and willowy blondes only take you so far, it turns out. Malefactors are punished. The universe is restored to balance.

This time, Gekko is a repentant father longing to make amends to win his daughter’s approval who also essentially steals a fortune from her to get back in the game.

Gekko is a humble reformed crook who has paid his debt to society and also a sleek alpha male puffing on a phallic cigar who can’t wait to gloat about his prowess at making money.

Gekko is a teacher who shares his knowledge. At times, one could swear that one had wandered into a parallel universe version of An Inconvenient Truth, as Gekko lectures us on the hazards of leverage and financial meltdown. Particularly priceless is when he calls a group of young students “ninjas”—no income, no job, no assets—adding, “You have a lot to look forward to.” But the same guy who observes that the mother of all evil is speculation turns up later in the film dressed in a power suit and giddy over his ability to turn $100 million into $1 billion. I don’t think he earned it at $25 an hour; leverage must have figured in there somewhere.

If we fast-forward 23 years to Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, we are treated to a curiously different kind of moral equation, the morality of “and also” rather than “either or.”

In the new film, Gordon Gekko is a humble reformed crook who has paid his debt to society and also a sleek alpha male who can’t wait to gloat about his prowess at making money. (20th Century Fox)

This “and also” value system also comes across in Gekko’s attitude to innovation. He is clearly cynical about clean tech and derides the “fusion delusion” as the next bubble. In his words, “the only green is money.” Yet at the end of the film, he gives $100 million away to support alternative energy and do something “good” with his money.

• Randall Lane: Wall Street on Wall Street

• Randall Lane: Gordon Gekko’s Secret Revealed
The film’s title may hold its final moral clue. If money never sleeps, then can greed not be far behind, even in these pinched times? No one in the film seems to be hurting for nice apartments and clothes, for example, even with a financial meltdown that has come from “the mother of all bubbles.” As Gekko himself puts it, “Greed got greedier with a little envy thrown in.”

So we’d all like to find a little absolution in these troubled times, and in fact in the end Gekko’s daughter does melt and forgive him, while we on the other hand—adding up all the “and alsos”—don’t know whether to follow suit.

This “and also” value system comes across in Gekko’s attitude to innovation. He is cynical about clean tech, yet in the end, he gives $100 million to support alternative energy.

Gordon, make up your mind. Maybe a little therapy would help.

Dubbed "Mr. Creativity" by The Economist, John Kao is a contributing editor at The Daily Beast and an adviser to both public and private sector leaders. He is chairman of the Institute for Large Scale Innovation, whose i20 group is an association of national innovation "czars." He wrote Jamming: The Art and Discipline of Business Creativity, a BusinessWeek bestseller, and Innovation Nation. He is also a Tony-nominated producer of film and stage.

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startups, Software, apparel

Where Bras Meet Software: Zyrra Raises Money From Jess McLear, Jean Hammond, & Local Angels For Its Bra Industry “Revolution”

Erin Kutz 10/19/10

Derek Ohly is known as the “bra guy,” both around the office at MassChallenge, the startup accelerator and entrepreneur competition, and throughout the Boston-area investor community, he says.

“I didn’t expect to end up in the world of bras, and here I am,” says Ohly, a graduate of Babson College’s MBA program (a likely story). “I have designed them, sewn them, fit them, and sourced them. As I like to put it, I have a PhD in bras.”

This isn’t just a weird hobby for Ohly. He’s CEO of Zyrra, a MassChallenge finalist company that’s using computer-aided-design (CAD) software, a patent-pending bra measurement system, and Tupperware-style parties to get custom-fit bras into the hands of women who just aren’t happy with how theirs currently fit.

“Bra guy” is a relatively new gig for Ohly, dating back to about 2004, when his MBA classmate and now Zyrra co-founder Christi Andersen mentioned that there was a pervasive problem with bra fit. So Ohly, who says he was overwhelmed by the number of women sharing Andersen’s gripes, set out in the bra business. He started by taking a sewing class at the Cambridge Center for Adult Education.

“I said, ‘I’m here to learn how to make bras.’ It was a good moment,” he says, noting that he was the only guy in the class. The group of women responded, “Sign me up,” when he explained his aim to make better-fitting bras—early market validation for the company’s product, he says.

Zyrra incorporated in late 2004 and spent a few years designing, prototyping, and building the bra models and the sizing system to plug into the CAD platform in order to design them in a more individualized way, and came out with its first bra model around 2007. The startup worked out of office space in Boston’s Chinatown neighborhood before moving to MassChallenge for the accelerator and business plan competition phase this summer.

Ohly and Andersen’s company isn’t just unique in that it’s applying software that’s typically been used for architecture and product development in the electronics, engineering, and furniture sectors to lingerie-making. The startup also has a different makeup of investors than most others in the tech space. The lead investor for its Series A financing, which is expected to close later this month in the range of $500,000 to $700,000, is angel investor Jess McLear, a member of angel group Golden Seeds and also a mentor at MassChallenge. Jean Hammond, another Golden Seeds member, has also backed the company.

“The angel community is about 90 percent men,” Ohly says. “We will have a slightly different breakdown.”

The company sells its bras (as well as matching underwear) through …Next Page »

Erin Kutz is an Assistant Editor for Xconomy. You can reach her by e-mail at ekutz@xconomy.com or by phone at (617) 252-0700.

Er, great news: George Lucas may be planning new “Star Wars ...

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Exclusive: Yahoo Courts Former News Corp. Digital Exec Ross ...

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Nielsen: 362000 Monthly Users For News Corp.'s Times Paywall ...

News International's silence on subscriber numbers for Times and Sunday Times online content continues, three and a half months after the paywall went up. But today audience research company Nielsen has taken a stab at estimating the ...

bench craft company complaints
bench craft company complaints

Er, great news: George Lucas may be planning new “Star Wars ...

Exclusive: Yahoo Courts Former News Corp. Digital Exec Ross ...

Nielsen: 362000 Monthly Users For News Corp.'s Times Paywall ...

bench craft company complaints bench craft company complaints
and willowy blondes only take you so far, it turns out. Malefactors are punished. The universe is restored to balance.