Many biotechnology stocks fell on Tuesday as investors struggled to understand the impact of a ruling that threw out parts of two gene patents and called into question thousands more.

Stock market losses were muted, with two major indexes that track the shares of the industry falling by less than 1 percent each. In part, that was because biotechnology executives hastened to reassure their investors that the ruling would not necessarily undermine their businesses, at least in the short run.

But the executives themselves were struggling on Tuesday to figure out what the long-term impact would be. Biotech companies spend billions every year trying to develop new tests and treatments based partly on genes they have isolated and patented.

In a far-reaching ruling, Judge Robert W. Sweet anticipated a negative reaction from the industry. In a footnote of his 152-page ruling, he discounted fears that invalidating such patents would decimate the industry.

On Monday, I [Arianna Huffington] wrote about the troubling state of America's commitment to innovation, spurred by a panel discussion I'd taken part in.

After the panel, I found myself having a fascinating follow-up discussion with a Harvard professor, a psychiatrist, a Broadway producer, a biotech entrepreneur, a business consultant, a film producer, an author, and a jazz musician.

It wasn't as crowded as it sounds since my conversation was with one person, John Kao. In his polymath career, Kao has taken on each of these roles. He now spends most of his time writing, lecturing, and advising governments and corporations on innovation.

--GET HUFFINGTON LOGO--

LONDON, Mar 30, 2010 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- Global executives admire Google, Apple and GE as the world's most innovative companies, a study from global management consultancy Arthur D. Little has revealed. In its bi-annual survey of 400 global companies, the consultancy compared innovation capacity against the average by industry.

For each sector, a "top innovator" was identified based on the success of its sales and new product time to market against the industry average. The sectors covered are:

• Technology, Information, Media & Electronics
• Electrical Engineering & Electronics
• Chemicals & Pharmaceutical
• Engineering, Machinery and High-Tech
• Retail/FMCG
• Automotive
• Energy & Utilities
• Financial Services
• Logistics

One of my favorite Harvard Business Review articles from last year was "The Innovator's DNA." The article by Innosight founder Clayton Christensen (yes, I'm biased), BYU Professor Jeffrey Dyer, and INSEAD Professor Hal Gregersen describes the critical characteristics of successful innovators, and presents practical tips for business leaders looking to strengthen their innovation muscles. And I have begun to see the Innovator's DNA tools and research helping companies improve their ability to successfully innovate.

One of the pieces of guidance that the professors offer is to "consciously complicate" your life by engaging in experiments. As the article notes:

"Like scientists, innovative entrepreneurs actively try out new ideas by creating prototypes and launching pilots ... The world is their laboratory ... Experimenters construct interactive experiences and try to provoke unorthodox responses to see what insights emerge."

From the Asian carp to the zebra mussel, invasive species are a major force of change in nature. They radically alter the ecosystems they invade, seize control of important resources from established native species, and create new opportunities for themselves and those that can adapt quickly enough to help exploit the way they affect things. They are the very model of disruptive innovation, sharing certain characteristics that can be used by executives to think afresh about their approach to innovation across all areas of business.

1. Start small. Most non-native species arrive on foreign shores in small numbers. Few survive. Those that go on to become invasive tend to exploit their smallness, which allows them to survive longer, with fewer resources, in uncertain circumstances—and to keep out of sight of competitors, predators, and parasites until they've learned how to thrive.

Does start-up financing differ for minority-owned businesses? Until recently, this has been a difficult question to examine because most data on small businesses looked at existing businesses of varying ages. But the development of the Kauffman Firm Survey (KFS) – an effort to track a sample of firms founded in 2004 over time – has allowed researchers to explore that question.

In a paper prepared for the Minority Business Development Agency, and in another report produced by the Kauffman Foundation, Alicia Robb of the Kauffman Foundation and her colleagues Rob Fairlie of the University of California Santa Cruz and David Robinson of Duke University examined the KFS data and found that minority-owned new businesses are less likely than White owned new businesses to be financed with external debt and equity. But the reasons why have less to do with the businesses being minority-owned than with differences between White and minority-owned start-ups.

Can entrepreneurship be taught? This is a question I get asked every other week. Some people are quite sceptical about the graduate entrepreneurship programs around the world, while others embrace them.

I think these people are getting lost in the question they are asking. What they need to realise is that anything can be taught. Whether you want to become a mortician, an acrobat or an entrepreneur, you can read a blog, pick up a book or take a course. We live in an information rich world, where we can learn anything we want.

The real question should not be: “Can it be taught?” The real question should be: “Do people have the stomach to do it?”

Last June, President Obama announced in Cairo, Egypt that the U.S. government will host a Summit on Entrepreneurship to identify how we can deepen ties between leaders, foundations, and entrepreneurs in the U.S. and Muslim communities around the world. Throughout April leading up to the April 26th summit, I will comment on the state of entrepreneurship in some of the nations participating which I will be attending in the hope of prompting further observations from readers.

Egypt is one the first countries that comes to mind when I think about entrepreneurship and the Muslim world. For the fourth time, Egypt ranked among the top 10 global reformers in the 2008/09 period, according World Bank’s Doing Business in the Arab World 2010 report. The report considers the country to be a comprehensive reformer; Egypt implemented at least 19 reforms, covering 8 or more of the 10 areas measured by Doing Business.

In its reform efforts, Egypt is inclusive, involving many relevant players of an entrepreneurial economy. This was evident at a very well attended launch of last year’s Global Entrepreneurship Week in Egypt, which included the Minister of Education, the President of the Financial Supervisory Authority and a wide array of business, cultural and academic leaders tapping the expertise of several organizations, such as the Middle East Council for Small Business and Entrepreneurship, the local universities, and the development agencies.  The event discussed how to build an entrepreneurial environment through education, cultural change and pro-entrepreneurship policies.

I [chrisjhorn] spoke this morning at the Irish Universities Association event on corporate governance.   The main theme of my presentation was the dangers inherent in poor stewardship of intellectual property and the processes therein.  This in turn is one major reason for the urgent need for a national intellectual property protocol.

Innovation is riskful.

Failure is an anathema. We have had outrageous failures in our banks, our health system, the Roman Catholic Church, in corporate governance, in public procurement and in regulatory oversight. Failure is devastating and unacceptable when a priori we have no reason to expect any deficiency. Failure may however be acceptable, if perhaps disappointing, when we know in advance that a venture may fail. For example, we accept failure in sport is because we cannot reasonably expect perpetual success.

The saving of Luton and indeed of Britain, (restoring our 'Great' prefix) would be the New Technology Economic Model, a 'model' which has been identified around the world with USA, Canada and Malaysia taking a keen interest. The basic principle is the use of technological innovation to drive the economy. Today, the US has an economic stimulus package in basic R&D, biomedical research facilities and essential broadband infrastructure as a response to their economic environment. A major research university can provide a huge economic boost to a regional economy with the University of Calgary (Canada) benefiting Alberta economy about $50 million per year circa 1994, including faculty and professional staff knowledge transfer. Spin-off companies commercialise intellectual property from university laboratories and are significant drivers of innovation appearing to effectively transfer technology out of universities, leading to job and wealth creation. However to contribute to economic growth, they must survive and succeed. Canada reports over 80% of their spin-off companies are still in business five years from start-up.

It is generally recognized that developed countries are moving to economies based on commercialising intellectual property and other intangible assets. In these new economies, concepts such as patents, copyrights, customer relationships, brand value, unique institutional designs, the value of future products and services and their structural capital (culture, systems and processes) are critically important to a region’s businesses. Economic performance is determined by a region’s effectiveness in using its comparative advantages to create and expand knowledge assets and convert them into economic value.

What is the state of the planet in 2010? The Economist, The Earth Institute at Columbia University, and Ericsson held a conference last week in an attempt to answer that question. Climate change showed up in each of the four sessions, which covered poverty, economic recovery, and international systems as well. What were the experts talking about?

Three main themes emerged from the panels. They included the need to communicate better with the public about the effects and science of climate change, region-specific clean energy technology, and how to craft an effective global climate treaty.

Communicating Climate Science

The first panel of the day at the State of the Planet was devoted exclusively to climate change. It featured Mark Cane and Wallace Broecker, two climate scientists from Columbia University as well as panels in New Delhi and Beijing. Mr. Cane first brought up the challenge of communicating climate research. He stated that scientists are "not the right people" to convey messages about scientific findings and their policy applications.

Raising money for your start-up is difficult. There are few people that are willing to invest their money in someone else’s relatively-unproven business, but even if you have those people, fewer businesses have the right characteristics to be financed through an external capital raise. HispanicBusiness.com featured an article that discussed Shark Tank, it’s use as an investing/entrepreneurship educational tool, and what many professors thought of the show and it’s hopeful business-owners that have appeared on it.

The Shark Tank is actually a U.S.-spin off of popular British television show Dragons’ Den. Most of the academics said that Dragons’ Den and Shark Tank are useful educational tools. Part of the programs’ benefit comes from having a celebrity deliver a message. As Sarah Dodd of Alba Business School puts it: “Three minutes with Dragon Theo Paphitis convinces my students far more than three hours of me saying the same things.”

Check out what HispanicBusiness had to say about our Shark Tank Entrepeneurs in their article below:

Two weeks from now in Deloitte's downtown Toronto office towers, 14 Canadian technology entrepreneurs will go on a dream date of sorts, hoping to hook up with eight Boston-based venture capitalists flying in for the day to scope out the talent.

The Bostonians have money to spend and "a propensity to invest in Canada" - welcome news to emerging Canadian tech companies frustrated by the prolonged slump in domestic venture capital activity, said charted accountant John Ruffolo, national leader of Deloitte's technology practice and an organizer of the invitation-only event.

The coming "mini venture fair" is a first for Deloitte in Canada and a sign of the times, said Mr. Ruffolo, who also plans to lead a delegation of Canadian tech firms to meet venture capitalists in California's Silicon Valley later this year.

Disruptive innovation seems to have bypassed the health care industry.

Harvard Business School professor Clay Christensen’s theory predicts that entrenched companies, products and services are often “disrupted” from below by competitors who are able to meet the needs of most current customers with products that do less (but just enough) and are much, much cheaper.

So why has health care been on this rampant march of incredibly escalating costs that seem impervious to competing forces? Where are the disruptive innovators?

Nearly every tech-focused venture capital firm in the Seattle area is tossing financial support behind TechStars, a "startup boot camp" of sorts which plans to accept its first 10 enrollees this fall. TechStars -- already established in Boston and Boulder -- has raised $450,000 in Seattle from more than 15 venture capital firms and angel investors.

About half of those funds will be used for operations of the Seattle branch, while the other half will go to direct investments in the companies accepted into the program, said Andy Sack, a Seattle angel investor who is helping to organize TechStars Seattle. Sack, who also runs the angel firm Founder's Co-op, said Seattle is unique in the way the entire investment community has rallied to support the idea.

Many of us are "burned out" from all the health care legislative battles on the hill as well as the non-stop media analysis. Among what appeared to be out of control unsupervised children fighting in our government sandbox, there was one group of heroes working above and beyond the call of duty.

These heroes are made up of House & Senate staffers that work in the "well" and on the floor of the House & Senate, from clerks to secretaries, stenographers to parliamentarians. Under the strain of all those extra hours, both parties scheming to employ unusual tactics to outsmart each other, these heroic staffers took on everything that was thrown at them, and never flinched.

Conversely in the Senate session that stretched past 2:00am on Thursday, March 25, (with well over 20 roll call votes) most of the senators resembled Wile Coyote after a failed attempt on the Roadrunner. At the end of the session, President pro tempore Al Franken (D-MN) looked and sounded more like he was part of a failed Saturday Night Live skit than an actual session of congress! Nevertheless the staffers hardly missed a beat. Kudos to them for a great job.

"I am here to watch you." So began anthropologist Arpita Roy when introducing herself in 2007 to a roomful of particle physicists. At the time, those scientists were racing to finish work on the world's biggest machine, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, Europe's high-energy physics laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland.

The LHC carries the hopes of generations of physicists, who have designed it to reach energies never before achieved in a collider and — possibly — to produce a zoo of particles new to science. But the LHC is also a huge human experiment, bringing together an unprecedented number of scientists. So in recent years, sociologists, anthropologists, historians and philosophers have been visiting CERN to see just how these densely packed physicists collide, ricochet and sometimes explode.

"The LHC allows a unique sociological study of how an experiment develops in real time: how scientists form opinions, make technical decisions and circulate knowledge in such a big project," says Arianna Borrelli, a particle physicist and philosopher of physics at the University of Wuppertal in Germany.

Another Earth Hour has passed by this weekend. Electrical systems across the globe were shut down to observe, for an hour, that energy is precious. In this moment, we also acknowledge that as humanity, we have the power to do better for ourselves. One great thing about Earth Hour is the photos. If you haven't yet, check out the brilliant photo essay at Boston.com on Earth Hour 2010.

If you haven't taken initiative to shut down your computer yet, read on to get a refresher on how better computing resource utilization creates a better world.

The U.S. Department of Energy announced today that it is investing $37.5 million in joint research initiatives with organizations in China over the next five years. After this sum is matched by private organizations, about $75 million will go toward U.S. efforts to improve energy efficiency, clean coal technologies, carbon sequestration and green vehicles.

Specifically, the money will be used to construct a U.S.-China Clean Energy Research Center, which will have branches in both countries. China will kick in another $75 million to develop technologies it can use to cut carbon emissions and become more energy efficient. With electric cars rolling out en masse in both countries in the next two years, this kind of research is more critical than ever.

An environmental group pushing the solar power industry to adopt best practices for “greener” manufacturing has released a scorecard showing which companies rated highest on solar panel recycling and other environmental efforts.

The Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition (SVTC), a nonprofit based in San Jose, Calif., released its SolarScorecard — the first of what it plans to make an annual survey. The report lists 24 leading makers of photovoltaic (PV) solar modules and one maker of solar cells supplied to module makers. While only 14 companies responded to the survey, they represent a 24 percent share of the market for solar modules.

The companies were rated on a scale of 1 to 100 based on whether they take back solar modules they’ve sold at the end of their life for recycling, whether they seek to reduce the use of environmentally hazardous materials in making solar panels, whether they monitor the green practices of their supply chain partners, and how transparent they are in disclosing their own manufacturing practices.