(CNN) -- Those living in the sunny innovation capital of the world better up their game or they will be left in Chinese tech dust.

At least, that was the theme of a spate of recent tech conferences held in Beijing.

China is becoming "a hotbed of tech innovation of global impact and also a magnet to attract top tier entrepreneurs coming from all over the world in the same fashion as the Silicon Valley," said Franck Nazikian, president of CHINICT, which bills itself as the largest conference on China tech innovation and entrepreneurship.

“In 1998, 3.4 million Chinese attended university. In 2008, the number was 21.5 million. Once a privilege for a select few, college education has defined a generational experience in China.”

These numbers come from an excellent presentation by Frank Yu, who tried to put it up on Slideshare, but in accordance with the mysterious ways of China, it disappeared. I’m sure he will send it to you if you ask.

Frank gave the presentation at Re-think Shanghai, one of the excellent events Geeks on a Plane attended in Asia over the past three weeks. This wonderful eye-opening tour of what’s going on in Asian entrepreneurship unlocked all kinds of feelings in me, and I’m sure they will be spilling out for months. But here’s my summary of Frank’s hypothesis.

Recent reports cite problems with the US innovation system and tech transfer. Now a new report, ‘Sparking Economic Growth’ from The Science Coalition, a nonprofit organisation of 50 public and private US universities based in Washington, DC, studies the origins of 100 successful companies and lauds federally-funded university research for continuing to spawn innovation, new companies, and jobs.

The federal government is the primary source of money for basic research, supplying about 60 per cent of funding in the US. The second-largest source of basic research funding is academic institutions themselves.

The forum is funded by the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC), to help technology transfer offices of universities, institutions, research councils and government-funded laboratories find the management they need to commercialise new technologies and create spin-out businesses. At the same time, UKIF will provide business people, who wish to create spin-outs, access to this technology.

The organisation has been set up by Ian Tracey, of STFC’s Innovations team, and Gerald Law who is responsible for several successful spin-out companies. UKIF has two other research councils, the Natural Environment Research Council and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, ten of the UK’s leading universities, and a number of knowledge transfer networks, science parks and funding bodies, as members.

I [Nick Leiber] moderated a panel yesterday at the inaugural We Own It Summit in downtown Manhattan. The daylong event, hatched through many meetings of the minds at 24 organizations including Astia, the Kauffman Foundation, and Springboard Enterprises, was meant to drum up practical ideas on boosting women’s participation in high-growth entrepreneurship.

My panel was about venture capital. To set the scene, I cited data from the Center for Women’s Business Research that show that while about 41 percent of private companies in the U.S. are owned by women, only 3 percent to 5 percent of them get venture capital. Then the panelists, experienced entrepreneurs and equity investors Heidi Messer (World Evolved), Diane Mulcahy (Babson College), Divya Gugnani (Behind the Burner), and Anu Shukla (KM), candidly described their experiences on both sides of the funding table to an audience of about 45 women and a handful of men. One of the big (if obvious) takeaways: venture money is available but there are still plenty of gender-related obstacles. After that, the discussion began, with panelists and folks in the audience kicking around prescriptions for improving the odds.

WASHINGTON, June 10 /PRNewswire/ -- A group of America's top business executives today released a plan to make America a global leader in energy technology innovation, and in meetings at the White House and with Congressional leaders called for urgent action to begin the national transition to clean, affordable, and secure supplies of energy.

The American Energy Innovation Council (AEIC) -- whose members include Bill Gates, chairman and former chief executive of Microsoft; Norm Augustine, former chairman of Lockheed Martin; Ursula Burns, chairman and chief executive of Xerox; John Doerr, partner at Kleiner Perkins; Chad Holliday, chairman of Bank of America and former CEO of DuPont; Jeff Immelt, chief executive of GE; and Tim Solso, chairman and chief executive of Cummins -- said in its report, "A Business Plan for America's Energy Future," that reforming and strengthening U.S. investment in energy innovation is the most critical element to securing America's future.

Angel investor Bill Warner is launching a three-month incubator for startups, located inside the Cambridge Innovation Center. Unlike existing incubators, such as Techstars and Y-Combinator, Warner’s project, called the Anything Goes Accelerator Lab, will not take equity in the startups it admits, and it will not evaluate candidates based on business plans, he said.

Warner said starting this fall, the program’s 80-or-so so slots will be filled by founder teams that show potential. Each will pay $350 a month for three months to get office space in the CIC’s coworking environment, access to tools developed by Warner and colleagues, and a network of informal mentors.

Warner and collaborator Nick Tommarello, a co-founder at Cambridge startup Sparkcloud, in which Warner is an investor, plan to base the three-month program on agile development concepts typically used in the software industry. Tommarello will work part-time on the project, as he remains on the founding team at Sparkcloud.

After at least 40 states made mid-year budget cuts in FY 2010 totaling $22 billion, the prospect for rosier times is after 2012, according to the latest biannual Fiscal Survey of the States conducted jointly by the National Governors Association and the National Association of State Budget Officers. The midterm cuts meant states' spending was reduced from $687.3 billion in FY 2008 to $612.9 billion in FY 2010 - at the same time mandatory spending continued to increase. The report indicates FY2011 will be challenging for many states, in spite of modest revenue growth.

"Because states lag behind national recovery, they expect 2011 to be as bad as 2010, and states will not begin the path to recovery until 2012," said NGA Executive Director Raymond C. Scheppach. NGA and NASBO expect states not to see 2008 revenue levels until 2013 at the soonest.

The Survey is available here: http://www.nga.org/Files/pdf/FSS1006.PDF.

Conventional wisdom says that private equity investors should place primary importance on the management team. For angel investors, future financing risk is also a critical consideration. Here’s why:

Angel Investors typically invest after friends and family, but before “institutional money” (VCs and the like).  This is inherently dangerous because of the risk of falling into the funding chasm (see my post on the funding chasm).

Even if the team, market and product all look exciting, a savvy angel investor should separately evaluate the probability that the company can raise their next round of capital. To do this analysis, here is a good set of questions to ask:

The newly formed Tech South East, an organization aimed at growing the technology and health and life science sectors, unveiled its mission yesterday in a kickoff at the Capitol Theatre.

Doug Robertson, president and CEO, was on hand to officially launch the opening of Tech South East yesterday at the Capitol Theatre.

The organization, with Doug Robertson at the helm as president and CEO and Jon Manship of Technology Venture Corporation chairing the board of directors, grew out of the Moncton Technology Planning Group, created in 2004 by community leaders representing technology-based business, institutional research, venture capital and local government.

Partnerships with the IC2 group in Austin, Texas and the City of Oulu, Finland led to research in how communities can grow innovation through establishing a common vision, and that and other work ultimately led to yesterday's event, at which broad support from various community leaders was obvious, given the attendance of close to 200 people from various interested parties.

These strategic partners include the Province of New Brunswick, which has contributed $331,000 to the organization, it was announced by Premier Shawn Graham at yesterday's ceremony.

RICH BENDIS PRESIDENT AND CEO OF INNOVATION AMERICA, CONGRATULATES DOUG ROBERTSON AND THE TECH SOUTH EAST TEAM ON THIS MILESTONE EVENT AND WISHES THEM MUCH SUCCESS AS THE NEW INNOVATION INTERMEDIARY FOR THIS GROWING REGION  IN NEW BRUNSWICK, CANADA.

Gathered around a large, sun-drenched table in the SoMa neighborhood of San Francisco on a Friday afternoon are financial advisers, activists, marketers, designers, coders, lawyers, and a half-dozen more local entrepreneurs. There are representatives from the microlending empire Kiva, social justice organization MercyCorps, and a solar-energy company based in India. At the table's head is David Bornstein, author of How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas, widely considered to be the bible of social entrepreneurship, who casually addresses the group as they tuck into deli sandwiches and takeout sushi.

This is not some kind of exclusive golden-circle conference. This is a typical day at Hub SoMa, a 8600-square-foot shared workspace for socially focused enterprises, where a visitor at any hour of the day will witness similar exchanges between the several dozen startups, business incubators, and non-profits that inhabit the space. And today, acknowledges managing director Alex Michel, as he grins and gestures to the remains of a few white wine bottles left on a counter, you may also see a few hangovers from a massive opening party that rocked the space the night before.

Who is an entrepreneur really?

It turns out that there are four distinct types of entrepreneurial organizations; small businesses, scalable startups, large companies and social entrepreneurs.

They all engage in entrepreneurship.

Yet entrepreneurs in one class think that the others aren’t the “real” entrepreneurs.

This post looks at the differences and similarities and explains why there’s such confusion.

Last week Anita Campbell let us know about what happened at National Small Business Week and the Small Business Administration’s focus on the “3 C’s”: capital, contracts and counseling. There was so much said about the first “C”, capital, I thought it was worth a deeper look.

In her kickoff address SBA Administrator Karen Mills brought us up to date on the results from last year’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) which to date has lent $27 billion to small businesses. But as Mills said, “There’s more work to do.”

To that end, President Obama encouraged Congress to pass the Small Business Lending Fund Act. The House financial services committee has already approved parts of the bill and it will soon go before the full House and the Senate. Mills called the Act a “small business jobs plan.”

"WHERE IS THE BEEF" FOR INNOVATIVE AND ENTREPRENEURIAL SMALL BUSINESSES? THIS PLAN DOES NOTHING FOR THE EARLY STAGE , TECHNOLOGY BUSINESSES THAT HAVE NO ASSETS AND THE LEADERS CANNOT GIVE PERSONAL GUARANTEES. WE STILL HAVE A "VALLEY OF DEATH" WHICH HAS NOT BEEN RECOGNIZED BY THIS ADMINISTRATION, WHICH RELATES TO THOSE FIRMS WHICH NEED EQUITY CAPITAL AND THE ANGELS, VC'S AND STATE TECHNOLOGY BASED ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMS, IN SOME CASES, CAN'T , WON'T OR DO NOT HAVE THE RESOURCES TO INVEST.

IN ADDITION CONGRESS CANNOT REACH AGREEMENT ON THE REAUTHORITIZATION OF THE SBIR PROGRAM, WHICH IS GLOBALLY THE MOST INNOVATIVE, EARLY STAGE FINANCING PROGRAM THAT EXISTS.

PLEASE PRESIDENT OBAMA, LETS DO SOMETHING TO PROTECT , SUPPORT AND GROW ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT SEGMENTS OF THE U.S. ECONOMY, "HIGH GROWTH, INNOVATIVE, SMALL BUSINESS ENTREPRENEURS"!  ........

COMMENT BY RICH BENDIS,PRESIDENT AND CEO OF INNOVATION AMERICA

VCs are on the hunt, and it doesn’t matter if a company is in Boston, Beijing, or Menlo Park, they’re looking to fund great ideas anywhere in the world. Some are even opening offices overseas in an effort to find the next big international thing.

With America's economy still shaky, Kiplinger's Personal Finance Magazine released the best cities for the next decade on Tuesday. These cities, which offer promising job prospects, were selected based on population growth, unemployment rate, income growth and cost of living. And, the winner is?

Austin, Texas.

That's a ranking Bijoy Goswami of Austin is excited the city has earned. Attracted by the city's booming technology sector, Goswami moved to Austin in 1995 after college. Since then, his career has flourished, he says, thanks to the city's supportive business climate. At 37, he's managed to run a start-up, write a book and produce a short film.

"Because entrepreneurship is the ethos of Austin, it's part of what makes it so special here," Goswami said.

Researchers at an Australian university have developed the first dipstick-type test to determine blood type. The test involves putting a drop of blood onto a thin piece of paper that has been specially printed with antibodies; as the blood seeps into different parts of the paper, the blood type is revealed. The researchers say the test, which costs pennies, could improve medical treatments in the developing world.

Blood typing is one of the most basic medical tests, but it currently requires delicate analysis with microfluidic or optical devices and costs hundreds of dollars per test. People have one of four main blood types, based on antigens on the red blood cells: A, B, AB, and O. Knowledge of blood type is critical to successful blood transfusions, which save millions of lives each year worldwide, and using the wrong type of blood can trigger a fatal reaction

If you have a son or daughter graduating from college this year, you’ve probably gotten the word. When meeting this year’s college grads it’s best not to ask: “Hey, what are you doing next year?” Too many recent graduates don’t have an answer. They can’t find jobs even remotely related to their fields. This year’s graduation theme is: “Don’t ask. Can’t say.”

We owe our young people something better — and the solution is not that complicated, although it is amazing how little it is discussed in the Washington policy debates. We need three things: start-ups, start-ups and more start-ups.

Good jobs — in bulk — don’t come from government. They come from risk-takers starting businesses — businesses that make people’s lives healthier, more productive, more comfortable or more entertained, with services and products that can be sold around the world. You can’t be for jobs and against business.

I’m typing this from the lawn of Alan Patricof’s “Greycroft” home in East Hampton – my first time in the Hamptons.  Greycroft is Alan’s venture capital firm that recently raised its second fund ($130 million) with offices in both New York and LA.  We learned this weekend that it was named after his East Hampton home.

We’re here for Greycroft’s CEO Summit – a gathering of the CEO’s of their portfolio companies with guest speakers covering topics including how to build your team, PR, customer development, etc.

My favorite two quotes of the weekend were:

• “Never trade your cat for somebody else’s dog” (referring to selling your company for stock to another privately held company – quote was from Alan.  I’m going to save that for a future blog post
• “Nail it before you scale it” – I missed who said this but I love this quote.  It is the key to “customer development” that Steve Blank talks about.  Get your product/market fit working before you ramp up your costs (or raise too much money).

The average local retailer or restaurant may not be a feasible candidate for venture capital funding, but if you have an idea for an innovative product or service-or if you are starting a small business that could otherwise be positioned for high growth-you may want to consider stepping into the venture capital game.

Venture capital is an elusive animal-Guy Kawasaki, managing director for Garage Technology Ventures, admitted in a recent post on his blog that "someone once told me that the probability of an entrepreneur getting venture capital is the same as getting struck by lightning while standing at the bottom of a swimming pool on a sunny day. This may be too optimistic."

However, venture capital can also be immensely valuable for a small business in the tough startup stage. Here are seven questions to assess whether you are a good candidate for VC funding.

Engaging Economic Development


Engaging Economic Development -