’t happen. Why I think so: They upset the status quo. They require quick action from government. They require big business to step up and help young people for the good of society. So, call me a cynic, but great big radical ideas like his are usually tough sledding to get done. However, the good news is things are so desperate right now common sense

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I’ve heard some rather direct and harsh criticism of President Obama’s recent comment about the USA being a “bit lazy” the last few decades. I’ll agree his comment is a bit unfair from one perspective: The USA has had nearly non-stop increases in productivity, and this for many years. Americans are working harder and doing more with less people, that’s true. And most workers are also doing it for less money. This squeeze is creating a tension that runs parallel to, and resonates with, the Occupy movement — but that’s another discussion. The fair part of Obama’s remark is that in the last 30 years the USA has watched it’s manufacturing base, and many of its competitive advantages, such as

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I participated earlier this week in the Oklahoma Creativity Forum 2011. It was an impressively well staged event, as professional a creativity/innovation conference as I’ve seen anywhere in the world. Beyond event management, I have to say the conference had a great feeling, a gusher of creative spark and soul. Let me tell you why I liked it so much: 1. For what it symbolizes, commitment to creativity — The state of Oklahoma is actually doing something about it’s own future. Not many states, countries, or cities move so boldly into action on the resource that is the well-spring of all innovation. The conference — and the state — clearly understand that you don’t get innovation without it’s pre-requsite, creativity.

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I just caught UK Labour party leader Ed Milliband’s speech at the Labour annual conference. In the talk he made a distinction between those who produce value and those who are simply predators. “Producers train, invest, sell…Predators are just interested in the fast buck, taking what they can out of the business.” In my view this is a crucial distinction and of utmost importance with regard to the world economy — and innovation. It’s not my role or my desire here to debate free market versus regulated markets. I’ll simply say that when it comes to innovation, it’s not really an innovation at all if it doesn’t provide actual value. Value means useful. Example: Is value created by mortgage derivatives?

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Elizabeth Warren made a very interesting comment at a recent campaign stop. The video and quotes from it are “going viral” — I’ve seen at least 4 re-postings on Facebook, and numerous tweets. Warren is seeking to be the new Senator in the State of Massachusetts. I wish her well, she’s a very intelligent woman with a heart. Her statement can be viewed on video here, but to sum up, she’s saying that wealthy people don’t do it alone. She says those who make a lot of money did it with the support of the society around them, including roads, educational systems (educated employees), police and fire protection. These are things that aid an entrepreneur to innovate and make money,

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