So you want to be the next big shot entrepreneur to come up with an idea that will change the world, but can't seem to come up with that golden ticket of an idea? Well perhaps you need to look no further than the world of art for inspiration. While looking through Hacker News posts, I stumbled across an illustrated SlideShare presentation from San Francisco-based cartoonist Betsy Streeter that suggests ways artists can unleash their "creative beasts" hiding within - an interesting approach to creativity that aspiring entrepreneurs can also take advantage of.

According to Streeter, the best way to get started is to first "give it permission to come out and play" by throwing away rules and judgements. For artists this means just free drawing at letting whatever comes to mind make its way onto the paper; for entrepreneurs, this means when you are brainstorming, don't throw any ideas away - everything and anything is free game, including the "impossible".

The $50 million angel tax credit passed by the Minnesota legislature Monday will no doubt provide much needed early stage capital for young start-ups. But the law’s biggest benefit may not be dollars and cents but rather how outsiders see Minnesota and how Minnesota sees itself.

By passing the bill quickly in the legislative year and with such overwhelming bipartisan support in the face of a $2 billion budget gap, lawmakers have instantly established Minnesota as a credible place to innovate and embrace risk, investors and entrepreneurs say. That’s quite a departure from the traditional rap on Minnesota, a high tax state whose 19 Fortune 500 companies had made its residents and leaders complacent and timid.

“People always whispered about these things but were too scared to say anything,” said Peter Bianco, director of life science business development for Nilan Johnson Lewis in Minneapolis. The angel credit will spark “an awakening that changes people’s attitudes and help us get out of this funk.”

In mid-February, about a month after a massive earthquake leveled much of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, a wound-care team from Brigham and Women's hospital in Boston traveled to the devastated capital. The team's task was to help care for scores of patients suffering from the large open wounds that accompany amputations, crushed limbs, and other injuries. Among the team was MIT graduate student Danielle Zurovcik, who arrived ready to test a device she had developed as part of her thesis research--a cheap and portable version of the negative-pressure devices currently used to speed wound healing in hospitals.

Zurovcik and her collaborators hope the device, which costs about $3, will provide a way to improve care for patients after the emergency phase of relief efforts, including life- and limb-saving surgeries, has ended. Even after many of the emergency medical teams leave the disaster zone, the dangers of chronic wounds remain high.

"My experience in Haiti and other major earthquakes is that after the acute medical response, such as amputating limbs and setting fractures, the major disease burden is wounds," says Robert Riviello, a trauma surgeon at Brigham and Women's, and Zurovcik's collaborator. Negative-pressure therapy decreases the need to change wound dressings from one to three times per day to once every few days, a major benefit when medical staff is in short supply.

Remember the satisfying sizzle of ants under a magnifying glass? No? Is that just me, then? Whatever, haters.

ANYway, the same science responsible for frying ants is at work on a larger scale in this clip from James May's "Big Ideas" series. What you've got here is a solar furnace, a carefully arranged array of mirrors that catches heat from the sun and reflects it, focusing it to point—effectively taking a lot of disparate, comfy sunbeams and gathering them together in a tight bundle. By their powers combined, the reflected beam can reach temperatures of 3,500 °C (6,330 °F). Watch in wonder and terror as the beam turns a hot dog to char and melts steel.

Venture capitalists have called for the creation of a Green Investment Bank (GIB) to accelerate private sector investment in support of the UK’s 2020 and 2050 low carbon, renewable energy and energy security targets.

A paper written by the British Venture Capital Association, published this week says that creating a low carbon economy will entail vast investment. For a start, a minimum £200 billion needs to be invested in power generation and grid investment to 2020; more money will be required to back technologies and companies in energy efficiency, smart grid and new forms of transport and power generation.

The paper proposes the primary objectives and operating principles of a GIB, and argues that action is needed quickly.

Congress this week takes important steps toward investing in applied innovation. We have known for decades, of course, that federal support for research and development can lead to scientific discoveries and new technologies that can solve some of the country’s most pressing problems. But as House members hear testimony tomorrow from innovation experts and consider a batch of bills that will fund important research at the Department of Energy on Thursday, they will have the opportunity to embrace a new approach to innovation championed by the Obama administration.

These new policies ensure that scientists, engineers, and taxpayers alike get the most out of those federal investments in basic research and development by taking what researchers know about the process of moving ideas from the lab to the market and linking universities, businesses, and the government in an effort to grow regional economies. The first steps begin on Wednesday, when the Subcommittee on Technology and Innovation of the House Science and Technology Committee will hold a hearing on “Supporting Innovation in the 21st Century Economy.” Then on Thursday, the full committee will markup bills authorizing the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy, R&D programs within the DOE Office of Science, and DOE’s Energy Innovation Hubs program.

BB pal Orli Cotel of Sierra Club tells me, "We are offering this ridiculous opportunity that just might be the best internship on earth, where you get paid to travel all over the country as the Sierra Club's youth outdoors ambassador, host a videoblog about helping to get young people outside, and get a bonus $2000 worth of free gear from The North Face." Deadline to apply is March 31. Hey Orli, does a 40-year-old still count as "youth"? Here's the gig:

• Travel around the country hiking, rafting, and enjoying the outdoors with the Sierra Club's youth programs
• Create an awesome video blog that documents the experience

The startup community in Philadelphia is abuzz over a provision in Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd’s (D-Conn.) draft financial reform bill that could impose significant costs and uncertainties on angel investing.

Angel investors are wealthy individuals who purchase equity or convertible debt securities to contribute much-needed seed capital to startup businesses. Angel investors are different from venture capitalists (VC’s) in that they are individuals rather than professionally managed investment funds and typically invest much smaller sums of money (usually a couple of million dollars or less) than would interest VC’s. (Angels are also less demanding in terms of the economic and participatory rights of ownership, such as liquidation preferences, vesting of entrepreneurs’ equity stakes, seats on the board, etc.) With VC funding virtually non-existent due to the Great Recession, angel investments are the lifeblood for many struggling startups.

Sales of securities to wealthy angel investors normally come under the private placement exemptions to the Securities Act of 1933, which as a general matter requires filing of a registration statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) prior to sale (a costly and onerous process). Under the safe harbor granted in Rule 506 of the SEC’s Regulation D (give yourself a pinch if your eyes start to glaze over at this point!), a company can sell securities in a private placement (i.e., without a general solicitation) to accredited investors and certain sophisticated non-accredited investors without filing a registration statement. Compliance with Rule 506 also enables the company to take advantage of exemptions from state securities laws (also known as “blue sky laws”), which otherwise can impose requirements in addition to those in the federal securities laws.

A startup team made up solely of college students may find themselves making tons of rookie mistakes, but a company founded by veterans may be trapped in yesterday’s thinking. And any company made up solely of either demographic has virtually no chance of getting VC money. That’s why Heidi Roizen, managing director for Mobius Venture Capital, says the best way to turn heads is to have a combination of both in this older, but still relevant entrepreneur thought leader lecture given at Stanford University.

Innovation is the lifeblood of commerce. It’s in the DNA of most business leaders to become an innovating company. Imitation, its supposed oxymoron, suffers from a pejorative stereotype. Received wisdom holds that it’s innovators that generate monopoly profits that flow until the imitators show up. But what if it were the other way around with the imitators doing well and the innovators choking on their dust?

Oded Shenkar, Ford Motor Company Chair in Global Business Management and professor of management and human resources at the Fisher College of Business at Ohio State University, thinks we have the whole innovation-imitation thing backwards. The Israeli-born academic who holds degrees in East-Asian Studies and sociology from Hebrew University and Columbia, has spent several years researching the relationship between innovation and its idiot-savant cousin, imitation. He cites Harvard’s Ted Levitt that “imitation is not only more abundant than innovation, but actually a much more prevalent road to business growth and profits.” In a new book, “Copycats,” to be published in June of this year by Harvard Business Press, Shenkar sets forth a compelling case that the true spoils go to market imitators not the innovators.

Diners Club may have been the first credit card issuer, but today the market is ruled by Mastercard, Visa and American Express. In 1921, White Castle pioneered the idea of a standardized fast food restaurant chain and after the Second World War Rally’s launched the drive-through concept, but today McDonald’s dominates both. When McDonald’s turned to healthier fare in recent years, Yum Brands replicated the move in its Taco Bell and Pizza Hut chains. Honda and Toyota waited for Ford and GM to be the first followers of Chrysler’s minivan but ultimately pushed them to the side when they introduced their own versions. When RC Cola launched diet cola in the 1960s Coke and Pepsi quickly overtook the innovation and made it their own. Hertz’s Connect car sharing service is uncannily like that of the Zipcar startup that initiated the model. Think of all the YouTube lookalikes that abound on the Internet.

San Francisco
Funding: Cereal sales; Y Combinator incubator
Amount raised: $30,000 from cereal; $20,000 from Y Combinator
Launched: August 2008

When AirBnB's founders first thought to build a Web site to help travelers to rent rooms in other people's homes, angel investors were intrigued but too wary to sink money into the fledging project, says CEO Brian Chesky.

So he and his cofounders lived off their savings and maxed out their credit cards until October 2008, when they realized that one of their ideas -- to create a fun breakfast cereal hosts could provide guests -- could be monetized in a big way. Taking advantage of the election year, they purchased huge quantities of bulk cereal, then pasted together cardboard boxes they'd paid an artist to brand as Obama O's and Cap'n McCain cereal. In two months, the entrepreneurs sold 800 boxes of cereal at $40 a pop, for a profit of more than $30,000.

There is a big banking reform bill working its way through the Senate right now. It is sponsored by Chris Dodd, Chairman of the Senate Banking Committee. It has a long name I can't remember, so I'll call it the Dodd Banking Bill.

What does a bill attempting to regulate the banking industry have to do with startups? Well unfortunately, it contains two provisions that are quite problematic and hurtful to entrepreneurs and startups. They are:

1) Changing the definition of a "qualified investor" in angel and venture deals. Not just anyone can invest in a startup company. You have to be a qualified investor. A qualified investor is currently defined as anyone with a net worth of over $1mm or net income of over $250k. Dodd's bill would increase that to $2.3mm and $450k respectively. And then index those numbers to inflation.

Google (GOOG) has been bombarded with requests from cities, towns, and individuals who want to host the ultra-high speed fiber optic broadband service announced by the search giant last month.

The company announced today that it has already heard from 600 communities and over 190,000 individuals about the project.

Google says it will make its decision "over the coming months."

Access to information and resources that help small businesses become environmentally friendlier keeps getting easier.

A growing array of websites are offering businesses help reducing their environmental footprint – or at least providing some guidance and information to do it themselves.

Here are five websites worth at least checking out:

Database of State Incentives for Renewables & Efficiency – Want to know what incentives government or your utility company offers your business for installing an energy-efficient heating system or putting solar panels on the roof? This site provides a comprehensive, yet easy-to-use, national database of incentives for taking steps to save energy.

GreenBiz – Read up on the latest trends in sustainable business practices and see what successful practices other companies, large and small, are employing. GreenBiz.com is a clearinghouse of news, advice and resources that keeps the pulse of green business.

The American Association of University Women recently released its new report, Why So Few?, which aims to identify the causes of the gender gap in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, or STEM, graduate programs and careers. The report highlights the progress that has been made in closing the gap in some fields, yet expresses concern that in other fields, most notably engineering and computer science, the gap remains pronounced.

Not only do fewer women than men make it to the upper echelons of academic STEM careers, but a higher percentage of women than men leave the field by midcareer (although I would guess that men with children and professional wives may leave the field at a rate that approaches that of women with children, as opposed to men who have children and stay-at-home wives).

What are the reasons for this persistent gap? According to the report, social and environmental factors are to blame. Shocking. Sadly, this report serves only to regurgitate age-old accusations and assumptions, and to make worn-out recommendations that we've heard so many times before—none of which have proven terribly effective in closing the gap in certain fields.

YouTube's most-viewed video of all time is an unlikely champion. Seen more than 170 million times since its posting in May 2007, "Charlie Bit My Finger" was never meant to be anything more than a family flick. But the Internet's hivemind saw something it liked and catapulted the clip, which depicts a laughing British baby gnawing on the finger of his crying brother, past "Evolution of Dance" as YouTube's views champ by the fall of 2009.

Technologies to harness solar power as a path to low-carbon energy are developing at breakneck speed. How can developing countries best make use of them to benefit the millions of rural poor who still live without electricity?

PALO ALTO — For 60 years, Roy Clay Sr. has had a Midas touch about the direction of technology.   At age 80, he’s got a new tip for investors — back technology manufacturing in the United States.

Made in the U.S.A. by Rod-L Electronics

Clay has practiced what he’s preached for more than 30 years as one of the last companies to make its own products in Silicon Valley.  Rod-L Electronics here is the global leader in electronic test equipment.

The Silicon Valley Engineering Hall of Fame member is featured in the new documentary Freedom Riders of the Cutting Edge, which told of how he overcame the rejection of being told in 1951 that McDonnell Aircraft  “had no jobs for professional Negroes.”  By 1956, he was programming the aircraft maker’s first computer.

By 1961, he managed Control Data’s Cobol and Fortran programming and 1965, he was hired by David Packard as Hewlett Packard’s first research and development manager for computers.   There he designed the first fault-tolerant computer to handle reservations for Holiday Inn.

With over 250 billion dollars in endowment and intellectual firepower unrivaled anywhere in the world, this country's research universities are the crown jewels of our society. But these grim economic times and the complexity of the world's biggest problems demand that universities become problem-centered engines of innovation and increasingly adept at execution. There is increasing evidence that leaders in higher education are responding to the challenge:

• At a recent discussion of entrepreneurial science, Bob Langer, one of the world's most innovative scientists, announced that MIT has designated world-wide challenges a campus-wide priority and both Stanford and the University of North Carolina have articulated similar initiatives.
• Multi-disciplinary problem-based initiatives of all kinds are supplementing traditional departmental structures on campuses nationwide. Bio-X, which brings together physicians, chemists, physicists, biologists and engineers, in an effort to attack challenging problems in human health, is a model for such an approach.

Is America turning into a third world country? That was the provocative topic of a panel I took part in last week at a conference sponsored by The Economist entitled "Innovation: Fresh Thinking For The Ideas Economy."

Once upon a time, the United States was the world's dominant innovator -- partly because we didn't have much competition. As a result of the destruction wreaked by WWII, the massive migration of brainpower to the U.S. caused by the war, and huge amounts of government spending, America had the innovation playing field largely to itself. None of these factors exist as we enter the second decade of the 21st century.

America now has plenty of countries it's competing with -- many of which are much more serous about innovation than we are. Just look at the numbers: