On May 19-21, the leaders of ICF's Top Seven Intelligent Communities will share success stories from around the world in creating and retaining the talent that powers an innovation economy.  At the annual Building the Broadband Economy summit in New York City, you will hear from speakers including Mayor J.M.L.N. Mikkers of Veldhoven in the Eindhoven region of the Netherlands; Dana McDaniel, Deputy City Manager of Dublin, Ohio, USA; Mayor Larry O'Brien of Ottawa, Ontario, Canada; and Mike Galloway, Director of City Development, Dundee, Scotland, UK. 

In 2010, the BBE summit theme is about talent and how to keep it.  In today's Broadband Economy, communities must continually raise the skill levels of citizens at all ages and in all walks of life.  But investments in education pay no dividends to the community if the people with new skills cannot find desirable and challenging work in the local economy.  You will hear from Smart21 and Top Seven Intelligent Community leaders who have grappled with this challenge and developed innovative strategies to close the education "last mile."

An exclusive, invitational event produced by the Intelligent Community Forum and the Polytechnic Institute of New York University, the summit attracts attendees from North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia and Africa.  It is a unique opportunity to learn from the world’s most dynamic communities how to use information and communications technology to build prosperous, inclusive and sustainable communities.  

The audience for BBE 2009 is limited to 300 attendees in order to provide the right environment to share knowledge and build relationships.  Attendance is principally by invitation but a limited number of paid registrations are also available for Innovation America subscribers at a 20% discount. (Register under VIP Registration at www.icfsummit.com using VIP Code PTR2010.) Registration is now open. 

Intelligent Community Forum
www.intelligentcommunity.org    

Attention non-profit and public sector organizations – a few weeks ago, InnoCentive announced a program just for you.  We’ve had some good response to this program so far, but we think there are more organizations in need that haven’t heard about it yet, and our goal is to help as many people as possible.  So here it is again – please spread the word.

Throughout 2010, InnoCentive will waive its typical fee for posting and managing a single Challenge for selected non-profit and public sector organizations.

Participating organizations have the same access as our corporate Seekers to InnoCentive’s expert services and diverse international network of 200,000+ Solvers – scientists, inventors, engineers, researchers, and innovators from all walks of life – who can help you solve key challenges facing your organization and your community.

The Islamic & Middle Eastern VC Market Despite the fact that there are literally millions of Muslim entrepreneurs in both developed and developing nations looking for investment capital for their new start-up ventures, the realm of the Islamic venture capitalist remains in an evolutionary state. Nonetheless, the untapped potential for Islamic venture capital remains huge. Moreover, the Islamic world has more than its fair share of investors with high-end net worth looking to invest in potentially lucrative deals. Thus, the convergence of both a ‘need’ and a ’supply’ invariably lead to the creation of a new product, and this is equally so in the case of purely Islamic venture capital.

The core to any proposed Islamic financing transaction is that Shariah (Islamic law) prohibits interest-based lending. Moreover, Shariah further prohibits investments in certain activities which are seen as being in violation of Islam, such as gambling.

However, in essence, the mechanisms of venture capital do not provide for interest-bearing lending. Rather, at the core of any venture capital funding is an agreement to share in the risks of the business venture in return for the profits derived from such business venture.

WASHINGTON, April 1 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — United States Senator Mary L. Landrieu, D-La., Chair of the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship, today sent a letter to Senate colleagues requesting support of several measures aimed at creating jobs and spurring small business growth. Sen. Landrieu is requesting that the proposals be included in the next jobs bill to be considered by the Senate.

"As Chair of the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship, I am writing to ask for your support on a package of small business measures that I would like to see become a part of any upcoming jobs bills in the Senate," Sen. Landrieu said in the letter. "Most of these proposals have passed by a large bipartisan margin out of the Committee, and for a modest amount all of these measures will create hundreds of thousands of jobs in 2010. These proposals would make key improvements to the U.S. Small Business Administration's (SBA) lending, exporting, contracting, innovation and business counseling programs."

Jim Horan has only been on the job for three-plus months as CEO of Montgomery County-based Y-Carbon, but the swirl of nanotechnology and clean energy activity that has captured the attention of the state and nation has made him one of the Delaware Valley’s busiest businessmen.

The latest for Y-Carbon, which is developing nanotech for breakthrough performance in fields of energy, is a Department of Energy Small Business Innovation Research phase 1 grant for $149,938. The federal stimulus funding has allowed the company, which is a portfolio company of both the Pennsylvania NanoMaterials Commercialization Center and The Nanotechnology Institute of Ben Franklin Technology Partners, to increase its staff by three to nine and expand the business from research to manufacturing.

San Diego Innovation Economy Doubles Start-up Rate and VC Funding -

By: Fred Patterson – The SBIR Coach® (www.SBIRcoach.com)

The Small Business Innovation Research Program (SBIR) got a small boost last week with the long-promised raising of the grant program’s funding caps by the SBA.  First proposed back in 2008, and supported by everyone associated with the program, the action has been held up with the anticipation of enactment of a comprehensive SBIR reauthorization bill.  With passage of that legislation stalled by a refusal of the House Small Business Committee to negotiate with the Senate, the SBA evidently decided not to wait any longer, asserted some long awaited leadership, and took independent action. 

[Effective March 30th, SBIR Phase I award amounts may be as much as $150K (up 50%), Phase IIs as much as $1M (up 33%).  STTR awards stay the same for now.  They’re covered by a different law, but changes are expected there soon as well.]

These increases, while a welcome boost to the small businesses who apply for these seed funds, don’t solve the biggest problem faced by SBIR funded companies – how to get their innovative technology transitioned into end use – aka commercialization, the mythical and elusive Phase III. 

The original intent of SBIR was that the government would provide the seed funding for development of dual-use potential technology to a working prototype (proof of concept) and the private sector would then take over the funding and help take the resulting products to eagerly awaiting markets.  It hasn’t worked quite as anticipated.

Rarely can a company take the work product coming off a Phase II and effect a quick transition to end use.  At that point they enter what’s known as the Valley of Death.  Whether it’s additional technical development work, system integration, packaging, supply chain building, configuration for manufacturing, or marketing and sales channel development, there’s money needed for getting from a prototype to a product that is market-ready.  Lots of money. 

A few weeks ago, we highlighted many of the cool startups that have popped up in New York City in recent years.

And now we turn to Silicon Valley.

Over the past few weeks, we've asked VCs, angel investors, entrepreneurs, and other tech journalists about their favorite up-and-coming Valley startups. We've written about many of these companies before, obviously, and we'll be writing about many of them again.

When Butler University defeated Kansas State to advance to the Final Four last month, thousands of students flooded the university's grassy mall and surrounded Bobby Fong, the university's president. A group of football players, concerned that the trim president would be knocked over by the boisterous crowd, promptly hoisted him into the air.

"Three players got behind me," Mr. Fong recalled in an interview. "A fourth said, 'On my shoulders, Dr. Fong,' and all of a sudden I was crowd-surfing. I call it my Peyton Manning moment. Somebody had my blind side."

Mr. Fong was covered that night. But in the nine days since then, Butler has been caught pleasantly off guard by the attention sparked by the success of its men's basketball team, the darling of this year's NCAA tournament. The university, with around 4,000 students, is among the smallest institutions ever to play for a national championship—and to suddenly be center stage, university officials and students have found, has been quite the surreal experience.

I gave a short talk a week ago trying to address the question of how to become innovative. I tried to sum up and put in a few slides some very basic thoughts of mine out of my very limited experience thus far, and came up with a pretty rough -if not hasty- presentation. To some of you most of its contents may sound profound, however it seems to have hit a chord, so here I am providing more details, a short paragraph per slide.

Small businesses can no longer afford to think local. In today's business environment, even a single-town business firm will be affected in a manner that is global.

Strategic management is much more important now when a firm is still small. For instance, when he was still running a garage operation, Bill Gates brought Microsoft to the big league with a strategic vision-- "A computer in every home."

Without a worldview or global strategy, the small business will be blind to exploit opportunities or manage risks with global factors that are intruding locally. Thus, business innovation is limited to local needs while global threats or opportunities abound.

Venture capital isn't required for entrepreneurial success, and it can carry a heavy price.

You are an entrepreneur faced with a troubling question: How do I get venture capital? Before you answer that question, consider another one that should be more important: Should you finance yourself, what I call bootstrapping?

In my new book "Bootstrap to Billions: Proven Rules from Entrepreneurs who Built Great Businesses from Scratch," I have profiled 28 entrepreneurs who built great companies from scratch, including the world's largest medical-device company (Earl Bakken of Medtronic), the world's largest consumer electronics retailer (Richard Schulze of Best Buy), and the world's largest private health care management company (Richard Burke of UnitedHealth Group).

China's first offshore wind farm, a 102-megawatt array that's set to come to full power this month in the Yangtze River delta near Shanghai, looks to be the start of something big. Chinese officials announced plans last month to request bids for three to four large-scale offshore wind power projects generating up to 1,000 megawatts total. Beijing-based energy consultancy Azure International predicts that China will install 514 megawatts of offshore wind over the next three to four years, and by 2020 will have invested $100 billion to install up to 30,000 megawatts. That's equal to all of the onshore wind farms currently installed in China, already the world's largest market for wind power.

China's offshore winds are slower than Europe's because they cross Asia before striking out to sea, whereas the North Sea's winds travel an unimpeded transatlantic path. But 40 percent of China's population lives along the eastern seaboard. China is building a transmission supergrid to bring in hydroelectric, coal, and wind power from western China, but Meyer says leaders of coastal provinces see offshore development as a means of local investment. "China still has a very locally protectionist economy. There's an interest from provincial governments to support the coastal economy and jobs by supporting a wind industry in their backyard," says Sebastian Meyer, Azure's research director.

Here are some examples of the ways our Most Innovative Companies are taking advantage of Apple's new tablet.

Facebook: Interestingly, Facebook hasn't released a dedicated iPad app yet--but "Facebook Ultimate," a Facebook iPad app with no connection to those behind Facebook, has managed to crack into the top 10 paid apps in just two days' time. It's made pretty clear that this is an unofficial app, so once Facebook does enter the fray, they'll probably knock Facebook Ultimate way down the list.

Amazon: Amazon's got two official apps in the iPad App Store: one for their essential movie-and-tv listings property, the Internet Movie Database, and one for the Kindle. Though the Kindle may not have fancy-pants page-turning animations, it does have a catalog that positively dwarfs the iBookstore--450,000 titles to Apple's mere 60,000. Plus, most of the titles still hold to Amazon's cheaper $9.99 pricing. It's surprising that Apple even let the Kindle app into the App Store--especially since it's more established and even preferable to Apple's own offering. And the IMDb app is surprisingly excellent: it's easy to navigate with fingers, and it gives access to HD movie trailers, galleries, and even local showtimes.

Netflix: Possibly the killer iPad app, Netflix's entry in the app store is one of the most exciting iPad apps ever (granted, it's only two days old, but still). Stream Netflix Instant Watch titles over Wi-Fi anywhere you take your iPad, customize your queue, and take advantage of Netflix's unbeatable library. Until that rumored Hulu app hits the App Store, Netflix is the king of iPad streaming video.

We cover a lot of robots here on Fast Company, sometimes exciting tech, sometimes promising for healthcare, or the future of daily life...and sometimes outright creepy. The latest Japanese android is firmly in this category.

She's a product of the Intelligent Robotics lab at Osaka University and robot builders Kokoro Co. Ltd., and she's dubbed Geminoid F (the "f" is for female.) And all that use of the word "she" is justified, as the bot is quite definitely convincingly female--which technically makes her a gynoid rather than an android. All this super realism is because she's modeled after a real twenty-something Japanese woman--on the right in that image above--via a sophisticated scanning system. Silicone realistic skin, convincing hair, and teeth that seem so real they make Geminoid F have a nearly human smile. Add in subtle movements, driven by a batch of servos, that give the robot the ability to raise an eyebrow, or mimic those tiny tics that our fallible flash-and-blood bodies get up to all the time without us realizing, and you've got a machine that is freakishly real. She truly delves into that uncanny valley between detectably artificial and undetectable human-mimicing. 

American academic leaders are casting a wary eye on developments in higher education in the rest of the world. Will the Bologna Process give Europe an edge? Will the development of research universities in countries outside the West stop the best talent from coming to the United States? What does it mean when American colleges and universities open up campuses thousands of miles away from their home base?

Ben Wildavsky argues that these and many other changes are indeed significant and are bringing about a "globalization" of higher education. But while some observers fear these developments could hurt American higher education, Wildavsky argues that the changes have the potential to be a win-win for all involved (and that these and other forms of globalization are now inevitable). He makes his case in a new book, The Great Brain Race: How Global Universities Are Reshaping the World (Princeton University Press). Wildavsky, a senior fellow at the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, answered questions about the themes of the book.

princetonacademics — March 25, 2010 — A Keller Center panel discussion on technology commercialization of university scientific and engineering inventions. The panel is moderated by Professor Ed Zschau, who has been an entrepreneur and a venture capital investor, as well as a two-term U.S. congressman. Zschau currently teaches the popular "High-Tech Entrepreneurship" course at Princeton.

It’s been an under-reported, or at least under-emphasized fact as we pull out of the economic collapse.

Rising employment and productivity in the manufacturing sector is leading this country back to health. Just plain ‘ol nuts and bolts, get your hands dirty, manufacturing. Making things.

Some data points to consider.

• March employment data released today confirms that manufacturing activity is growing at its fastest pace in five-and-a-half years, helping the nation avoid a double-dip recession.

I recently wrote a blog post on understanding how the size and age of a venture capital fund might affect you when you’re raising money.  Because it is a “series” I plan to get into some of the deeper complexities of funds such as “cross over funds” and “why VC’s hate to price their own deals” at a later stage. The last post was a high-level primer.  I know many super experienced entrepreneurs who don’t understand the basics of how fund size and age can affect them so I thought it was worth establishing a baseline.

Chris Dixon provided some commentary on Twitter that he believes my last post missed “the most important point about fund size.”  He’s specifically referring to his point of view that entrepreneurs shouldn’t take seed money from “big VC’s” (he defines them as > $100 million).  It actually wasn’t the point of my post – my point was just to get people thinking about the issues of size and age in the first place.

But I understand Chris’s sentiment and in certain situations I agree. But while he’s directionally right that there are risks, he’s wrong to rule out all VC’s who do seed investing. Yes, I’m a VC who does seed investing so I have a bias. But Chris is a seed investor who competes for deals with VCs so the bias runs both ways. I bet if we discussed the issue live we’d probably end up agreeing more than disagreeing.

Thomas L. Friedman, The New York Times's op-editorialist extraordinaire, penned a Sunday column about a topic that could affect the future of the U.S. economy. But while his overall point is on target -- he misses the mark in a key way.

I agree with Friedman (pictured) on the main point, that a recovery depends on small companies creating jobs. However, his prescription -- increasing the number of what he calls "high-IQ risk-takers" in the U.S. -- won't do the trick. Instead, jobs will result when entrepreneurs can get the capital they need to start and build successful ventures. And getting that money takes more than just smart people.

Friedman's argument springs from what appears to be an interview with Craig Mundie, the chief research and strategy officer of Microsoft (MSFT). Although Microsoft has been a relative laggard technologically for at least the last decade, Friedman appears to be swept away by Mundie's viewpoint.

The Microsoft exec suggests that the problem with the U.S. economy is that so-called high-IQ risk-takers (a phrase that Friedman repeats eight times in his column) in business and government are being discouraged by "cutbacks in higher education, restrictions on immigration and a toxic public space that dissuades talented people from going into government." Moreover, Mundie argues that the common element that explains the "above-average returns as a country" for Singapore, Israel and America has been those high-IQ risk-takers.