Gregg Fraley

Briefly noted: My good friend Alan Black sent me a link today to a very hip and creative blog called Crooked Brains. The post up today has to do with electronic or smart pens and he thought I’d like to see it given my recent review of Livescribes Echo smart pen.  Check out these wacky pens, some of which are quite innovative, some just interesting. Livescribe’s Echo is included in the list, and I still think it’s the most practical, but the others are quite interesting, and may suit your needs.  For instance if you’re a music composer the Gigiway device looks great. Is it just me thinking that this market is about to take off, or am I just

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Traipsing through O’Hare Airport a couple weeks ago, killing time, made the fatal error of stopping by Brookstone’s shop.  They always have cool stuff. I’d heard of the electronic pen concept from a friend a couple years ago and had made a mental note then to get one. Of course, it fell off my radar screen (never saw it on a shelf anywhere…) and I never got around to it.  I saw one, and was compelled to take the plunge.  I’m really glad I did, this Echo “smartpen” from Livescribe, is possibly the most useful tool for personal creativity I’ve ever bought.  Now, I love my iPhone, and, am sure to buy an iPad soon, but honestly, I see the

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Alright, maybe it’s not that different, but I swear, Jimmy Fallon is pulling out all the stops to innovate and entertain on his late night show.  Let’s face it, being a big late night star is a high risk business, witness Conan O’Brien’s crash and burn — and Conan was funny!  Fallon is an SNL grad with a couple of interesting movies under his belt (my favorite being Fever Pitch). I’d seen Late Night just after he’d started the gig (March 2009), and at the time, to me, he was trying a bit too hard.  Accidently revisited these last few weeks, and things have changed, Fallon’s at the top of his game. On the one hand, he’s doing some old

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Briefly noted: Inc. Magazine‘s July/August issue features a blueprint for revitalizing the American economy “Bring on the Entrepreneurs“.  Essentially the plan would have thousands of new companies and millions of new jobs created. Editor Jane Berenston organized a response to an op-ed column by Thomas L. Friedman in The New York Times that called for Obama to make job creation the centerpiece of his administration. I commented on that article last January in this blog. The Inc. article was written by Adam Bluestein and Amy Barrett. In it, they identify existing programs that could be expanded, address issues like immigration, education, government impediments to start-ups — bureaucracy, financing, incubators, student loans, taxes, and energy policy.  There’s more, 16 major points

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This is part two in a series of posts about the Three Oaks Creativity Weekend. I’ve titled this series of posts “Letting Go” because that was the theme that emerged. Generally meetings, events, or conferences decide on a theme and then orchestrate events around it; we did the opposite.  Since it was Not a Conference, we decided to let the group create the theme. We talked about it early on, listed a few options, then it popped up spontaneously through the weekend. Letting Go was mentioned many times, but we could easily have called the weekend, the Sound of Music. At several points, once during an improv session, the group burst into “the Hills are Alive,” and when our campers

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My wife Caroline and I hosted a private gathering last weekend, specifically to do sharing around the concept of creativity.  It was not a conference.  Only 20 people attended, and that was intentional. I’m going to post a few times about this unique “creativity weekend” so let me give you a bit  of background to start. The original impulse to host a 4 day creativity event was simply to reconnect with a number of creative people, who are also friends. When I say “creative people” I mean people with a specific interest in the topic — not just people who Are Creative. Those attending all had some connection to applied creativity, innovation, facilitation, self-expression, and the arts. The invite list

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This weekend I’m hosting a group of friends here in Three Oaks.  It’s an interesting group and I’m looking forward to a lot of “new” input. I know that by Monday I’ll have a list of new books to read, new ideas to develop, and newly refreshed friendships.  This is all good! A lot of the focus in innovation facilitation is on tools and techniques to generate new ideas.  This makes sense, after all innovation is about new things, and the tools are helpful in having you think differently. Still, one must know something in the first place. New ideas are rarely “green field”, they are usually a build on a previous idea, or a combination of old things or

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Those of you who read this blog will know of the recent online debate I had with author Ashley Merryman. Essentially, I was not letting her get away with dismissing brainstorming. Ashley co-wrote a recent Newsweek article titled “Forget Brainstorming.” While I liked the article generally, I hated the title, and disagree and dispute the conclusions she’d drawn from a subset of the research on brainstorming. The debate also highlighted the problem with the term itself; brainstorming can be either an unstructured bull crap session, or a highly structured event, and depending on which one you’re talking about, they are either a waste of time, or a smart thing to do. The exchange got me thinking, again, about when “brainstorming”

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There is quite a bandwagon rolling right now about Creativity. 5 years ago it seemed that Creativity was a bad word. You could never say it aloud at a corporation because what it meant wasn’t new ideas, it was interpreted as “lack of control” or, even worse, those touchy-feely things that have nothing to do with business. Alright, you could say the word, IF, you coupled it with “…and Innovation.” This is still something you nearly always have to do. When you think about it, it’s kind of silly. Creativity is a bigger concept than innovation, in fact, innovation is a subset. So, saying Creativity AND Innovation is a bit like say, I like Music AND Raggae. Now, every few

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Off to London today to run an idea generation session with a start-up.  Yes! I’m as jazzed as Charlie Parker on a double expresso. My mind if filled with excitement and my heart is filled with Hope. It occurs to me that those intrepid folks who start new ventures, large and small, sophisticated and simple, all share one thing: Hope. It’s one of the three Christian virtues, along with faith and charity, but you don’t have to be Christian to have, or appreciate Hope. Hope is what sometimes makes life worth living.  Hope is what has the Chicago Cubs (those perennial also-rans) dream of  autumn World Series baseball glory.  Hope is what makes an entrepreneur get up in the morning.

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