The leadership of the Colorado Capital Congress and invited guests participated in a brainstorming session July 25 at Regis University to come up with new ideas to improve Colorado’s capital markets. Every business and government report continues to state the great need for additional capital for businesses. The Colorado Capital Congress, a free public forum, is working to address this need by converting ideas into action initiatives.
On Monday night, participants were treated to a keynote presentation by Futurist Tom Frey of the DaVinci Institute on the future of Colorado’s capital markets. Pointing out how the Roman Empire failed in part due to its use of Roman numerals and their inability to complete higher math functions, Mr. Frey challenged the audience to identify and be prepared to discard the Roman numeral equivalents within Colorado’s capital markets. The address presented trends on the use of money, alternative currencies, and new forms of payment.
Attendees wrote down ideas that addressed the four issues of the capital market:
- Sources of capital – existing cash or other resources that may be converted to cash or used as collateral
- Matching capital sources with businesses – quicker, better, faster ways to create appropriate matches that recognize the readiness of a business to receive capital and the ability of the an investor to evaluate risks
- Greater incentives – ways to make investments in Colorado businesses more attractive than offshore investments, creating cash reserves or other investment alternatives
- Reduction of risks – ways to reduce actual risks and the perception that investing in Colorado businesses is too risky
A variety of brainstorming techniques were employed to avoid over thinking, to encourage lateral thinking and to shift perspective.
Several hundred ideas were proposed. These ideas will be reviewed and filtered for duplicates and then placed on the idea page on the Colorado Capital Congress website: http://www.coloradocapitalcongress.com/messages/boards/forum/1764531. Members of the public may join the Congress and post their own ideas.
The Congress will employ a six-stage process: idea, initiative, discussion, vote, publication and action. The Congress will continue to solicit ideas until August 18. At that time, up to twenty ideas will be selected as initiatives and assigned to task forces. Each task force will be responsible for developing its assigned idea to a point of readiness for implementation. Then, Representatives in the Congress may discuss the issues online. On October 20, all Representatives will be invited to the Regis University campus to vote on all initiatives. Champions will be recruited to implement each initiative receiving a majority vote. Action may take the form of new laws, regulations, public/private partnerships or private collaborations.
The Institute on the Common Good and the Sullivan Chair for Free Enterprise of Regis University host the Colorado Capital Congress.
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