When they got engaged over winter break, UW-Madison student Kara Andersen promised her new fiance Tom Gerold that she wouldn't start planning the wedding right away.

They had an invention to finish first.

The decision paid off on Friday when their creation, an automated pesticide sprayer for fruit trees, won the $10,000 top Schoofs Prize for Creativity in the annual UW-Madison Innovation Day competition. In its 16th year, the contest rewards undergraduate students for creative, patentable inventions.

Among the other 22 inventions submitted in the contest: the CocoStove, a burner in a coconut for use in places such as rural Haiti, and BreezeDry, a towel bar with fans designed to dry clothes faster.

Past winners of the contest have gone on to great success. Matt Younkle won the Schoofs Prize in 1996 for the TurboTap, a way for vendors to pour beer faster with less waste. Now the TurboTap is used in about half of the major sports stadiums in the country, said Younkle, who was on campus Thursday to look at the inventions.

Part of the challenge is that the students need to build their inventions, not just imagine them.

Sustainable innovation requires structured methods. But it also requires collaboration and information sharing among colleagues. Innovation is a team sport - groups produce better results than the lone genius. So how do you create a more favorable context for collaboration and sharing in your business unit?

Reputation is what matters. The degree to which a technical worker will share information with a colleague depends on that colleague's reputation for returning the favor. The rule of reciprocity states that people give back to those in the form they have received from others. It is a social rule taught by every human society to its members - you give back to those who have given to you. But the key is: to make the first move. You have to be seen as someone who gives and shares information with others, and has a reputation for returning the favor when others give to you.

The Canada - California Strategic Innovation Partnership (CCSIP) is an important element of the Canadian and Californian science and technology agendas.

Peter Van Loan, the Canadian Minister of International Trade, recently announced 15 research initiatives of cooperation with the Government of California, which "will help move ideas from the laboratory to the real world, and will contribute to a cleaner environment and improved healthcare."

Minister Van Loan continued, "Our joint projects will lead to advances in many fields, from carbon storage and new biofuels to energy-efficient computers and better border crossings."

Nine of the 15 initiatives are collaborative events and six are research and development projects. They involve 21 Canadian universities in partnership with eight University of California campuses.

A number of group members have asked me to dedicate space to the topic of innovation in higher education. With this in mind, I have started putting together a number of posts and resources that deal directly with this very slippery concept. In this post, I speak with Chris Finlay, the Director of Design for Student Experience at the Business Innovation Factory. His current role is to use methods of design thinking to understand the undergraduate student experience in order to find opportunities for systems level innovation in higher education.

KCH: If an organization has little to no formal systems in place to foster innovation, where should they begin? What are the first steps?

CF: Step one is to not be overwhelmed by the task ahead. We humans have a strange tendency to think in extremes, particularly when we are projecting ourselves into an unknown future. People often worry that they will be expected to create the next Google or Apple. And more than figuring out how to be that successful, people want to avoid creating the next New Coke or Segway. The truth is that most value creation is generally somewhere in between those extremes and people would do well to recognize that. We need to remember that we don’t have to hit a home run every time, and that the process can be manageable and still successful. And it can be. An excellent guiding philosophy for any organization to temper their worries and get started on a path to deepening their capacity to innovate is to “think big, start small, scale fast”.

Tech South East is an innovation intermediary focused on South East New Brunswick’s technology and health science sectors with the goal of aligning companies, assets and resources to work together on advancement and growth. As a catalyst and facilitator, Tech South East brings together industry, government, academia and the financial community to develop and implement the region’s innovation acceleration strategy. In working with its partners, TSE is the leading advocate for the needs, interests and opportunities of the stakeholders in the region’s innovation system.

Tech South East benefits from the support and strategic input of its board of directors who are community leaders and business owners in the technology arena dedicated to the Region’s success. This multi-faceted and highly experienced team provides valuable organizational direction and support to Tech South East.

Many state and local governments are promoting "economic gardening" as a means of stimulating growth in their economies and employment. This is a good thing. But, a key ingredient is missing - access to capital for growing entrepreneurial companies. Capital is in short supply by definition. Only those businesses that can convince investors and lenders that they can produce increased value for investors or meet their debt obligations for lenders deserve to obtain capital. The programs for economic gardening seem to focus on helping the growth stage companies deal with growth issues in order to make them more attractive to investors and lenders. This is a good thing also, but needs to have a slightly different focus.

How can governmental entities make capital more available to deserving growth companies in their geographic areas? Not by promoting venture capital firms to focus on a their geographic areas and not by trying to educate angel investors on investing in entrepreneurial companies. I urge all governmental decision makers to read a new book by Josh Lerner, a Harvard professor, Boulevard of Broken Dreams: Why Public Efforts to Boost Entrepreneurship and Venture Capital Have Failed--and What to Do About It, The Kauffman Foundation.

Innovation, it seems, is everything that it’s cut out to be. Done right, it can take a company, government or country from mediocrity to greatness. But innovation doesn’t come easy, and in some industries, the road to innovation is a long and arduous one.

Take the pharmaceutical industry for instance, which according to Franz Humer, Chairman of Roche Holding, needs about 20 to 25 years from the germination of an idea to the “possibility” of a medicine. Suffice to say, “enormous amounts of money” are also required, as it takes “north of a billion dollars” to develop a new drug today.

“We do not understand the human body; we’ve got to do experiments on 15,000 people before we know if a drug works,” says Humer, who was a panellist on ‘Leading Innovation’ at the INSEAD Leadership Summit Middle East held recently in Abu Dhabi.

“Part of innovation is failure; there is more failure in innovation than there is in success. If I look at our 10,000 scientists who work for us, their chance of ever participating in creating a successful product is zero -- but it is more important for them to determine what doesn’t work than to find what works.”

A bill before the Oregon Legislature would create a task force to examine whether the idea of "economic gardening" could provide a boost to the state's sputtering economy.

While we would typically run, screaming in horror, at the idea of yet another government task force, the time is right for the so-called "Oregon Economic Gardening Council."
Editorial: This bill could be economic home run (Feb. 10)
Corvallis Mayor Charles Tomlinson has been among the local officials who have been pounding the drums now for more than a year, trying to call attention to the idea of economic gardening.

At the risk of oversimplification, the idea behind economic gardening (created in large part by economic developers in Littleton, Colo.) is for a community to grow its own jobs by encouraging local entrepreneurial activity.

NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – The privately-funded Morgridge Institute for Research, part of the public-private Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, plans to recruit 10 principal investigators among 100 researchers and support staffers to be hired over the next five years.

The 100 new people will help Morgridge carry out research in regenerative biology, virology, medical devices, pharmaceutical informatics, and education research; as well as develop and run programs in two additional fields, core computational technology and outreach to students and the general public.

The specialties are designed to enhance Morgridge's mission of translating biomedical discoveries into new drugs and devices, as well as complement the research areas of its publicly-funded twin institute, the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery, which include epigenetics and systems biology. The twin institutes are known collectively as the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery, now completing a $205 million, 300,000-square-foot facility within the UW-Madison campus.

COLUMBUS, Ohio — The Technology Entrepreneurship and Commercialization Center at Ohio State University’s Fisher College of Business was created to assess the commercial and economic viability of technology developed at Battelle

.

During a six-month pilot, Battelle’s National Security Global Business provided more than 50 innovations — from millimeter wave technology used in telecommunications to a flame retardant derived from soybeans — to the Technology Entrepreneurship and Commercialization (TEC) center, which evaluated the innovations for their commercial potential, Battelle said in a release.

The pilot went so well, the science and technology institute has agreed to work with the center for two more years, splitting profits with the university when it takes the commercial lead. The partnership eventually could extend to some of Battelle’s other businesses, such as its Health and Life Sciences Global Business.

I [Fergus] was having dinner two days ago and the topic of conversation turned to life expectations. Shallow conversation I know but it passed an hour. I mentioned a recent video I found of Steve Job’s. Now I am not a huge Steve Jobs worshipper. He has had a huge impact on the world we know to day and there is no denying his achievements but for me I have just never gelled with his public persona. I say that because I don’t know him… all I know is what I read. What I read I have never had much time for. (I reserve the right though to meet him and have a completely different opinion of the man himself. They are so often two different things.)

All that said I do find this speech inspiring. It reflects many of my own beliefs and he actually uses a phrase that I often keep in my own head. Its key themes are below they make in my mind the essence of great entrepreneurship. Keep them at the forefront and you won’t go far wrong

1. Go with your heart but go with gusto – Steve famously dropped out and in the video he describes how he then dropped back in “You have to trust in something–your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever–because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart, even when it leads you off the well-worn path, and that will make all the difference.”

Here's my [Mark Frauenfelder] round up of highlights from the second day of the TED 2010 presentations. My head is abuzz with all the thought-provoking ideas I learned today. (Here's yesterday's roundup.)

Inventor Nathan Myhrvold, of Intellectual Ventures had the most entertaining presentation of the day: a mosquito death ray. It's part of a plan to eradicate malaria and it's being funded by Myhrvold's former boss, Bill Gates.

First Myhrvold showed off a container that can keep vaccination medicine cold and fresh for six months. The old way -- a styrofoam cooler with ice -- keeps the medicine cold for just four hours. The new container loses less than 1/2 watt. It's similar to a cryogenic dewar, with the same kind of insulation. But this one works like a Coke machine, vending out vials one-at-a-time so warm air never gets inside the container.

Next, malaria. Every 43 seconds a kid dies of malaria in Africa. What can we do about it? Spraying is effective, but there are environmental issues. There's not an effective vaccine yet. Bed nets are effective, if you use them, but people use them for fishnets instead, and it won't make malaria extinct.

While the economy is finally showing signs of life, securing capital for early-stage ventures hasn’t gotten any easier- so it seems timely to let start-up owners in on the criteria by which they will be judged.

Each year our firm typically reviews more than 2,500 companies seeking seed or Series A funding and invests in between six and twelve. Here’s how we judge a young company’s viability.

First of all, we evaluate deals on three axes: The team, the market and the technology or product.

• We want a team with domain expertise in the market space—individuals who can see the opportunities in that market before they are apparent to others and can use that vision to become early movers in the market.
• We want the company to be targeting a market that is nascent or even nonexistent. It needs to be a market the entrepreneurs believe will, at some point, grow rapidly, creating an opportunity for the company to move faster than any incumbents.
• The company needs to have a product with some level of defensibility – something that’s not easily replicable once the market becomes more obvious to others.

This is a first of a kind book.Written by a cohort of authors that have successfully made the transition from engineering to executive leadership, it’s been eye opening to read the examples and advice.I certainly wish this book had been around when I first made the switch from individual technical contributor to manager. Recommend it highly!

Innovation is most often defined as a good idea that has a favorable economic outcome – in other words, you know it when you sell it.

I have seen Corporate executives glow red in the face shouting down top talent barking out; “It’s not innovation unless you can show me the money!”

In reality, you can’t see the money unless you can first see the innovation.

Nobody can solve one equation with two unknowns, i.e., what’s a new idea? and what’s an economic outcome? The trick is to identify the new ideas and direct them to the appropriate economic outcome, not the other way around. Many companies live in a silo where many good ideas can’t find a place to be profitable, so they are scrapped. This is not the fault of talent or the idea, but invariably both are lost.

The Department of Energy today drew upon the recommendations of an Obama administration-wide effort to boost regional economic development, announcing that DOE would team up with six other federal agencies to create an energy-related regional innovation cluster dedicated to developing and commercializing new building efficiency technologies. The other agencies joining the effort are the Small Business Administration, the National Science Foundation, the Departments of Labor and Education, and the Department of Commerce’s Economic Development Administration and Manufacturing Extension Partnership.

The key feature of the proposal unveiled today is that these seven federal agencies will seek bids from regional economies around the country, requiring a “bottom up” self-organizing effort by states and localities, universities and federal research labs, workforce development agencies and the private sector. This was one of the key recommendations in our paper, “The Geography of Innovation,” and is widely regarded among economic development experts and innovation gurus as the best way to build regional innovation clusters in the United States. Capitalizing on our country’s unique regional science and technology strengths, entrepreneurial flair and strong work ethic, targeted federal funds will help these regional clusters self organize and compete on a global scale.

Walter Fredrick Morrison, the Frisbee inventor, died this week. His simple sports innovation – a plastic, aerodynamic disc – has become one of the most popular toys in American history, uniting beachgoers, college kids, and competitive teams for half a century.

How did he come up with the idea? Morrison said it was easy as pie – literally. In the 1940s, he and his future wife brought cake and pie tins with them to the beach. The couple enjoyed flinging the pans back and forth, letting them glide in the California wind.

A former military pilot, Morrison applied his knowledge of aerodynamics to tinker with the tins, improving their control. Finally, in 1948, the Los Angeles building inspector began producing and selling his own discs.

If there’s any doubt that small businesses and access to credit are still a very hot topic in this almost-post recession economy, just read the headlines.

Our very own Anita Campbell isn’t likely to stump for a jobs bill but she did something much better. Recently, Anita conducted a webinar for Verizon titled “How Can You Secure Credit For Your Small Business In Today’s Market?“ Joining her for the presentation was Tom Markel, Vice President of iBank.

The pair of them packed an incredible amount of information into a mere hour. Here are some highlights.

Commercial real estate: Research your options, check to see if there are liens or back taxes owing on the property, and have a lawyer look over the contract. TIP: Be aware that you’ll need a lot of skin in the game; banks now want you to put up about 40- 50% of the purchase price.

Bank lines of credit: Similar to credit cards and should only be used to cover cash flow emergencies. You need good cash flow and a good credit score, but not collateral (unless you have a poor credit history) to get a line of credit. You’ll make monthly payments and there are no penalties for paying off the entire balance. TIP: In the current climate, banks will look closely at the business owner.

Technology transfer is a long-established part of early-stage research within the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries. Although technology transfer offices have traditionally been associated with inefficiency and a lack of commercial judgment, recent trends have shown improvements in staffing, expertise and service levels. However, the tech transfer function has recently suffered from ‘funding gaps’ for promising new technologies. A clear disparity exists between current service offerings and demand levels amongst investors/industry partners, while the lack of an established model for effective technology transfer function and significant regional variations are major obstacles to future progress.

‘Technology Transfer Strategies’ is a new, uniquely themed report provides a comprehensive examination of the major trends in technology transfer activity in the US, Canada and Europe. The report provides a detailed country-level analysis of technology transfer and associated intellectual property technology regulations, in addition to evaluating the key approaches to office structuring and strategies to negotiate the ’funding gap’. A series of in-depth interviews also document the experiences and insights of 11 tech transfer experts, and their recommendations for successful technology transfer strategies are revealed.

Last year wasn’t the finest for the venture-capital industry, which experienced a continued lack of big returns from initial public offerings and mergers and acquisitions and had to deal with fundraising hurdles besides. But according to a new survey from law firm Fenwick & West, there was some good news for venture capital towards the end of last year.

Valuations of venture-capital investments in startup companies improved markedly in the second half of 2009, showing that the trajectory for deals was positive, according to the new survey. The survey, which analyzed the terms of venture financings for 335 companies headquartered in Silicon Valley that raised money in 2009, found that “up” rounds–in which the price per share at which a company sells its stock rose from a previous financing–exceeded “down” rounds 44% to 33%, with 23% flat, in the second half of 2009. In contrast, down rounds exceeded up rounds 47% to 28%, with 25% flat, in the first half of 2009, notes Fenwick & West.