A version of this article appeared in the Asheville Citizen-Times. The community ‘innovation engine’ that I developed, Open Strategic Innovation for Communities (OSIC), can assist in organizing further positive change in Asheville and Buncombe county. When it comes to solutions to our greatest challenges, there is less ‘low hanging fruit’. So what’s next? OSIC […]
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE ASHEVILLE, NC – Sustain NC is a professional development initiative of InnovoGraph LLC nurturing sustainability innovation. The central initiating Sustain NC service project is completion of the North Carolina Clean Power Plan. Part of making that happen is deploying a Smart Grid, Distributed Energy, and Efficiency Program (Smart Grid DEEP). There is […]
Have you been to the NC Nature Research Center? Know anyone who has? Whether you have or have not, North Carolina has one of the most sophisticated public interactive anthropogenic climate strategy tools in the world: the Koshland Earth Lab Airborne Carbon (CO2) Mitigation Decision Wall. This powerful anthropogenic climate education and policy development tool was licensed by the Koshland […]
Setting the community, state, and national bar too high worries folks. We know this one. I was recently asked why I would ‘criticize’ the Eblen Charities-Buncombe Schools-NCSECU teacher housing project. As a repeatable path to really dealing with our housing and poverty issues, do we have that now with the Eblen teacher housing project? Guessing… maybe? […]
As an innovation expert I can tell you simply increasing experimentation on poverty programs is not responsible. All the low hanging fruit is gone. The thousands of folks in Asheville actually experiencing poverty or hovering near poverty need responsible leaders at all levels of government. For example, the idea of some in local leadership […]
We are loading in hotels where affordable housing could go… and more higher paying white collar, ‘green collar’, and ’no collar’ jobs to help pay for higher quality housing for each citizen. People in poverty in Asheville have emergency level needs. Increasing net worth by cutting housing costs and increasing SNAP funds while raising the Federal […]
Here’s my email on the occupancy tax and BCTDA: Subj: Buncombe tourism advertising needs to be an industry expense versus public expense, 6/28/15 Greetings to those with local fiscal and legislative control over Buncombe County’s Tourism Development Authority, Heather Rayburn is right that factors at BCTDA’s inception in 1983 no longer apply. I wish the […]
While not a be-all and end-all solution, a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) analysis is a classic strategy tool is often a helpful outline of status. I’ll be adding more to this post, including a preliminary Asheville SWOT analysis. Here’s a few notes about changes in June 2015 to our entrepreneurial ecosystem. I use the term innovation and […]
While there will always be another real estate development project for city council to decide, I look forward to also assisting in raising our expectations for today and tomorrow. While not my only agenda item, I feel certain a powerful anti-poverty strategy can be developed for Asheville. Next, Asheville has a range of initiatives related to […]
Asheville is experiencing the same inequality challenges as the rest of the nation is. The Ford Foundation has helped us all greatly by establishing how crucial getting America back on track id by forming sufficient local and state anti-poverty strategy supported at the Federal level. Short-term thinking in markets, e.g. the classic MBA theory of […]