June Holley’s Twitter feed pointed me to a good post on innovation from the Innovation Leadership Network blog. The following words caught my eye:

…the way to innovate is to generate a lot of ideas, figure out ways to try them out cheaply and quickly, and then scale-up the ones that seem most promising.

This apprqoch works particularly well in regional economic development. It is the framework we used in developing Strategic Doing at the Purdue Center for Regional Development.

Business people in Wisconsin enter 2010 with a much hardened view of the world. Going through a near depression will do that to you.

Almost every manager was faced the undesirable task of shrinking their enterprises and letting go of valuable employees, many with long tenures of service. Business volumes in manufacturing, the mainstay of the state's economy, fell by half or more in early 2009.

IF we have overindulged in anything these past several days, it is neither holiday ham nor American football; it is Top 10 lists. We have been stuffed full of them. Even in these self-restrained pages, it has been impossible to avoid the end-of-the-decade accountings of the 10 best such-and-suches and the 10 worst fill-in-the-blanks.

And so, in the spirit of rock star excess, I offer yet another.

The main difference, if it matters, is that this list looks forward, not backward. So here, then, are 10 ideas that might make the next 10 years more interesting, healthy or civil. Some are trivial, some fundamental. They have little in common with one another except that I am seized by each, and moved by its potential to change our world.

When the clock struck midnight on New Year's Eve, venture capitalists were toasting good riddance not just to 2009 but to an entire decade in which their industry as a whole lost money for its investors.

While prominent firms such as Sequoia Capital, Accel Partners and Norwest Venture Partners still earned handsome returns and have raised new investment funds, the venture capital industry as a whole is struggling to return to positive territory.

The SBTC opposes the House SBIR bill, which would radically alter the nature of the SBIR program. We instead support the Senate bill, which would keep the program largely the same.

Permitting VC firms to have more than 50 percent control of the SBIR small companies completely changes the program.

As it has stood for 26 years, the SBIR program was the only level playing field for the very smallest companies. With 25-page limits on the proposals and a technology peer review it permitted the small companies to compete. If the House Committee proposal is incorporated in the SBIR program, the well-funded VC-owned companies will have the advantage of their lobbyists and large marketing departments to influence the outcome of the awards.

Every quarter, without fail, a bunch of articles appear talking about the venture capital industries investment pace as a result of the PWC MoneyTree report. I used to get calls from all of the Denver / Boulder area reporters about my thoughts on these – that eventually stopped when I started responding “who gives a fuck?”

A few days ago I got a note from Steve Murchie about his new blog titled Angels and Pinheads. I’m glad Steve is blogging about this as he’s got plenty of experience and thoughts around the dynamics of angel investors – some that I agree with and some that I don’t. Regardless, my view is that there more there is out there, the better, as long as people engage in the conversation.

IT may not feel that way right now, but the last 10 years may go down in world history as a big success. That idea may be hard to accept in the United States. After all, it was the decade of 9/11, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the financial crisis, all dramatic and painful events. But in economic terms, at least, the decade was a remarkably good one for many people around the globe.

The raging economic growth rates of China and India are well known, though their rise is part of a broader trend in the economic development of poorer countries. Ideals of prosperity, freedom and the rule of law have probably never been more resonant globally than they’ve been over the last 10 years, even if practice often falls short. And for all of the anticapitalistic rhetoric that has emerged from the financial crisis, national leaders around the world are embracing the commercialization of their economies.

Innovation America's tagline is "The Daily Pulse of Global Innovation". See the impact that Global trends and Innovation are having around the world by watching this short, thought provoking video. I liked it so much that I made it the lead article for the first Monday of 2010! IT IS A MUST WATCH !
Enjoy and Thanks to Tom Mathews for sending it to me.
--Rich Bendis

BioNJ, a dynamic industry association dedicated to securing, coordinating and providing resources and services to member biotechnology companies critical to building successful biotechnology enterprises in NJ, has found a unique way to support workforce development in its' member biotechnology companies. BioNJ has partnered with the state of NJ and its 19 community colleges to provide technical workforce training to all of NJ biotechnology companies. This training program permits small biotechnology start-ups to join together and with larger member companies in customized training programs delivered by the state's community colleges. Training is delivered on-site at the company or at any of the 65 community college campus locations across the state. The training classes are free to all NJ Biotechnology companies and include such topics as Team Building, Project Management, Six Sigma, GMP, Biotechnology Ethics, Presentation Skills, etc. The training courses are developed annually based upon a survey of BioNJ member companies. Tuition funding is provided by the NJ Department of Labor and Workforce Development.

Further information can be found at www.bionj.org and www.njworkforce.org

How would you feel about a physician who killed more patients than he helped? What about a police detective who committed more murders than he solved? Or a teacher whose students were more likely to get dumber than smarter as the school year progressed? And what if you discovered that these perverse outcomes were more the rule than the exception—that they were characteristic of most doctors, policemen and professors? You’d be more than perplexed. You’d be incensed, outraged. You’d demand that something must be done!

Given this, why are we complacent when confronted with data that suggest most managers are more likely to douse the flames of employee enthusiasm than fan them, and are more likely to frustrate extraordinary accomplishment than to foster it?

Lets end the year with a technology puzzle.

To get started,click on a word and the moment you do that, timer starts. Once you finish the puzzle, you will be prompted to enter your name/site url along with the finishing time (well, that’s system generated).

Top 10 timings, along with the names will be displayed on the page.

[Editor's Note: Puzzle is available on the original page.]

We’ve been getting and sending a lot of holiday greetings, but one we have yet to hear is: “Have a Very New Year!” Perhaps it sounds too ambiguous for a real felicitation; safer to wish upon each other happiness rather than newness. But what if the newness of the new year was more than a calendrical trope? What if we rolled into January as if we were rolling into undiscovered country — ties cut, wagons loaded, oxen hitched?

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.”