Innovation on the Brain

 Innovation and Tech Scene in the Midwest
This article pissed me off. And a lot of other people in the Midwest Tech Scene.  But it fits in with several other discussions I've had, and ultimately makes a lot of sense. The folks at the TechLabs all had entrepreneurial inclination, but in a lot of cases were married by 25 and had kids on the way (well, the men at least, not so much for the women, but that's another story for another time). You don't see that too often in the valley, where folks work long hours because their dream for their startup is their family/baby/relationship/etc.

I went to the Technori Pitch on Tuesday to support my buddies at OurLabel. The Keynote speaker was one of the co-founders from SIRI, who is moving back from the valley to Chicago, and spoke highly of engineering in Champaign (and Northwestern) and trying to keep the strong engineering students in the area. There's a lot of cool entrepreneurial & venture capital stuff going on in the midwest, but there is a huge drain of talent out to the west coast. I have to wonder what would happen if more people stuck around here and started something new.

 Startups & Believable Leadership
 One of the interesting things about going to the pitch was hearing 6 different pitches from wildly different startups and looking at the Charisma of the co-founders - a huge variety in the ideas, the leadership, how the team came together, and how they were trying to scale their business (or even looking at the competition). It was really interesting watching their presentation styles - the first presenter  (ZealousGood) seemed like she was super sharp, super motivated, and had a good sense of how to try a business and scale it up. The next founder (Lovendar) was less likeable (in my book) but obviously has something that she could pitch on the Today Show or Oprah and make a lot of money with/go far/get a huge user base - but entirely less compelling to me, personally. She had great stage presence, and clearly had a good idea and good engagement with the crowd. Then there were some pitches that were great ideas, but the co-founders just weren't compelling at all to listen to. It definitely re-inforced the idea for me that good ideas will only get you so far, but being able to communicate your idea in a compelling way to a wide variety of audiences is probably equally important. There's a lot of public speaking classes out there, but if public speaking is not your thing and you really want to succeed in business, finding that partner that can be the "public face" of your idea is really important.

Gamification Schools
On Wednesday I got to tour the Chicago Quest Charter school - it was SUPER exciting and kind of blew  my mind. (So much so that when I was introducing myself I threw my pen halfway across the room. Woops.) It was "Boss Level" week - basically the end of the trimester - so all the kids were in their home base working on a puppet show. Very cool to see such tight technology integration and have the kids focus on teamwork (especially with 6th and 7th graders!). Talking to the staff was really interesting when they talked about the melt downs that kids have - imagine group projects in college where you have to deal with people you don't particularly like, but all of the hormones of middle school.