I always say that if no one else shows up for Innovation Breakfast, I’ll at least be able to get some work done.  Hasn’t happened yet. 

Meanwhile, on most blogs, when you see no blogging, you know that nothing’s happening, so you “move along.”  The opposite is true of Innovation Breakfast.  When you see no blog post, it means the joint was hopping and I didn’t get to write anything.   Sometimes we have a dozen people dropping in, sometimes people come in groups of 1 or 2.

You’ll notice the time of this blog post is after Breakfast hours.  We had another good conversation this morning, with someone we’ve been wanting to meet.  We learned new stuff and shared ideas and everyone went forth with their day secure in the knowledge that they gained something from the interaction.

Last week, at Innovation Breakfast, we had an excellent discussion on the pros and cons of the Lean Startup concept.  One issue I am very aware of is the balancing act companies must deal with — rapid iteration and testing on your customer base versus giving the customer a positive experience.  I have seen many companies using Lean Startup concepts alienate a whole class of customers with poor user experiences.

This week I learned about a great program at Rutgers, an accelerated social media MBA, from CutlerDave.  I can’t help it — but his name and the “first name last name” architecture of the Twitter ID make me envision him as an odd mashup of Jeff Cutler and SchneiderMike (two social media gurus I know and enjoy.)  Since I have been toying with the idea of a social media house party in Vermont (at Red Clover Inn and Restaurant in Vermont), I was very interested in hearing about this program.  Social Media House Party fits in really nicely with the Innovation Dinner concept we’ve been discussing at Carlton PR & Marketing, as a way to help more startups and entrepreneurs get the marketing help they need to succeed.

This past week we had the first Innovation Dinner and we assembled ten entrepreneurs to give their input on a project designed to help everyone — not a stealth project just nothing to talk about…yet.  We want to do more of these.  Ideas?  Concepts?  We seem to be able to get entrepreneurs together.  If you had 10 or 12 entrepreneurs in a room, what would you want to ask them, show them, find out about them?  Let us know.