In yesterday's posting on EDA and incubators, I noted that EDA needs to move beyond a focus on bricks and mortar. They understand that and last month, EDA, along with NIH and NSF, announced a new technology commercialization grant called the I6 Challenge:

The i6 Challenge is a new $12 million innovation competition administered by the Economic Development Administration (EDA) of the U.S. Department of Commerce, in partnership with the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and National Science Foundation (NSF). EDA will award up to $1 million to each of six winning teams with the most innovative ideas to drive technology commercialization and entrepreneurship in their regions. NIH and NSF will award a total of up to $6M in supplemental funding to their SBIR grantees that are associated or partnered with the winning teams.

The joint conference committee on financial reform has met and the verdict appears to be in. Private equity funds with more than $150 million in assets under management will have to register with the Securities and Exchange Commission, joining their hedge fund brethren. Venture capital funds of all sizes, meanwhile, will escape registration, although they will be subject to some reporting requirements.

As work on reconciling two different versions of financial reform passed by the two houses of Congress proceeded Tuesday, Senator Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.) said that the Senate would accept the House of Representatives’ provision that would require private equity firms with $150 million or more in assets under with the SEC. He added that the Senate would also accept an exemption for family offices and venture capital firms, as everyone agrees that the business model for venture capital differs from that of private equity firms.

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) - Electric car maker Tesla Motors Inc. filed documents Tuesday for an initial public offering of stock that could net nearly $180 million.

In addition, Tesla plans to sell $50 million of its stock to Toyota Motor Corp. /quotes/comstock/13*!tm/quotes/nls/tm (TM 72.78, -0.26, -0.36%) immediately following the IPO. Tesla recently agreed to buy Toyota's Fremont, Calif. manufacturing facility for $42 million, while receiving an investment from the Japanese auto maker as part of a broader partnership.

Closely-held Tesla said in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission that 11.1 million shares will be offered at between $14 and $16 a share, and that it will trade under the ticker "TSLA."

Tesla said that as of March 31 it had sold 1,063 Roadsters, the luxury sports car it introduced in 2008. The company aims to start volume production of its planned Model S sedan, which will sell for nearly $50,000, in 2012.

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The goal is true innovation – breakthrough new products, services and solutions – that create tomorrow’s growth engines. But most companies are stuck in traditional development: line extensions, modifications and improvements, which won’t generate the desired sales and profits. InnovationManagement asked Dr Robert Cooper about the importance of innovation.

Everybody is talking about innovation and how important it is. Do you agree – is it really that important, and why is that?

– Most companies have ambitious growth goals. The trouble is there are only so many sources of growth. Four of these – market growth, market share increases, new markets, and acquisitions – are proving difficult or expensive. Markets in many countries and industries are flat and increasingly commoditized; gains in market shares are expensive; and acquisitions often don’t work. New markets – India and China, for example – pose special problems. Even traditional product development – for most companies, this means line extensions, improvements and product modifications – seems depleted, and only serves to maintain market share.

FRIDAY, May 21 (HealthDay News) -- What do creative people and people diagnosed with schizophrenia have in common? According to new research out of Sweden, both share similar dopamine systems in the brain.

Dopamine, along with serotonin, is a key neurotransmitter - chemicals that are vital to transmitting messages via nerve cells in the brain.

"We have studied the brain and the dopamine D2 receptors, and have shown that the dopamine system of healthy, highly creative people is similar to that found in people with schizophrenia," Fredrik Ullen, associate professor at Karolinska Institute's department of women's and children's health in Stockholm, said in a news release.

From Mrs. Fields to Martha Stewart, many iconic entrepreneurs (as well as other hugely successful businesses like Starbucks) have sparked the creation of other new ventures. By direct example and advice--or by replicating other successful business models--the positive economic ripple effect has been nothing short of remarkable. We decided to profile a few of these firms, to discover what inspired a new generation of mini-moguls and how they are paying it forward in their own backyards.

Doing by Design
In the case of Martha Stewart, a multi-track ripple effect is in full bloom. Her signature lifestyle companies (under the umbrella of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia) actually applaud the development of independent ventures by her staff and associates. By her example (or via personal input and advice in some cases) Stewart has nudged, challenged and inspired many women (as well as a few men) to launch or grow their businesses with gusto.

The 'clumping' of rare isotopes of carbon and oxygen in the bones and teeth of extinct animals offers a method for determining their body temperatures.

The discovery could provide key evidence in the debate surrounding the body temperature of dinosaurs, and might also allow researchers to glean information about the temperature of ancient oceans, say the authors of a paper published this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

ATLANTA — UCB, Inc. (U.S. headquarters in Smyrna) is one of more than 800 bio-tech companies in Georgia. (photo-Edgar Treiguts)
Leaders in Georgia’s life sciences industry say the start-up of a new resource center will give a boost to the state’s bio-tech economy.

Officials say the Georgia Bioscience Commercialization Center in Atlanta will serve as a mentoring resource for those wanting to start a bio-tech business. About 20 people from the private company side of bio-science will volunteer their time to help.

State economic development and legislative leaders make no secret of their desire to grow bio-business in the state. Right now 800 bio-tech companies bring in $16 billion in revenue.

Before I start talking about the best Business Schools for Social Entrepreneurship, lets first discuss what Social Entrepreneurship is. A social entrepreneur is someone who recognizes a social problem and uses entrepreneurial principals to organize, create, and manage a venture to create social change. A business entrepreuner typically measures performance in profit and return, however a social entrepreneur focuses on creating social capital. Thus, the main aim of social entrepreneurship is to further social and environmental goals though this need not necessarily be incompatible with making a profit. In fact, many of the new breed of social entrepreneurs are pursuing for profit ventures.

According to Beyond Grey Pinstrips, the Aspen Institute’s alternative rankings for schools integrating social and environmental stewardship into their curricula, the top 10 US schools for social entrepreunership are:

1. University of Michigan, Ross
2. Yale School of Management
3. Stanford
4. Notre Dame, Mendoza
5. University of California, Berkeley (Haas)

Plans to create a generation of 'green' jobs will involve low-skilled as well as high-skilled workers, and could therefore play a key social function in addressing Europe's unemployment crisis, EU officials and MEPs told a Brussels conference yesterday (10 June).

The debate, organised by the European Greens, sought to assess the state of play in the EU's drive to "green the economy," particularly as it relates to the creation of low-carbon jobs.

Former Socialist MEP Gyula Hegyi, introduced as 'Mr. Green Jobs' in EU Employment Commissioner László Andor's cabinet, refuted the notion that the green agenda would only create elite science and high-tech jobs.

If you’ve been reading the newspaper recently, you might have heard that the Great Recession has been a boom time for entrepreneurs. No less an authority than former Labor Secretary Robert Reich wrote in a New York Times opinion piece, “LAST year was a fabulous one for entrepreneurs, at least according to the Kauffman Index of Entrepreneurial Activity released last month by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation.”

Reich quotes the Foundation as saying “Rather than making history for its deep recession and record unemployment, 2009 might instead be remembered as the year business startups reached their highest level in 14 years — even exceeding the number of startups during the peak 1999-2000 technology boom.”

06/14/2010 To ease the strain population growth places infrastructures and governments, IBM is combining business analytics with cloud computing and smart grid technologies to help urban systems operate more efficiently.

I'm a surfer but I'm not crazy. I wouldn't go anywhere near these waves. But I really like this video by iamkalaniprince capturing a seemingly relentless set of 25+ foot peaks rolling in at Jaws on the North Shore of Maui. These monsters come barreling across the deep water trenches of the Pacific then heave up onto the Hawaiian reef creating some of the biggest and fastest waves in the world. The slow-motion (and the glorious Canon optics) underscores, to me, the majesty of this great dance and the strange harmony we human apes find amidst the power of nature.

Canon 5D Mark II Slow Motion + Jaws ( Peahi ) 12-7-09 from iamkalaniprince on Vimeo.

One of the great traps of technology-based economic development is the herd mentality. Everyone wanted to be like Silicon Valley. Then everyone want to be the leader in bio-tech. Then nano-tech. Now its "green." The simple fact is that not everyone can be a leader in the hottest fad. In fact, chancing the hottest technological fad is a sure way to accomplish nothing.

But, there are still specific parts of any new technology where localities can gain an edge. One example is high-tech in New York City -- sometime incorrectly referred to Silicon Alley when it should be called Digital Alley. As a recent story in the Economist notes:

Today, much tech innovation focuses on the media and advertising industries--both of which, for all their recent troubles and changes, remain lucrative and largely New York-based. That is why, for example, the bulk of Google's 500-odd advertising staff, the source of a large chunk of its profits, are in New York, not in the Googleplex in Mountain View, California.

When the business review site Yelp added badges and royalty titles to its check-in features earlier this month, it seemed clear that it was doing so in response to those very features made popular by the location-based network Foursquare.

Of course, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, right?

And in some cases, imitation might be a good business strategy as well: take something your competitor is doing and do the same thing, but (hopefully) better.

But when it comes to proprietary product features, imitation isn't necessarily flattering. It's cause for litigation.

OutCast PR cofounder Margit Wennmachers is now a partner at one of the more powerful and active VC firms in the valley, Andresseen Horowitz.

The New York Times's Claire Cain Miller, who broke the news, says the gig puts Margit in rare company:

"Ms. Wennmachers will become one of the few female venture capital partners. Just 14 percent of venture capitalists are women, according to the National Venture Capital Association, and an even smaller percentage are partners at firms that are actively investing."

I think we can all agree that early stage investing has changed significantly over the past 10 years and I don’t see it reversing any time soon. And by “changed significantly” I mean it is increasingly difficult to raise the $100K – $2M necessary to move from the pre-seed stage (where you likely raised $10-$100K from friends and family or your 401(k)) to raising institutional venture capital (~$2M +). This gap straddles two stages of financing - seed stage and early stage. For purposes of this post, I’ll refer to this gap as the “early stage gap”. The companies looking to raise money in this early stage gap are generally past the proof of concept stage, are not yet ready to blow it out with institutional venture financing or growth capital, and are looking for additional capital to continue building out their product or service and gain the elusive “traction” (see my earlier thoughts here on the “traction” concept) necessary for raising larger sums of money at a decent valuation.

"People are the crucial factor" behind Flanders winning development strategy and its successes in research centers like imec, VITO, VIB and the Holst Center, according to Nathalie Cogghe of the Flanders Investment & Trade investment promotion agency.

As Director of Inward Investment, Europe & The Americas, Cogghe is part of a global economic development team based in Brussels, that includes a number of technology specialists deployed around the world.

Like all such agencies, FI&T offers companies and prospective investors the usual tax, real estate and location incentives, but it also offers special knowledge-based incentives, including "incentives for people working in R&D" where employers get a tax benefit that amounts to a "very significant cost saving."

CANBERRA - Australian cities have been given an environmental thumbs-down in a new assessment of their green qualities.

Despite rating highly for quality of life, the Australian Conservation Foundation's sustainable cities index says the 20 urban centres included in the report performed poorly in international terms.

Only two of the biggest cities - Brisbane and Melbourne - made the national top 10 and Western Australia's capital, Perth, came last.

The most sustainable city was Darwin, ahead of Queensland's Sunshine Coast.