Gregg Fraley

“Coffee, tea, or, — hey, get the hell off the plane!” Nearly an entire cabin of passengers on a Ryanair flight revolted over the weekend. The incident caused a three hour delay for all passengers, even the non-trouble makers. Nearly 100 passengers deemed by the airline to have caused the trouble, were forced off the plane and must now book their own flights home. They will also incur lodging charges. Some will not be allowed back on Ryanair — those who disobeyed the cabin crew. I guess paying customers are pretty much “extra baggage” to Ryanair. And God forbid anyone should question the cabin crew!  This must be punished! The donnybrook started when a passenger (or a few) was charged

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There’s a new wave of poker madness about to start.  I’m not talking Texas Hold-em.  I’m talking about Stephen M. Shapiro’s new book, Personality Poker, the playing card tool for driving high performance teamwork and innovation. Personality Poker is being released on Thursday, October 28th, 2010. This book is innovative in several ways.  First, it’s a truly novel way to assess yourself, teams, and companies. The built in assessment reveals your personality preferences, but perhaps more importantly, it’s been designed to tell how your traits fit into the innovation process. Second, it’s not just a book, it’s also a deck of cards, a card game, which comes packaged with the book.  I’ve never seen this kind of packaging done before

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If you are interested in Creativity, but have avoided creativity conferences, I have an idea for you — go on the first ever Creativity Cruise. Most creativity conferences are held at hotels, and in a way, this is where the problems start. I’ve already said too much in my blog about the why’s and why not’s of Creativity Conferences, but one I didn’t mention in the Not column is the plastic, antiseptic, and expensive aspect of hotel locations. With the exception of Toronto’s MindCamp, nearly all the conferences are hotel-based. Eileen Doyle and Bruce Baum — two noted creativity practitioners — have decided to change all that, with the Creativity Cruise. Before I go into the details I’ll simply say

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Was sad to see the news about Blockbuster — they’re filing for bankruptcy.  It’s a Chapter 11 situation so they’ll reorganize, square away a lot of debt, and try again.  So, they are not dead yet.  I’ve been a long time customer, and did a tiny bit of work for them about 8 years ago, so, love the brand and company. I wish them the best of luck, but frankly, I don’t see recovery happening.  I see a slow and painful death.  You might ask why? Well, to put it frankly, this is a company with a history of being afraid to change, afraid to respond quickly to market shifts. Their initial path to glory was simply renting movies. They

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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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Simple concept here.  In my view this is how BP turns this oil spill situation around. First, stop the freakin leak.  Second, become the world leader in environmental clean-up and prevention technology. BP has done irreparable harm to the Gulf of Mexico. How irreparable remains to be seen, and, it depends on BP’s commitment to making things as right as they can be.  Now. BP will forever be known as the evil, money-grubbing #¢#∞¡!itches  who befouled the Gulf of Mexico if it doesn’t do the right thing by humanity and invest billions in learning how to prevent and manage disasters like this.  BP, listen!  Hire the scientists, spend the money, partner with governments, other oil companies, NASA, anybody who can

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I grew up drinking beer.  I always took nips from my Dad’s quart bottle when he wasn’t looking.  Taste develops that way. Wine  entered my life in high school. Boone’s Farm Apple Wine I am sad to report (nice label). I thought I was moving up in the world when I started drinking Mateus from that stone-like bottle a couple years later (the bottle felt “old world” to me). As a young adult I often drank “wine from a box” usually at family gatherings (those boxes never seemed to run out). As I write this I only imagine the horror my French wife will experience knowing the sour grape juice passing for wine that has passed through my uneducated lips.  Over

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I’m surprised that Apple has decided not to support Adobe Flash on the iPad. Why would Apple want to cramp its own innovation by not supporting the world’s most popular media player? There’s been a war of words between the two CEO’s, but suffice to say there wouldn’t be so many words if it didn’t matter. My surprise, first blush, has to do with Loyalty. I may have this wrong, but wasn’t it Adobe Photoshop that was a linch pin of the Mac’s survival?  When the vast majority of corporations were going PC, the Mac maintained a strong hold in design and advertising because of its unique abilities to manage art projects. So, I always thought Adobe and Apple were

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Branding is something we are imprinted with at a subconscious level. I saw this guy at Hobgoblins, a quite ordinary guy, but with this poofy quiff.  I asked myself why? The result is this drawing. Non-Americans might not get the Bob’s Big Boy reference, click here and you’ll see what that is.

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If you need some visual stimulus, check out these innovative billboards: http://10steps.sg/inspirations/artworks/50-extraordinary-and-attractive-billboards.

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