Gregg Fraley

If It’s Not a Creative Solution, I’m Not Interested. The tragic shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords has me thinking about political discourse in the USA. My heart goes out to the families who have lost loved ones, and my heart goes out to all Americans. Once again we grieve over guns and politics. As a “Boomer” it takes me back to another time, in a sad way.  I am once again sitting in grade school and hearing over the loud speaker that John F. Kennedy, my hero, our President, had been shot, and once again, I’m re-living the shooting deaths of Robert F Kennedy , and Martin Luther King. Dead hero’s all, it’s not a proud legacy. I now pray

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Some people have no idea what it means to have a “Generative Discussion.” A generative discussion is when people talk, and in the process of discussing something, use a bit of vision, imagination, and ideation. Entrepreneurs and inventors are good at this; they tend to always be looking for the opportunity in what’s being talked about. “What If…” or “Wouldn’t it be Cool If…” or “How Might We…” are phrases you often hear. Now dig, I’m not talking about brainstorming (in any of its many forms and definitions).  I’m talking about, well, talking — but with a creative twist. Creative talking, Innovative talking (aka a Generative Discussion) is more than debate — which is usually about proving how right you

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Some people don’t gift unneeded presents to each other at Christmas (or other winter holidays) they instead find some very worthy cause. It’s a creative way to spread love and goodwill at this time of year. If you are one of those people, or, are considering that generous holiday-love-gifting, please read on, I’d like to tell you a story. The story begins, for me, with my new KILN business partner Kate Hammer. On meeting her earlier this year, my first impression of her was something like “clever businessey intellectual” but now I’d have to modify that to “big-hearted clever businessey intellectual.” Kate saw a challenge someone in her community was having — and she’s been moved to help organize a

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Am off tonight to do a Pecha Kucha presentation at an event organized by Simon Strong of Human Zoo. It looks like a fascinating line-up of tasty Pecha’s. It’s good fun to create something as scaled down as 20 slides at 20 seconds each.  It forces you to get to the essence of things.  In preparing for tonight, I put together what I think is an insightful set of 20 statements about innovation that I’m calling “Innovation in a Nutshell” or less PC, “No BS Innovation”.  Sharing my work with you here… So, please, tell me what you think of the following.  My intent is to take Innovation back to the absolute basics — if you follow this guide, you

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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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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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Something happened to me yesterday that I’m still processing. Think of trying to blend peanut butter and sand –it’s a sticky and abrasive emotional mess. Sparing you the gory details, it has to do with someone not doing what they said they would do.  Now, they said they would do this thing without any pressure, they made a committment.  Well, as we all know, situations and feelings change, and, my friend and associate reneged. I said I understood, and I do, but its left a hole in my project and frankly, in my heart. We’re still friends but now it’s a bit different, sadly. I’ll get over it, people aren’t perfect. I still love my friend. Beyond the emotional upset,

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Continuing my current trend of writing about personal experiences related to Innovation. I’m currently on a diet and fitness program.  The reason: I’ve let my weight creep up very slowly and now my clothes don’t fit, except for the stretchy waisted “fat” clothes.  I’ve made half-hearted efforts for a few months and decided last week to accelerate progress and quit fooling around.  So, I’m on a regime of daily exercise, no alcohol, and moderate (but not starvation) eating. It’s been challenging, my body is resisting, I’m sore all over, and very tired at the end of the day. As Rocky Balboa once said “I need to call a Taxi to get to the bathroom…” And, what I’ve noticed, after only

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