Can you like money and help others, too?

Speaking of doing well by doing good (as I was last time):

There’s an essay in Tuesday’s New York Times by Harvard economist Edward L. Glaeser addressing the idea that’s currently in the air about social entrepreneurship, to wit: Is making money for investors a for-profit corporation’s sole legitimate aim or is there something more it should try to accomplish, such as making the world a better place?

After explaining the recent history of this question and quoting people from each side of the issue (Bill Gates and the bleeding hearts, Milton Friedman and the ruthless profit maximizers), Glaeser comes down firmly in the middle, but he does make an important gesture of respect toward creativity and innovation:

“I certainly agree with Friedman that traditional corporations have one overriding moral obligation — to fulfill their fiduciary duties and maximize shareholder wealth. Yet I’m also a fan of organizational innovation, which makes me a little more enthusiastic about the idea of experimenting with new legal entities with more complex objectives.”

Hear, hear. The plan for Geniocity.com is all about helping society through services and goods that also earn serious profits, allowing us to do even more for society and and earn even greater profits. It’s never sounded like a confused or conflicted mission to me. I think it makes perfect sense and I’m hoping more and more people will start feeling the same way, especially since we all can now see the disastrous effects of unrestricted greed on the economy, our quality of life and our nation’s financial security.

Read Glaeser here and see what you think.  

     or? and?                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       

No good entrepreneurs in Cleveland

I got angry yesterday morning.

It’s not an emotion I like to experience before breakfast, but a Plain Dealer story I read left me little choice. It reported that movers and shakers in Cleveland’s business-development community believe our region lacks seasoned entrepreneurs and that the best strategy our leading development fund could adopt would be to import talent from Boston, Silicon Valley and select places overseas.

Excuse me? A shortage of talent and experience?

This is the bitterest joke that Cleveland endlessly plays on itself – claiming that people here aren’t good enough to invest in when the real problem is that the talented, enterprising ones are routinely ignored by the very leaders and groups that could help them and the local economy the most.

“Believe in Cleveland”? Great promotional slogan for a city whose ”developers” don’t do anything of the sort. What they do is look around with their noses in the air, see nothing that’s happening on the ground and conclude that we need to uproot the brilliant thinkers and doers from some other city and embed them in our half-empty office towers and decaying factories. 

There are imaginative and capable people all over this corner of Ohio who are starting from scratch with great ideas that could become important sources of jobs, money, community pride and, someday, global influence – but because they don’t fall into the one narrow category of worthy enterprises (IT innovations or biotech that will produce $1 billion in revenue in five years) local major funders will consider, they are denied the money they need to succeed. 

Compare this reality to what’s happened in Ireland, a long-impoverished nation that has undergone an absolute economic revolution in the last few years. What did the Irish do right?

 As the New York Times reported nearly a year ago:

“The change began when Ireland entered the European Union in 1973. In subsequent years, the government rewrote its tax policies to attract foreign investment by American corporations, made all education free through the university level and changed tax rates and used direct equity investment to encourage Irish people to set up their own businesses.

‘The change came in the 1990s,’ said James Murphy, founder and managing director of Lifes2Good, a marketer of drugstore products for muscle aches, hair loss and other maladies. ‘Taxes and interest rates came down, and all of a sudden we believed in ourselves.’ ”

Think of that. Ireland encouraged its own people – not people from someplace else - to set up their own businesses. National leaders trusted that Ireland actually had talented entrepreneurs just waiting to be given a chance and encouraged them with material help. They believed in themselves. And – what do you know! – a lot of entrepreneurs emerged and are succeeding fantastically, building their ideas and small companies into international corporations that are bringing gobs of money, excitement, pride and an improving standard of living to a land once synonymous with hopeless destitution. 

Now, get this: Right underneath the story I read about Cleveland business development was another one noting that the Ohio state government had approved grants to three business projects expected to bring jobs to Cuyahoga and Summit counties, the home bases of Cleveland and Akron, respectively.

What is one of the three? A $78,000 grant to buy equipment for Proxy Biomedical Limited, an Irish company specializing in bio-materials, as part of a $2 million project expected to create 26 jobs.

So Ireland believes in the Irish and so does Ohio. But no one in charge believes in entrepreneurial Clevelanders. 

No wonder our most gifted citizens so often decide, after years of fruitless efforts, to “be leavin’ Cleveland.”

Have yourself a locally made little Christmas

“I don’t want an orphan’s tree,” said Tootie Smith.

The littlest character in Sally Benson’s sweet novella, “Meet Me in St. Louis,” was dismayed at her grandpa’s mock-serious warning that Christmas might not be much that year, just some fruit in their stockings and an evergreen trimmed with berries and nuts. The prospect made Tootie start to cry.

The holiday turned out better than that for the Smiths, in spite of money always being tight in their family of five children. But the rest of us may not be that lucky: The economy is so bad, a story in yesterday’s New York Times said, that Wal-Mart will probably be the only retailer in the nation to wake up to a big, glittering package of profits on Christmas morning.

I don’t want an orphan’s tree, either, though it’s logical for people with little to spend on presents to buy only what’s practical, cheap or both. Still, who wants to find nothing but econopacks of tube socks and bargain DVDS in her brightly wrapped gift boxes? 

The truth is, shopping at a giant factory depot like Wal-Mart may be smart if necessities and mass-produced stuff are what will make your loved ones’ holidays brighter. But it’s also simply unimaginative. Dull. Not to mention destructive to local economies, which depend largely on the jobs, goods and services generated by local entrepreneurs and small businesses.

And the truth is that everyone wants to give and get something a little special on a special occasion – not something you can find 100 billion cheap, identical, factory-made versions of.

So how do you get special and affordable? Get creative: Make things yourself, or buy locally made creative goods. There are so many kinds, no matter where you live – art, crafts, foods, clothes, toys, books, tickets to live performances, useful things and purely enjoyable ones, all unique and all devised by talented people who make your community a more interesting and economically healthy place to live. Just look around and you’ll start discovering endless gifts that could turn the holiday into a standout instead of an assembly-line copy. 

I admit I have something to gain from urging you to be more inventive with your small budget. The Geniocity Shop sells original glass, jewelry, films, pictures and more, many of them costing between $10 and $50, and nearly all of them by artists local to my company’s Northeast Ohio community. The artists are the ones who benefit most from Geniocity Shop sales. But if my shop doesn’t have something you want, dozens of other locally-owned and -stocked shops in your area will, whatever area that is.

So go ahead and buy your cost-effective, mass-made utility presents from the big-box stores, if they save you money. But for the special little gifts that will thrill, delight and turn into lifetime treasures and memories for the people you value, step into the stores owned by your neighborhood entrepreneurs.

Tootie will be happy you did.

Angels, earn your wings

Why is reality never like the movies?

Specifically, why is it so for hard for an entrepreneur like me to get an angel when George Bailey didn’t even have to ask?  From what I remember of “It’s a Wonderful Life”, all George had to be was suicidally frustrated and hopeless and presto! He found a kindly silver-haired guy talking him off the bridge and making his life seem worthwhile again. 

I think could work myself down to that level of despair. Of course, I’d want my angel to show up with a big check made out to The Genius Group LLC, along with the usual store of life-affirming wisdom. 

Anyone?

Anyone?

I’m not hearing any bells.

I keep hoping that my state or local government will finally create a program that connects entrepreneurs like me with angel investors. There was even a story about angels in the online New York Times yesterday saying that a report by the National Governors’ Association Center for Best Practices finds that state officials are working to develop more ways to help entrepreneurs find private investors. I quote:

“Among other strategies, this includes creating seminars on private equity investment, connecting entrepreneurs with existing educational opportunities, forming statewide angel networks, and appointing angel investors to state economic advisory boards, the report said.” 

I got a excited for a nanosecond, until I saw the rest of the story:

“Angel investing in entrepreneurial ventures can range anywhere from $5,000 to $100,000, with investors typically backing new medical devices, software, biotechnology, business services, IT and energy initiatives.”

Rats. Rats and mice with cheese on top. That’s why I keep saying “an entrepreneur like me” – I’m not in new medical devices, software, biotechnology, business services, IT and energy initiatives. I’m in new media, wanting to inform the public about all those technological innovations and many other kinds of creative developments. And so my state officials in Ohio (oops, did I name the place?), along with the other set of 49, apparently couldn’t care less whether my business and other nonbiotech, non-IT companies fulfill their great potential or not.

Guess we’re going to have to keep trying to do it for ourselves, huh? Boo! Happy Halloween!

It’s scary out there. Will I ever find someone(s) with the imagination, vision and enthusiasm to materially join me in this great quest to change how the world perceives and practices creativity? To revolutionize human problem-solving and change our societies into peaceful, constructive cultures?

Does anybody here see what I see? (Let’s count how many shows I reference today. That was “1776.” Title, not tally.)  

Anybody? Nnnnnot yet, apparently.

Ok, so – Here’s a guide I found online to help those of us on whose lines of business the venture people and programs spit. There are probably more, but this is a start. And remember: There’s no money anywhere right now except for the eight hours every third day when stockholders have taken their puppy uppers. But we can be prepared with strategies for when the money comes back, Little Sheba. Or bahk. Or ba-a-a-ak.  We hope.

And for those of you who were counting, the correct answer is six.

In and under the financial wagons

Investors had a big ol’ hootenanny at the end of last week. And when they finally woke up Monday, they had a collective hangover that looked a lot like the onset of clinical depression.

On Friday, they thought the cavalry had arrived to save them and all those sorry, overextended,  who-cares-make-hay hucksters who took over the banking and loan industries while the government winked and held the doors open. They saw charging horses and flashing weapons and cheered their own salvation with a whooping, hollering orgy of piling back into the wagons they’d just crawled under … only to realize when the dust cleared that it was merely George W. Custer in a cowboy hat, waving his fountain pen at the head of a tattered, debt-ridden regiment of federal spendthrifts.  

And even though they – and we – would like to believe that a couple of signatures can give this movie a happy ending, deep down we know that this is likely no summertime Hollywood western (“Buckaroo Bailout” ?), but a long, grim, anguishing Bergman flick the likes of “Autumn Sonata.”

When the economy tanks, entrepreneurs are often the ones sucked under with it, as a story in the small-business section of Monday’s New York Times points out. It figures: We’re smaller, with fewer clients or customers, fewer resources. Some are already facing reality, closing or selling their enterprises and going back to corporate life. It’s not a guarantee of safety, but at least the paychecks there are steadier and usually come with health insurance.

How do you know when it’s time to fold? When you’re out of money? Or when you’re out of hope? I’m a first-time entrepreneur and have no answer, but I can guess that the need to eat has a way of dissolving dreams quickly. Still, as long as the whole world doesn’t collapse, some of us will keep going, biding our time and winterizing our little companies so they’ll survive the coming harsh season somehow, while we take on second jobs.

Could the cavalry have a real leader in its ranks? Or will we have to hold out until one appears out of our own midst? I have no idea. But the real entrepreneurs among us may start raising chickens inside that circle of wagons.