It’s day 1 at Innovatrs.com so it seems fitting that I should bang on about why I developed Innovate and as a result Innovatrs.com. 40 odd years ago I was born into the Letts publishing empire. The business was rocking. It had invented the diary way back in the late 1700′s and controlled the industry ever since. Letts was a household name and my father ruled the roost. The business had been handed from father to son for 200 odd years and the family finally had their 7th CEO in the making. Me.

Over the next 20 years I was put through the family bootcamp which taught me how to run a multinational, develop the future Letts and become a great CEO. I crawled the factory floors before I could talk. I chatted with each member of staff as soon as I could yap. I met customers while still at junior school and worked in most departments as a spotty teen. At business school I studied factory optimization and helped usher in major production improvements at the business. By my twenties I was the heir pretender. The morale of this story was that I was given the best coaching imaginable in how to run an international business. And it got me thinking…

By my mid twenties I was all trained up and screaming to go. So off I went. First up I ran a tech services company (don’t ask me how) based in the Brunel Science Park. I ended up doing a management buyout of the business and set up one of the first ever digital media businesses. From that I got to run the European arm of a US corporate portal software vendor, then set up the Web’s Currency, Beenz, took it global, grew it like a weed and ended up getting headhunted to run the next big thing out of Silicon Valley – the leading B2B marketplace: a digital barter network with over 600 employees. So I did that and figured out how to run a Silicon Valley pin up. Learnt the Silicon Valley secrets and met the shakers and movers all while watching my successors stuff up Beenz – only to be saved through a successful sale engineered by my friend and Chairman at Beenz, Philip Crawford. Phew.

And it was while in Silicon Valley that I got the idea for Innovate and Innovatrs.com. You see the secret behind Silicon Valley is the ecosystem. The ecosystem of entrepreneurs, financiers and talented designers, developers and marketers. All in one extraordinary centre of innovation. Each competing to launch, back and ultimately build the next BIG idea into an industry leader. So, I thought, why not build a new ecosystem. A global ecosystem of Innovatrs and entrepreneurs. Meeting and competing in one virtual space to develop the next BIG idea irrespective of whether they come from Toronto, New York, Shanghai, Barcelona, Milan, Manchester, Delhi or Bangkok. Thriving off the energy, partnerships, know-how, tools and resources bubbling up from a global ecosystem on the Web. Innovatrs.com.

So, I started thinking about what the ecosystem needed to get it off the ground. And concluded that first and foremost it had to have a methodology for innovation and a start-up system. Something that gets passed down in an ad hoc fashion and by word of mouth in the Valley. But this new, digital and global ecosystem needed to have one that was written down and systematized. Then everything else would develop around it as its starting point. So a few years ago I locked myself away for 6 months and wrote Innovate (TM), the worlds first true attempt at a comprehensive innovation methodology and business-build system. A step by step guide to how to develop a great idea, launch it successfully and build a cool business. A practical start-up system. Over the last few years I have tested Innovate against a whole host of start-ups, entrepreneurs and innovation experts. It works.

So, today we are ready. Ready to opensource Innovate, ready to launch Innovatrs.com and ready to build the worlds first global, Web based ecosystem of entrepreneurs and innovators. A place where ideas can become great businesses and entrepreneurs can get rich and famous. A place where investors will gather and governments will listen. A Silicon Valley for the rest of the planet. On the Web. Here for you 24×7. How timely.

So the rest is up to you. Join us, sign up at Innovatrs.net and use Innovate to reach your potential. We only care about your success and we’ll do whatever it takes to help you. Innovate – Change Your Life.