Gregg Fraley

Guerilla Innovation- Chapter 12 Having a Healthy Money Mindset One major factor that stops people from making the jump into business ownership is their relationship with money. Before I get into ways in which entrepreneurs (aka ‘guerilla innovators’) can get funds, a blurb on the whole money mindset is in order. Money, because of its importance, is deeply entwined with our thinking. It is often an emotional relationship. These emotions about money can inhibit creativity and put a damper on innovation. Before you go out fund raising, think about these statements: Do you have a problem with asking for money? Do you have a fear of rejection? Do you worry you can’t prove or persuade others you and your concept are

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Guerilla Innovation – Chapter 11 Birthing the Baby Until now the focus of this online-blogged-book on small business innovation has been a guerilla innovation mindset. This includes thinking, idea generation, creating, amping, and planning for getting a new business going. I hope by now you’ve got a specific business idea in mind. The thing is, at some point, you actually have to start. You’ve got to pull the trigger, birth the baby, take the leap (add your own cliche here) but you must, jungle plan firmly in hand, get officially started. It’s the first step in creating momentum. It might be the single hardest thing you’ll ever do. I recall the words of the late, great comedienne, Lucille Ball who

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Guerilla Innovation Chapter 10 In the previous post/chapter of Guerilla Innovation we talked about “amping ideas.” I reviewed two tools for doing so. They’re good tools. And…there’s more to it than those techniques. Idea amping is a way of life for an entrepreneur — and especially so for a small business one. Nobody will do the hard work of making something special for you. Something in our culture encourages you to quit when things become unreasonable. Yet, entrepreneurship is in many ways being unreasonable with yourself — and accepting the lemons people give you and making lemonade. Being an entrepreneur is a contrarian state. Unreasonable, in the sense that you go beyond what reason or logic would dictate to you is

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Can we just Get the Innovation Party Started already? One of the most frustrating things about being an Innovation consultant is watching organizations get stuck in a mud pit of inaction around innovation. Call it procrastination, lack of corporate will, a culture of bureaucracy — they all amount to the same thing: no productive innovation work done. I see it over and over, it’s as common as a head cold and just as unpleasant. I’ve written about this before — today’s post has a bit of a new wrinkle. Here’s the message: Have a party and get started. I mean it literally. Make innovation an ongoing company party. The common suggestions around how to circumvent this…innovation infarction…are many. They include:

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The classic American vacation might be that drive out west to see Mt. Rushmore. I’ve always yearned to see the famous mountain sculpture. This past week I got out to South Dakota, determined not to write or even think about creativity or innovation. I was there to enjoy the Black Hills, the Badlands, take in Mt. Rushmore, have a couple of strenuous hikes, and share it all with my lovely partner. Then I saw the Crazy Horse Memorial — and I had to kiss goodbye the idea of a creativity and innovation thought-free vacation. I’ve never seen such an ambitious creative project. It took me by surprise. I was only vaguely aware of the project and we stopped to see

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I believe that one of the most fundamental choices a human being can make relates to creativity. The choice is: do I wish to be a creative person or not? It would seem to be a no-brainer, but it’s interesting that at least half of people I talk to make the choice to Not be a creative person. This is done without a lot of thought, but sometimes it’s deliberate. Oh shame! For a long time I’ve taken for granted that people would want to be creative, but now I’m getting that there are reasons why folks might go the other way. Here are those reasons:   I don’t want the pressure of people looking to me for creative options

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Who’s Lukas Rosol? He’s the 100th ranked tennis player in the world. A virtual “no name” with only 19 professional level tour match wins. A 26 year old, 6 foot 5 drink of water at about 170 pounds. Bad haircut. Czech dude. Major tat on his left calf. Lean and mean. As of tonight he has 20 wins. This evening at Wimbledon, against long odds, he upset one of the greatest tennis players that ever lived, Rafael Nadal. Nadal won the French Open just a few weeks ago, this is not an old champion fading away. It’s a stunning defeat for Rafa, a player known for his ultra fitness and competitiveness, at the peak of his game. Absolutely nobody would

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It’s easy to understand why many managers are not interested at all in heading up an innovation team. Saying no is the sane choice. The truth is Innovation Team Leadership is usually a thankless job. It’s often a job on top of another job. In other words, a lot of extra work spent on innovation initiatives means it’s a killer to keep up with the business-as-usual-operational job. So, that’s usually enough to kill innovation leadership motivation. But wait, there’s more! Not only is it a ton of work, it’s high risk. Many, even most, innovation efforts fail. Failure doesn’t look good come job and salary review time. People spout a lot of happy talk about learning from failure but the

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Briefly noted: The New York Times ran an article this morning about how Starbucks is moving manufacture of pottery mugs to a small shop in East Liverpool, Ohio. This is notable because it’s another example of “reshoring” — that is, bringing manufacturing from China and other cheap (aka slave) labor markets back to the USA. This is how restoring the economy happens, one job at a time. Kudos to Starbucks for being a good corporate citizen, and doing something that is just plain smart as well. Sales from the mugs will help support Starbuck’s Create Jobs for USA Fund. I’ve blogged about both reshoring and the Create Jobs for USA program here before — nice to see it’s an active

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Birmingham Alabama — Monday May 14th, 2012, Gonzeaux #7 It’s an image that was so arresting and shocking at the time that I’ve never forgotten it. It stained my memory like indigo on fine white linen, never to be washed out. I was nine years old. I’m talking about the sight, on national television, of black people being attacked by German Shepard’s in the Birmingham, Alabama race riots of 1963. The high-pressure water hoses were cruel, but the dogs, those vicious dogs, made my skin crawl, and it flipped a switch in my head. From that point forward I was a social progressive. I’ve not ever visited Alabama. I’ve been to nearly every state in the USA, but never had

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