Editor's note:  Creating Innovators offers an expose on what it takes to foster creative and entrepreneurial skills in students and adults alike.  I agreed with Tony Wagner’s general premise that being an 'innovator' is not a destination, but a lifelong learning process.  Through a collection of interviews with students, parents, and their teachers, Wagner identifies a few common threads: parenting styles, impact and role of mentors and teachers, and the role of the various educational institutions on their development (listed in order of importance, in my opinion).

The program director at an entrepreneurial class I taught recently said, “no one speaks to us so frankly about failure.” I then had fun with a colleague discussing that thought and it made me decide to postpone the second of three “Dear Reader” blogs regarding “empty abundance.”

Your responses to my request in last month’s blog for input on my book are astounding.

Editor's Note: We have a team in the process of launching a promising start-up social enterprise called America Mentors (dba Cleveland Mentors), designed to significantly increase the size and quality of student mentoring programs. The team is using The Lean Startup to build an innovative business model that, through effective marketing and enabling technology, will match 5M caring and committed citizens across the country to the 5M low-income/first-generation college students to double their graduation rates.

Editor’s note: Attached for your viewing is a 12 minute video of a commencement address I gave last week the day after we celebrated the life of my good friend, Jake Sposito. I wrote to you about Jake a few months ago in a blog titled, “This Mortal Coil.” These remarks to 38 entrepreneurs graduating from Goldman Sachs “10,000 Businesses” program here in Cleveland use Jake’s life to share a couple of the most important lessons Jake taught me:

Editor’s note: Sometimes I just like to laugh. This song takes an old theme (“beauty is only skin deep”) and an old sound (doo wop) and combines into something catchy and funny to me. Note: R rating for language. Hope you enjoy.

I need your input.

Editor’s Note: I think my Avett Brothers music count is getting high but this one, off their “Carpenter” album is amazing. My son, Timmy, and I have declared this song as our new life “theme”.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/27/opinion/the-charitable-industrial-complex.html

Editor’s note: Our foundation has enjoyed our work in my little town, Ashtabula, since 2009 that started with loans to five entrepreneurs. We didn’t know we were doing a lot of the stuff Mr. Feld recommends in his book so it’s very rewarding to learn we followed a similar path to the work done in Boulder, CO, one of America’s most famous entrepreneurial ecosystems. We’ll remain a “poor man’s Boulder” but will continue to happily follow their lead, now more specifically having discovered this book and their movement, Startup Revolution. The most important part of this book, good for ANY business venture, is Brad’s down to earth philosophical but very actionable advice, such as: “Leaders of startup communities must be entrepreneurs. Everyone else is a feeder into the startup community.” Thanks to Robert Hatta for recommending (and buying) me this book.