When we encounter people and organizations the initial experience speaks volumes to their purpose. Our first experience with people and organizations is with their media. Media now reflects intentions that are immediately transparent and if not designed with a “social element” the experience reflects an anti-social purpose. Anti-social experiences are not relational.

What Is Your Purpose?

Purpose reflects a person or organizations thinking aimed at achieving a goal in a given system, whether human or machine. Its most general sense is the anticipated result which guides decision making in choosing appropriate actions within a range of strategies . Purpose serves the intent of ones actions which are reflected in subsequent communications that relate to said actions. In today’s eco-system of social media one’s purpose is detected by the context of the content people and organizations propagate. Content attracts us to a destination, your site, and when we get to your destination the experience better reflect our purpose, not yours.

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Backers of the Ohio Third Frontier are mounting a campaign to market the state’s biggest-ever economic development program to voters who will be asked to renew and expand the program in May.

Still in its formative stage, the campaign already includes a bi-weekly electronic magazine called HiVelocity, which partly aims to demystify Third Frontier by telling its success stories through people and businesses.

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COLUMBUS, Ohio — Late in its middle-age, the Ohio Third Frontier project has created $6.6 billion in economic impact and 41,300 jobs (pdf) in seven years, an independent research institute told members of the Third Frontier advisory board and commission during a joint meeting this morning.

From 2003 through 2008, the Third Frontier and Ohio universities invested $681 million in research, development and commercialization projects at academic, research and development institutions and companies, entrepreneur-development organizations and venture capital funds, said SRI International, the Menlo Park, Calif., firm hired by the Third Frontier to do the economic impact study.

In late 2007, during the early months of his faculty position at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City, Benjamin tenOever faced a wrinkle in his research plans. Experienced in looking at how cells respond to viruses, he'd set his sights on microRNA and how these small molecular segments that tweak protein expression might help cells fight off infection. After months of work, the project looked like it might be a dead end: They had found that microRNAs are produced as a virus infects a cell, but those sequences didn't make a difference in how a cell responded to its invader.

- DESCRIPTION -Proposals will be sought from small business firms for participation in the NIST Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Program. The SBIR Program is a three-phase program which implements Public Law 102-564, the Small Business Research and Development Enhancement Act of 1992. The pending Solicitation, SBIR, includes subtopics describing research needed to extend technologies developed at NIST for the purpose of commercializing the NIST technology as well as subtopics describing NIST mission-related research that directly support a NIST project that can be achieved by a small business.

Cutting deep into the inner reaches of the atom to see what matter is really made of. It sounds like science fiction, or perhaps a physicist’s dream, but in December, one giant step was taken toward accomplishing just that, as the Large Hadron Collider kicked into action.

It was just one of the stories that made 2009 a dynamic year in science and technology.

Large Hadron Collider

With technical problems resolved, the Large Hadron Collider, or LHC, sent proton beams whizzing through a 27-kilometer-long circular tunnel under the French-Swiss border, colliding them at a record 2.36 trillion electron volts. After this crucial early success, the stage is set for the discovery of mysterious subatomic particles – and perhaps some of the keys to the universe itself.

Thank you to everyone who entered our last contest of 2009 for a chance to win one of three copies of Gary Hamel's latest book "The Future of Management" ?

Lady luck has spoken and I'd like to announce the three winners of their very own copy of "The Future of Management":

1. Cathy Olofson

2. Ashish Thomas

3. Peter Vander Auwera

The objective of this book is to illustrate statistical methodologies that incorporate physical and numerical experiments and that allow one to schedule and plan technological innovation, similar to any other productive activity. This methodology should be implemented through a structured procedure aimed at reducing the high rate of commercial failure characterizing actual innovation processes. In fact, it is well known that :

i) The rate of commercial failure of a innovative idea is very high (90 94 out of 100 proposals for innovation undergo substantial failure in the EU and in the USA).

ii) Low reliability in the long run and sensitivity to usage conditions are the factors that determine the failure of the innovation. The definition of an iterative design activity is an objective that can be reached by subdividing the complex innovation process into short steps in experimental statistics research.

The approach adopted to analyze customer needs and the tools used to reduce unwanted variability form the framework for the statistical design of "continuous" product innovation. Starting from the observation that product innovation is achieved when a "quality" that is able to satisfy a new customer need is conferred on the product and survives over real operating conditions and time, this book illustrates the operative steps required to perform the whole innovation process iteratively.

Over the past couple years I have written several stories with “frog soup” as a main theme. The idea of being in cold water, and not recognizing the degree by degree increase of heat in the water, till at some point we are cooked, is the danger of being a cold-blooded animal. Business may follow a similar course.

In business we can follow the route of “this is the way we’ve always done it, and it works, so there is no reason to change our processes or strategies.” Innovations like virtualization or cloud computing hit the headlines, and many say “it is a cool idea, but we want the security and hands-on confidence of running our own servers and applications.”

The human brain comes with unique equipment to build and sustain innovative cultures, where design leads to profitability. How so?

1. Kindle and design an idea. Just as the iPod started with an innovative idea, Steve Jobs and others continue to design Apple products that revolutionize communication. Fast Company celebrated the last decade’s 14 biggest such design moments, all of which unveil the original ideas that rolled into products with possibilities. How does it happen? Your brain’s hippocampus releases a shot of dopamine in response to novelty. Anthony Grace at the University of Pittsburgh describes a feedback loop that involves a chemical and electrical interactions between dopamine and novel or unexpected events. This lively process appears to lock in memory, as it also engages the amygdala where the brain processes emotional information that feeds innovation.

Economic growth is a fascinating topic and Eliot Spitzer adds to it in "Inventing a new Economy," in Slate (December 28, 2009). It was impossible not to compare it to Arnold Kling and Nick Schulz's book, "From Poverty to Prosperity," which I [Brooks M. Wilson] continue to enjoy, savoring their insights and those gleaned from many great economists, and on which I recently posted ("Kling and Schulz: The Importance of Markets"). Spitzer's article is worthwhile reading, and his main point that the United States needs to remain a creative, innovative society is correct, but he makes several economic errors which perhaps can be forgiven because he is an attorney/politician/journalist, not an economist.

Spitzer describes ideas and the resultant innovations as an international competition in which countries win or lose depending on their ability to turn ideas into innovations.

Worst decade: The Republican Party, from Karl Rove's pronouncement of a "permanent majority" to total collapse and minority status.

Worst performance of the year: The Democratic Party, who after securing the White House and a Democratic majority have been so brazenly arrogant and politically incompetent as to have allowed a conservative comeback one year after people thought, said and wrote that conservatism was dead.

Biggest winner of 2009: Sarah Palin. No man could have bailed on his governorship to find himself in national news continually, with supporters growing daily, while orchestrating it all from a Facebook page, and putting so much fear into the DNC that they put out an oppo memo on her, even though she's not running for anything (until 2012, that is).

The nuthatch and brown creeper are different bird species that look a lot alike and eat insects in the same wooded areas in North America. You might think they compete, but they don't. In accordance with a common arrangement in nature that ecologists call the competitive-exclusion principle, the brown creeper starts searching for insects at the bottom of a tree while the nuthatch starts from the top.

Entrepreneurs can learn from this evolutionary process, which unfortunately isn't very common in the business world. Business competitors will normally compete in a death match unless one finds a new market niche or a new process to address the existing market. The best strategy is to invest a modest amount of energy into an innovation, as the nuthatches did in moving to the higher branches. To start the innovation process that could lead to such a breakthrough, entrepreneurs should perform a detailed competitive analysis.

Opportunist, enabler, advocate and producer are the four models of corporate entrepreneurship that Robert C. Wolcott and Michael J. Lippitz discuss in ‘Grow from Within’ (www.tatamcgrawhill.com).

Mapping the models on two dimensions, viz. organisational ownership (ranging from diffused to focussed) and resource authority (ad hoc to dedicated), the authors find that all companies begin as opportunists.

“Without any designated organisational ownership or resources, corporate entrepreneurship proceeds (if at all) based on the efforts and serendipity of intrepid ‘project champions’ – people who toil against the odds, often creating new businesses in spite of the corporation.”

Silicon Valley, a driving engine of California's economy, started the last decade with the dot-com bust. It starts a new one looking remarkably resilient.

This might sound like casual boosterism from someone who has covered the valley for 10 years.

It's not. Egos are big enough around here without an extra dose of self promotion from me. And it's clear that Silicon Valley has more than its share of social and economic challenges.

Marketing to consumers’ cellphones has long been viewed as something of a holy grail by businesses – prized but always beyond reach. Recently however, new mobile technologies have gone mainstream, making the elusive goal of an always-on connection with customers firmly within reach of even the smallest business.

Consider that:

• There are four times the number of cellphones in the world versus PCs (4Bn vs. 1Bn) and 20% of all U.S. households are now “mobile-only”
• Over 130 Billion texts are sent each month, up from practically nothing in 2000
• Gen Yers (18-29) say their phone is the most important device they own
• According to multiple analysts, Mobile Marketing and Advertising will explode from just a couple hundred million dollars in revenues in 2008 to $3 – 5 Billion by 2012.

The end of the year is a great time. Not only do you have the holidays, the cheer, and good friends and family close by, you also have the perfect start date for everything. Let me provide some examples and you tell me when it sounds familiar.

When are you going to rewrite your site content? After the first of the year!

When are you going to try out social media? After the first of the year!

In response to the terrorist bombing attempt on Christmas Day, Dutch officials have announced that they will begin using more full body scanners for United States-bound flights.

Security experts think that this technology could have detected the explosives Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was concealing when he successfully boarded Flight 253 to Detroit from Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam.

But concerns have been raised that these full body scanners can reveal more than just explosives. Is improved security worth sacrificing your personal privacy?

Do you think you live in a state that encourages and supports entrepreneurism? You simply need to ask the Small Business & Entrepreneurship (SBE) Council. Recently, the SBE Council released data announcing the top states that have the best climate for entrepreneurs to excel – and the results may surprise you!

The SBE’s Take on the Small Business Environment

Who is the SBE Council? The SBE Council is a non-partisan, non-profit small business advocacy group whose mission is to protect small businesses and promote entrepreneurship. Part of their mission is to educate lawmakers and elected officials, as well as the public, to advance policies and laws that make entrepreneurship easier.

Documenting the Decade

Readers submitted photos and their recollections of important moments from the last 10 years, documenting events including the Sept. 11 attacks, the space shuttle Columbia disaster, the war in Iraq, the Asian tsunami, Hurrican Katrina, the 2004 and 2008 elections and the recession.

[Editor's Note: This article is a pictorial piece documenting the last 10 years.]

The creation by entrepreneurs of a destination for tech companies in Rajasthan's Thar Desert shows it's time to rethink regional development planning

For government officials and planning consultants looking to create regional economic growth and drive innovation, industry clusters are the Holy Grail. Popularized by Harvard professor Michael Porter in the early 1990s, cluster theory holds that a government or economic development body can create a viable hub of economic activity in a specific industrial sector by bringing in businesses, suppliers, researchers, and additional related people or entities. In other words, a focused governmental effort can create something from nothing, turning, for example, a fallow field into a tech park bursting with highly competitive, innovative companies. Governments all over the world have invested millions—sometimes billions—of dollars to attract industries they consider strategic.