Say goodbye to 2009, the worst economic year since the Great Depression.

Say hello to the billionaire bailout society in which the super-rich gamble, lose and get bailed out by the rest of us.

To save the system from total collapse we poured trillions of dollars into the financial sector. The result? Banks still are refusing to lend. Thirty million Americans are looking for full-time jobs and 49 million are skipping meals including one out of four children. But Wall Street again is reaping record profits and bonuses.

I run across a lot of organisations that say that 'innovation' is one of their core values, but their actions don't support innovation at all. Every once in a while, one of them decides that it is time to get serious about innovation, and that's when I get called in to help. As John has described, one of the first issues that these organisations deal with is the question of how to be more innovative. Often their first step is to work on generating more ideas, but we know that idea generation usually isn't the problem - idea execution is. Coming to grips with this is one of the key steps to take in becoming more innovative. Another key step is figuring out who should be responsible for innovation?

Jonathan Crowley from NESTA frames the issue nicely - organisations face two choices: create an innovation team that is responsible for driving innovation, or make innovation part of everyone's job. There are advantages and disadvantages to both approaches.

CHICAGO – The Microsoft Health Users Group, in conjunction with the Health Information and Management Systems Society, is calling for entries for its annual Innovation Awards.

Applications are due by 5 p.m. CST on Jan. 22, 2010.

The Microsoft Healthcare Innovation Awards are presented annually to the healthcare organization and technology solutions partner that best demonstrates industry leadership in using technology to achieve innovation excellence in each of the following categories:

* Clinical Records – Inpatient
* Clinical Records – Ambulatory
* HIE and Interoperability
* Microsoft HealthVault Applications

For us, Indian technology story is beyond Internet/Mobile industry and we do attempt to bring in few innovation that’s happening at the trenches.

Be it about Chotukool, the bottom of pyramid refrigerator or Millee (rural project that uses mobile gaming for learning) – we do attempt to profile some of these initiatives that impact the common man.

Andrew Levine knew he wouldn't find a job in investment banking when he graduated with an M.B.A. from the University of Miami in 2008. Wall Street was in the midst of a financial collapse. So instead the 24-year-old focused his efforts on launching a start-up. "I figured that starting my own company was the best use of my time while I waited for the market to thaw," says Mr. Levine.

Faced with an unemployment rate of 16% for 20- to 24-year-olds, a growing number of recent college and grad-school graduates are launching their own companies, according to anecdotal evidence from colleges, universities and entrepreneurship programs around the U.S.

There are a couple of categories in franchising that will continue to gather steam in 2010, and for many years to come. There will also be some other interesting things going on in franchising in 2010, and they don’t involve the latest pizza craze, or the launch of a solar-powered pretzel stand.

Let’s start by talking about our country’s demographics. According to AARP International:

“In two years, the oldest of the baby boomers will start turning 65. The baby boomer bulge will continue padding the senior population year after year, growing to 1 in 5 U.S. residents by 2030.”

Yelp may have just turned down a half-billion dollar takeover offer from Google. Zynga does a crazy-big $180m funding. Not long ago, Twitter took another $100-million in financing, and now we learn it’s … profitable. In the immortal words of Walter Sobchak, has the whole world – or least every young and fast-growing technology company -- gone crazy?

Maybe, but there could also be something important going on. It’s been so long since it last happened that most people will have forgotten, but there is often a reason why companies start doing strange things, like taking lots of money when they don’t need it, and like turning down appealing acquisitions. The reason? This thing called an “initial public offering” (IPO).

In the C-suites of corporate America, innovation has become a mandate. Executives - from CEOs to marketing officers - believe that to innovate is to embrace the Holy Grail of 21st Century business.

But is innovation alone the answer? Is the end - innovation - capable of surviving solely as a mandate?

Or is innovation a process, journey that seeks a destination refined and polished along the way? "Total Innovation" is a sojourn that mandates a total approach philosophy.

The Copenhagen Accord, the closest thing to a deal to emerge from the climate change summit, represents a step forward in dealing with the planet’s most pressing issue but stronger action is still needed. While many of the challenges negotiators faced in Copenhagen were inevitable and expected, two problems at the heart of the disappointing outcome--the insistence on binding, internationally-agreed-upon targets, for which countries are still obviously unprepared, and the conflation of the mitigation and aid agendas, which makes reaching a binding agreement on either impractical—could have been avoided. If the global community learns from Copenhagen’s mistakes, much greater progress can be made on both of these objectives.

Innovation systems in developing countries differ largely from those in developed countries. A typical difference is that less developed countries have weaker institutional frameworks and low levels of interaction among the different actors in the innovation system. Scholars in innovation system research agree on the importance of understanding innovation systems in developing countries as systems in construction. Thus, while the most important organisations often exist, the critical linkages between e.g. user-producer and university- industry are still ill developed. The literature hitherto has been rather vague on how these systems can be built. We contribute to the literature by discussing the role of intermediate organisations in supporting different forms of interactive learning and linking relevant actors to each other in emerging innovation systems in developing countries, using data from Tanzania and El Salvador.

I [Adam Lashinsky] had a small, Twitter-hosted dustup recently with Trevor Loy, a pleasant fellow who, when he is not Twittering, brings truth and justice to the world via the agency of venture capital. Loy was hot and bothered over some turn of events in Congress having to do with immigration policy. Many entrepreneurs are immigrants, you see. And because venture capital equals entrepreneurialism, the proposed congressional action might harm VCs, which, in turn, would grievously harm the U.S. economy. This, Loy, explained, is because fully 21% of the U.S. economy is attributed to revenue earned by "venture-backed" companies.

Where, I wondered, did this startlingly encouraging statistic come from? Loy was kind enough to supply me the link to a report paid for by the National Venture Capital Association. Thank goodness for the hard work the NVCA does to help us understand the good VCs spread throughout the land. NVCA President Mark Heesen, a savvy Washington hand I've been privileged to chat with over the years, prefaced the report with a few nice words about the industry that employs him. "The data," he wrote, "continues to confirm that venture capital matters deeply, not only to our economy but to everyday lives of Americans, who use venture-backed innovations, work at venture-backed companies and dare to bring new ideas to the market."

IN Silicon Valley we have a saying: launch early, launch often. It’s an acknowledgment that successful, innovative companies are the ones that rapidly try new ideas, see what works, improve their products and repeat. Businesses that launch frequently are also able to take advantage of economies of scale to make launchings faster and easier. In many ways, the key to innovation is speed of execution.

NASA, an agency that depends on innovation, could benefit from the same mindset. To meet its new goals for human spaceflight, NASA must be able to be creative and take risks, or else it will be unable to adapt to new technology and changing political realities. Grand plans stretching over decades will become irrelevant and eventually collapse.

The Rudd Government today released draft legislation for the new R&D Tax Credit — the biggest reform to business innovation policy in over a decade.

The draft legislation follows through on the Government’s commitment to deliver a more generous, more predictable, and less complex tax incentive by replacing the outdated and complicated R&D Tax Concession.

This important microeconomic reform is part of the Government’s broad productivity agenda. It will cut red tape and provide better incentives to help boost the competitiveness of the Australian economy.

The R&D Tax Credit is also a central element of the Rudd Government’s long-term agenda to lift Australia’s innovation capacity and performance, Powering Ideas.

Innovation is driven by people and their ideas. Through the work of the Innovation Think Tank, greater south Wood County stands to create a culture of innovation that will keep the area sustainable in the future.

A recent meeting, facilitated by Jack Ricchiuto, gave participants the opportunity to share their thoughts regarding what they want to see possible in this community in 20 years. Answers included diversified industry, an innovative workforce, capitalization on the knowledge and resources available in the area, inventions from this area featured in Time Magazine's Top 50 of the Year, innovative schools producing employees that have gained skills through project-based learning, world-class infrastructure, risk-taking culture, financial resources for product development, a process for innovation, green energy production and a system of connections for people and resources. All suggestions would position greater south Wood County as a hub of commerce in the future.

Traditionally, we have tended to think of businesses (or individuals who then start businesses) as the principal source of innovative new products or services in a market economy. But, in a thought-provoking new working paper, Carliss Y. Baldwin of Harvard Business School and Eric von Hippel of the MIT Sloan School of Management argue that sources of innovation are changing in today’s economy.

In particular, the professors make the case that, as a result of declining design and communication costs and increasing use of modular design architectures, two other types of innovation are competitive in more and more situations. Those two types? Innovation by users and open collaborative innovation projects (like open source software projects, for example).

It’s that time of the year when we actually review what has gone past a turbulent year 2009 and probably a year after the financial crisis that rocked the world after the collapse of Lehmann Brothers in Sep 2008. Of course, one of the key after effects is that fundraising for start-ups in the technology space become increasingly difficult this year. While we are beginning to see more and more acquisitions in the US tech space, the SG tech start-ups are still working towards a tough environment. In the technology entrepreneurship scene, significant incidents have shaped and brought forward new perspectives in Singapore. While we are about to start the new road ahead in 2010. Here are the top 5 tech entrepreneurship events that rocked SG in 2009 (in no order of preference):

Analysts say the Google-Microsoft war has already yielded a slew of search upgrades.

Computerworld - This month's flurry of upgrades to Google Inc.'s eponymous search engine, coupled with Microsoft Corp.'s renewed charge into the search business, could soon lead to radical changes in one of the Internet's most popular applications.

Analysts say the increasingly heated battle between Microsoft's new Bing search tool and Google is already bringing users an avalanche of innovations that should continue for a year or two.

"Google and Microsoft sparring is fueling this," said Hadley Reynolds, an analyst at IDC. "Microsoft's willingness to invest in search and not just let Google walk away with it is driving a new level of competition."

[Portugal] There are four types of crops (bear with me on this) for companies; seeding (seed capital); harvesting (venture capital), selling (acquisition) and consuming (IPO).

In Portugal, each one has their own expression. We have VC’s, we have acquisitions and some IPO’s, but not that many seeders. So, it seems natural that the actual business angels in Portugal should be doing seed capital, but they’re more interested on being just the middle man between the ideia/startup and the venture capital noney. For that they’ll crop up to 10%. So, what history tells us ? Everyone’s killing the middle man and it will be shot at plain sight!

Wait no more, hope is here and we’re starting to see the rise of the newborns, the seeders! The guys that support your startup/idea/project, without the business spreadsheet or the fancy 20 page business plan full of charts. They’re the ones who leverage most of the startup risk, but also the ones who can profit from your business. The best seats of the train are always those upfront, that’s what seed capital hopes and prays for!

How the Copenhagen Climate Accord measures up.

Global warming: The Accord agrees that global temperature rise should stay below 2C (3.6F). A tangible acheivement but less ambitious than some would have hoped. 5/10

Reducing greenhouse gases: The treaty did not include any numerical targets for cutting pollution. 0/10

[Much more on the original article - Ed.]

Scotland’s business angels should play a bigger role in advising start-up firms, a new report from researchers at the University of the West of Scotland has recommended.

The report, Business Angel Syndicates in Scotland, recommends that government should tap into private-sector expertise to help new companies become investment-ready.

The report, subtitled an Exploratory Study of Gatekeepers, looks at the role of angel syndicate managers and how they might be further enhanced to benefit the Scottish economy. One of its key recommendations is that emerging entrepreneurs should have greater access to the expertise of angel gatekeepers in the early stages to help make their business investment-ready.