The lure of the West Coast.

When I [Scott Kirsner] met Bill Clerico and Rich Aberman in 2008, the two recent Boston College graduates were just starting to talk to local investors about WePay, their online payment start-up. They had an idea - help groups of people make payment easier for collective projects like renting a ski house or throwing a bachelorette party - and they were working to build a prototype. I wrote about them as part of a column about how hard it is to change the way we pay for things, using new technologies like mobile phones.

PROVO, Utah -- In an effort to attract dollars, prestige, and top-notch staff, universities have long pushed to commercialize faculty research. That has helped institutions from Massachusetts Institute of Technology to Stanford become hotbeds of entrepreneurialism. The most surprising success, though, may be Brigham Young University.

The Mormon university now ranks first in the country in the number of startups, licenses, and patent applications per research dollar spent, according to the Association of University Technology Managers. BYU-licensed technology led to the creation of nine new companies last year on a research budget of roughly $30 million. Stanford, with a budget of $1.1 billion, spawned the same number of startups.

SILICON VALLEY: For IIT Kharagpur graduate Debarag Banerjee, the last two years were like nothing he had ever seen over the last decade in the Silicon Valley—a lack of IPOs, limited fund raising and even lesser deal flow. The rampant cost-cutting led him to think of an innovation which would cut costs first and then improve the quality of an experience rather than the other way around.

As he says, “The recession brought upon an increased focus on the bottomline from consumers. This also included a focus on how much they pay for home entertainment. At the same time, monthly fees for cable TV and other paid TV services continued climbing, while free videos in higher quality and quantity continued to be available over the Internet. We saw an opportunity in this crisis in providing consumers a way to enjoy free videos from the Internet on their big-screen TV bypassing the traditional cable and satellite TV subscriptions.”

Visitors touring Zappos.com's suburban Las Vegas headquarters can see Chief Executive Anthony C. "Tony" Hsieh waving from his cubicle or get their photos taken in goofy, mullet-shaped wigs. On the tour, which the online shoe retailer offers 16 times a week, staffers blow horns and ring cowbells to greet the guests, who move among the aisles in groups of 20, trying to get a handle on the company's unique culture. "The original idea was to add a little fun," Hsieh explains. Then it all escalated "as the next aisle said, 'We can do it better.' "

Zappos already knows how to sell shoes. Now it's hoping to profit from people's fascination with its friendly, antics-filled business model. Last summer, the company began holding two-day, $4,000 seminars on how to recreate the essence of its corporate culture. At the third such session, last October, the 25 attendees included an executive from the Girl Scouts, some competing e-tailers, and an entrepreneur from Scotland—a market Zappos doesn't even serve. In coming weeks the company will also relaunch Zappos Insights, a Web site offering management videos and tips from staffers at a cost of $39.95 a month.

SUNNYVALE, Calif. — For years, the process remained relatively static: PC makers like Hewlett-Packard and Apple, with well-staffed research labs and design departments, would dream up their next product and then hire a Chinese or Taiwanese fabricator to manufacture the largest number of units at the lowest possible cost.

But lately, this traditional division of labor has been upended. Many of those Asian companies have moved well beyond manufacturing to seize greater control over the look and feel of tomorrow’s personal computers, smartphones and even Web sites.

Have you ever worked in a company where the boss or your manager hoards information? Unfortunately, this is not all that uncommon. The old saying goes that “Knowledge is Power”, and those who are insecure in their abilities or feel threatened by those around them try to remain in control by hording information.

In fact, I know of one company where the Managing Director actually leaves notes lying around with incorrect or inaccurate information. The aim of this of course is to retain power by keeping the troops in the “dark” or, better still, confused. Can you believe that?

The question is: what’s your modus operandi?

Yup, we hear Comcast is in "very preliminary talks" with ESPN to carry their 3D channel set to debut in June.

We also heard that their customers are getting more interested in 3D offerings: About 65 percent of all on demand orders for horror flick My Bloody Valentine were for the 3D version.

In most of the roles I’ve held over the past 15 years a key outcome was to create a growth business. It didn’t matter whether the effort was a start-up, creating a new product, an acquisition, or a partnership. One of the hardest things to do in those roles was to take an idea and translate that idea into a fully formed business that made peoples’ lives better.

The work we’re doing at Posit Science has brought this to the forefront again. The scientific breakthrough of harnessing the power of the brain to improve performance is clear. This is the invention. Invention- the word invent comes from the Latin word inventus, in plus ventus, meaning to come upon or to encounter. I think of an invention as a discovery or an idea that we dream up.

Guy Kawasaki has seen innovation from inside Apple, where he held his first job, as well as from his work since then as a venture capitalist. At a technology conference at the University of Pennsylvania, reported in Knowledge@Wharton, he outlined his 10 Commandments for Entrepreneurs

A meteor is something in the far distance streaming through the galaxies. From Wikipedia: A meteoroid is a sand- to bouldersized particle of debris in the Solar System. The visible path of a meteoroid that enters Earth’s atmosphere is called a meteor. The root word meteor comes from the Greek mete?ros, meaning “high in the air.” It is also commonly although erroneously called a shooting star.

Social media is like a meteor. For a lot of people it is something far away but they have heard about it from someone or somewhere or seen it in the distance of their attention spans.

Government needs to do more to encourage innovation, America's first chief technology officer has been told.

The message was given to Aneesh Chopra as he visited the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas.

While being applauded for recognising the importance of technology to help the economy, Mr Chopra was also chided.

"When it comes to innovation there's a lot the government can do, and there's a lot they should not do," said consumer industry head Gary Shapiro.

A few angel investors have slipped or fallen from their lofty perch, so entrepreneurs must take great care to validate the character and reputation of every prospective investor. The entrepreneur’s tendency to be in a huge hurry to obtain the funding can end up being disastrous, and play into the hands of these less scrupulous investors.

Many entrepreneurs believe all money is created equal. As long as somebody recognizes their million dollar idea and writes them a check, the source really doesn't matter. In fact, most angels are pure, but there are some exceptions that may cost you more than an investment:

Johns Hopkins University's Rockville campus is launching a technology commercialization and entrepreneurship program based on a similar initiative at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, that officials said has led to the creation of more than 25 companies since its inception in 2005.

The program — called Innovate! — will take 15 business executives and 15 post-doctoral entrepreneurs through the process of evaluating a technology product's commercial potential and starting a business around that product over about a year's time. The products will be from the National Institutes of Health, Hopkins and other research institutions and federal agencies.

Six venture capital firms have successfully sold $120 million in tax credits and generated $85 million to invest in Tennessee-based entrepreneurs, state officials announced today.

Through the TNInvestco program, the six firms were each awarded $20 million in gross premium tax credits, which were marketed to insurance companies to create a pool of venture capital funds to invest in early and mid-stage companies. Participating insurance companies will apply the tax credits against their gross premium tax liability.

The message of White House Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra on Thursday was both clear and irritatingly abstract. For the United States to pull out of recession and strive, government and businesses must be nimble and transformative, he said.

Fielding questions from a roomful of reporters at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Chopra named open standards for digitizing healthcare records and learning by example from innovative technology CEOs as paths to nationwide prosperity.

In University and the Creative Economy, Richard Florida and colleagues build an economic development case around a region’s ability to capitalize on innovative technologies and research being produced at universities. Silicon Valley and Research Triangle are exemplary models. What if a region does not have this ability? Appropriately, they suggest a region work on developing the capacity to absorb university output through campus-industry partnerships. Otherwise, valuable intellectual property goes elsewhere. Or, worse off, and probably more common, it disappears into a black hole of uncommercialized ideas and patents.

Now, for regions that have universities but neither the current ability to absorb, nor the means to create a working capacity, is there an additional solution? Is it time for the universities to build their own infrastructure to absorb and commercialize their own creativity? Maybe this is the crossroads where higher education and economic development policy can tango?

Conservative, stodgy, slow to adapt, slow to change…

These terms have all been applied to manufacturing companies and the suppliers that provide automation products and services for them. Automation World wanted to start the new year by looking at the ideas and innovations that have driven automation, and at the technologies developing now that will impact automation in the future.

Last year was just miserable for private equity fund-raising in the United States. Hitting its lowest point since 2003, private equity (including venture capital) fell 68 percent to $95.8 billion across 331 funds, down from $300 billion across 508 funds in 2008, according to Dow Jones LP Source.

No category of funds escaped the slowdown, except for secondary funds — a major outlier that saw a more than 50 percent increase in fund-raising.

Statement by Chair of the Council of Economic Advisors Christina Romer on the Employment Situation in December

The statement below was posted on www.WhiteHouse.gov by the Chair of the Council of Economic Advisors Christina Romer in response to the December employment report. The statement can also be accessed at the following link: http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2010/01/08/december-jobs-numbers.

On the December Jobs Numbers

Today’s employment report, though a setback from November, is consistent with the gradual labor market stabilization we have been seeing over the last several months.

Payroll employment declined 85,000 in December. To put this number in perspective, employment declined 139,000 in September and 127,000 in October. So, in a broad sense the trend toward moderating job loss is continuing. This trend is particularly obvious in the quarterly pattern: average monthly job loss was 691,000 in the first quarter of 2009, 428,000 in the second quarter, 199,000 in the third quarter, and 69,000 in the fourth quarter.

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Early stage venture group Ohio TechAngel Funds has raised $2.5 million for its third investment fund, according to a regulatory filing.

Like the group’s previous funds, Ohio TechAngel Fund III will invest in Ohio-based technology companies in the life and physical sciences, and information technology industries, said John O. Huston, co-manager of the funds.

Angel investors invest money and experience in young companies. In recent years, groups like Ohio TechAngels have organized these investors and joined forces with other angel groups to provide vital pre-seed and seed capital that creates jobs and brings products to market.