In the year 100,010, some evolved species will be digging through ancient digital rubble and find a strange visual iconography made of tiny colorful squares with rounded corners. They will diligently attempt to decipher what we meant by "I am T-Pain," "Doodle Jump," and "Zombie Farm." Finally, they will conclude that our native tongue was something called Apps.

Every day new apps are introduced for the iPhone, iTouch, and now the iPad (not to mention Android apps). Each represents a new business and the touch-screen icons serve as their "logos." With over 100,000 apps to date and more on the way, this is a creative gold rush for graphic designers and fuels our insatiable lust for designing logos.

The importance of firm formation to net job creation raises the question: Over time, are newly formed businesses employing more or fewer people? Given the number of net new jobs created from firm formation, a decline in startups’ average employment could pose problems for our economy’s ability to generate the jobs we need to reduce current levels of unemployment.

To figure out what has been happening to the initial employment of new businesses, I took a look at data from the Longitudinal Business Database of the U.S. Census (see figure below). The vertical axis measures the average number of employees per new business in its founding year. The blue bars show the average number of employees in new firms by year. The black line shows the five year moving average of that figure.

Just when I think that something is dead it surprises me with a new way which is creative and comes back to life. Offlate Ive felt that banner advertising is dead. But I guess after today I would say creative banner advertising is rare and not dead. Today I came across a banner ad that I not only interacted with but I am also writing this blog post about it.

I went to Youtube today morning and came across this banner ad (Check screenshot below)

If you click on the above you will know that it asks you to click on the banner. Once you click the attributes given to the girl start changing after she starts having sprite. Check each time you click the banner changes on attribute. At the end she gets her match.

Check how banner looks at the end of 4 clicks:

"Changing the game" is the motto of Sportvision, a company that takes pictures of sporting events.

In baseball, at least, Sportvision is doing exactly that.

Sportvision's primary business is selling "enhancements for sports television." The images it captures are used to create neat graphical overlays shown on TV.

But the data Sportvision collects is doing a lot more than that. The company's baseball analytics tools, PITCHf/x, HITf/x, and FIELDf/x, capture the precise flight of the ball and movement of the players at every stage of play, giving teams, analysts, and fans far more information about the game than would have been possible just a few years ago.

A few weeks ago I [Arno Harris] flagged a story in the Christian Science Monitor titled "Stimulus Funds for Clean Energy Largely Unspent" because I thought it deserved a clarifying 'blog post. The story repeats several big misunderstandings about the status of renewable energy programs included in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA). The general thrust of the story is that the lack of immediate and large uptake of stimulus funds is a sign that the program isn't working or having its intended result.

The reality is that despite the low outflows of ARRA funds to date, the stimulus program is playing an important role in maintaining business continuity for developers of solar and wind projects in the US. In fact, the expiration of the program at the end of this year poses a major disruptive threat to the progress that's been made in renewable energy in the US over the last few years. It's critical that we get the program extended for a couple more years to enable the industry to recover fully.

ARRA was passed in the early days of the Obama administration as the magnitude of the financial crisis began to unfold. Among its many provisions was a section intended to support continued development of renewable energy projects--particularly wind and solar projects. The provision allows wind and solar developers to receive a cash grant in lieu of the Investment Tax Credit (ITC).

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Google Inc. Chief Executive Eric Schmidt told a group of editors Sunday that he is confident that newspapers will find new ways to make money online by harnessing the vast reach of the Internet.

Media executives have accused Google of draining readers and advertising from newspapers' Web sites. But in a speech to open the annual conference of the American Society of News Editors, Schmidt said Google recognizes that newspapers are vital to democracy and provide a critical source of online content.

"We understand how fundamental your mission is," he said.

Schmidt predicted that the news business will find a new model, based on a combination of advertising and subscription revenue. He said Google hopes to facilitate that, but he offered no specifics.

Go ahead, LOL. A sense of humor is an under-rated tool for entrepreneurs, innovators, and change agents. And that's no joke.

To keep the recovery going and put people back to work, imaginative entrepreneurs must start new businesses and revitalize old ones. Creative leaders unlock ingenuity and build support for change by lightening up. They are willing to consider new possibilities that seem absurd, even ludicrous, at first. They shake up thinking as though shaking a kaleidoscope, allowing surprising new juxtapositions to emerge. This is exactly what humor is all about: playing with ideas, challenging assumptions, and poking fun at tradition.

Some entrepreneurs thrive on humor. Monster.com founder Jeff Taylor went on both to start new Internet ventures and crack jokes as a part-time radio disk jockey. Former BBC head Greg Dyke produced a wave of creativity, including development of the BBC hit comedy, The Office, by going to ridiculous extremes that gave others permission to float "silly" (and often successful) ideas. For example, he printed yellow cards resembling penalty cards in European soccer marked "Cut the crap, make it happen" that could be tossed on the table during ponderous meetings.

VENTURE capital and private equity investments in China jumped last month backed by positive investments in information technology industries, an industry report said today.

VC and PE firms invested US$418 million in 46 businesses through March, compared with US$292 million in 18 cases a month earlier, Zero2IPO Research Center said.

Investments in information technology sector totaled US$192 million, accounting for 46.2 percent of the total, in 20 cases, the report said.

As national organizations that support the start-up and growth of innovative small businesses, we want to express the importance of ensuring that the Restoring American Financial Stability Act of 2010 does not damage angel investing and particularly the entrepreneurial businesses they support. We join the Angel Capital Association in asking that two small sections in the bill be removed or modified:

• Section 412 and 413, Adjusting the Accredited Investor Standard for Inflation. As currently written, this section could result in the elimination of as many as two-thirds of all accredited investors who invest directly in start-up and early-stage small businesses.
• Section 926, Authority of State Regulators Over Regulation D Offerings. This section could make it more difficult to raise angel capital from investors in different states, make it unclear what entities regulate angel investments, and introduce potential lengthy waiting periods for businesses to receive their capital, possibly resulting in the death of those businesses.
• We appreciate the importance of regulation to protect investors from fraud, but we urge the Senate to consider several factors in improving these sections of the legislation:
• Entrepreneurial companies are important to job creation and innovation in the United States. We note particularly the study by the US Census Bureau that companies five years old or less created all of the net new jobs over a 25 year period.
• Angel investors are an important source of capital for many of these innovative start-ups. For instance, one of the signatories to this letter, the Association of University Technology Managers (AUTM), has tracked the source of initial funding for university spin-out companies for the past five years. They have consistently found that accredited individual investors are the source of initial funding for a third of all university start-up companies. All of the signing organizations are therefore deeply concerned about any changes that would diminish the size of the pool of accredited investors.
• Establishing standards that would significantly cut back on the pool of angel capital is especially difficult during the recession, when small businesses are having trouble finding capital, especially in the $100,000 to $2 million range that is sometimes referred to as the “Valley of Death.”
• Startup and seed investments are precisely the types of financing that need uniformity and simplicity the most. It is important to ensure that entrepreneurs raising capital have the same regulations regardless of their state and that they are not subjected to excessive legal costs, delays, complexity, and uncertainty that would follow from Section 926 as currently written.
• Consider “beefing up” accredited investor protections for private offerings by clarifying who is disqualified from involvement in these financings and developing more accessible information on individuals and entities with prior records of fraud and deceit in any type of investment activity, so that federal and state securities regulators can more easily review Regulation D filings to ensure that new investment offerings do not include those people and entities.

Thanks for your consideration of these issues and your support of innovative small businesses. We want to ensure that the entrepreneurial startups that create important innovations and high quality jobs not only continue to have this important type of capital so they can grow, but that they are not subjected to regulations that make new and existing companies die for lack of capital or waiting to clear 120 day hurdles and large legal costs to get regulatory approval for the legitimate capital they raised.

Sincerely,

Dan Berglund State Science & Technology Institute

Marianne Hudson Angel Capital Association

Jim Jaffe National Association of Seed and Venture Funds

David Monkman National Business Incubation Association

Matthew Nemerson Technology Councils of North America

Rohit Shukla Larta Institute

Ashley Stevens, D. Phil (Oxon), CLP Association of University Technology Managers

Kerwin Tesdell Community Development Venture Capital Alliance

Eileen Walker Association of University Research Parks

I [Stefan Lindegaard] have just attended a great conference by 100% Open which is a new agency specialising in open innovation. They have an interesting Jam & Discover approach to open innovation and they also run networks and extend into training and venturing. Check out their site: 100% Open

At the conference, I picked up a new report: Open innovation – From marginal to mainstream. In this, they had some guiding principles and since I could not find it online I have typed in their guiding principle on communication below as I find it worth sharing. UPDATE: You can read the full report here: NESTA

100% Open Guiding Principle on Communication:

• Many large organisations are trying to become open innovators by first trying to change their culture. Whilst this is rational, it rarely seems to work. Companies will often change their ways of doing things more happily and spontaneously if the see first-hand evidence of colleagues adopting a new approach and it working. Success sells.

In today's challenging economic environment, technology start-ups can struggle to bring new ideas to market. In response, IBM (NYSE: IBM) opened its resources to these companies in a new initiative to help this next generation of entrepreneurs capture emerging business opportunities in fast-growing industries such as energy and utilities, health care, telecommunications and government.

The IBM Global Entrepreneur initiative provides start-ups with no-charge access to industry-specific technologies in a cloud computing environment. Under the new program, IBM will provide access to its Research community as well as sales, marketing and technical skills. IBM invests more than $6 billion per year in Research with more than 3,000 people in eight labs around the world. With more than 4,914 new patents in 2009 alone, IBM has experience bringing innovative technologies to market.

IBM is uniquely positioned to help start-ups because of the depth of resources, expertise, and experience with the most forward-thinking institutions, governments, and businesses around the world. With its Smarter Planet strategy and years of investments in research, IBM is skilled in building product and services offerings for businesses based on new ideas. IBM Industry Frameworks, for example, are software platforms targeted to industry specific market opportunities such as Smarter Water, Smarter Buildings and Smarter Health Care.

Though rising numbers from the final quarter for 2009 had many hopeful that 2010 would see a rebound of venture capital funds, new data from the Nation Venture Capital Association (NVCA) is bound to disappoint as Q1 2010 saw the lowest first quarter numbers (PDF) in 17 years. According to the NVCA, just $3.6 billion has been raised so far this year by VCs compared to $5.2 billion in 2009 and $7.1 billion 2008.

"Over the last two years, alternative asset allocations have declined and the exit market has suffered, putting venture firms in the unenviable position of communicating their value in an extremely challenging environment," says Heesen. "Many firms have been waiting until the exit market improves before embarking upon their fundraising efforts."

It’s not enough that Warren Buffett has become one of the richest men in the world. He’s also a world-class storyteller – and nowhere does this gift go on public display more than in his annual letter to shareholders.

His latest  letter on the Berkshire Hathaway Web site offers terrific lessons for startup ventures in shaping their communications.

Lesson No. 1: Converse Like a Real Human Being

There’s something about a position of power that often causes perfectly normal executives to embrace “corporate speak.” Their communications become stiff and jargon-filled drivel.

In contrast, look at how Buffett explains his philosophy of empowerment:

We tend to let our many subsidiaries operate on their own, without our supervising and monitoring them to any degree. That means we are sometimes late in spotting management problems and that both operating and capital decisions are occasionally made with which Charlie and I would have disagreed had we been consulted.

Duncan Stewart doesn't pretend to know where the world of technology is going, but he's never shy about expressing an opinion, usually with considerable vigour.

After two decades as a high-tech analyst, money manager, venture capitalist and media commentator, Deloitte Canada's resident high-tech guru also has the street cred to back up his views.

So when Stewart addresses the annual TEC VenturePrize awards luncheon Thursday, my guess is the audience won't be bored. Stewart has a habit of calling it as he sees it, whether good, bad or ugly.

Tengion Inc.’s initial public offering on Friday harks back to the days when small venture-backed companies routinely employed boutique investment banks to escort themselves to the public markets.

The biotechnology company raised $30 million in the IPO, the smallest venture-backed offering since Feb. 19, 2008, when another unprofitable biotech, Bioheart Inc., earned just $5.8 million in proceeds in a slimmed down offering. Tengion is also the first such company since Bioheart to use boutique banks solely as bookrunners - which do the majority of work and collect the largest fees.

A year ago, the National Venture Capital Association urged the venture capital community to hire boutiques to take companies public, much like the industry did during the 1990s, arguing that VCs have relied too heavily on so-called bulge-bracket banks that aren’t interested in smaller companies.

Boutique investment banks can handle smaller transactions that have less appeal to larger banks. They’re also more likely to have staff with specialized experience needed to market offerings from small technology and health care companies to long-term investors, some observers say.

Transcript of Governor Schwarzenegger Announcing the Establishment of the Office of Economic Development

SECRETARY BRADSHAW:

Good morning, everyone. Let me be the first one to officially welcome you to the Governor's Office of Economic Development. (Applause) My name is Vickie Bradshaw and I'm California Secretary for Labor and Workforce Development and I'm going to introduce a few people before we get started. Robert Rivinius, president and CEO of the Building Industry Trade Association; (Applause) Patricia Fong Kushida, president and CEO of the California Asian-Pacific Chamber of Commerce; (Applause) Steve Gándota, Sacramento Hispanic Chamber of Commerce; (Applause) Juan Alday, director of the Latin Business Association; (Applause) Ken Macias, the chairman of the California Hispanic Chamber of Commerce; (Applause) Stuart Drown, the executive director of the Little Hoover Commission; (Applause) Wayne Schell, the president and CEO of the Association of Local Economic Development; (Applause) Danny Curtin, the director of the California Conference of Carpenters; (Applause) Some of them are buried deep in the back. Aubry Stone, the president and CEO of the Black Chamber of Commerce; (Applause) Bill Dombrowski, the president and CEO of the California Retailers Association; (Applause) Edwin Lombard, board member of the Black Chamber of Commerce; (Applause) Malaki Seku-Amen, the legislative advocate for the California State Conference of the NAACP; (Applause) Linda Adams, the Secretary of Cal EPA; (Applause) a couple other cabinet members are tied up at the moment. Bill Leonard and Teri Takai - ah, we found him. Bill Leonard is making his way up. And Undersecretary Will Brown of the California Department of Food and Ag. (Applause)

Good Company Ventures is hosting its Philly launch event about social entrepreneurship and mission-driven investment. Then the party moves to Ladder 15 for the Philly Startup Leaders happy hour.

Agenda
5:00 Registration
5:30 Introductions -- Beth Cohen

GoodCompany 2009 Company Speed Pitches
GoodCompany 2010 Social Impact Incubator -- Garrrett Melby, Chris Bentley
Missioneurs -- Blake Jennelle

6:15 Panel Discussion -- Venture Capital as Engine of Social Innovation

Josh Kopelman, Gil Beyda, Nate Lentz, Len Lodish, Tom Balderston, Jacob Gray (Moderator)

7:15 Networking Reception

Kenya's National Council for Science and Technology and the British Council are to work together to expand the Africa Knowledge Transfer Partnership programme. The aim is to provide opportunities for businesses to improve their competitiveness and productivity through the better use of higher education knowledge, technology and expertise.

African Knowledge Transfer Partnerships, or AKTPs, are UK-sponsored partnerships between higher education institutions and private sector organisations in the UK and Sub-Saharan Africa. The partnerships are being piloted in six African countries - Kenya, Uganda, Ghana, Nigeria, South Africa and Rwanda.

The aim, according the British Council, is to help companies improve their productivity and competitiveness by using the scientific knowledge, technology and skills available in higher education institutions through collaborative projects.

Neatorama calls this clutch eco-conscious and fashionably stylish, but I disagree. While recycling a keyboard may be a good idea, I wouldn't be caught dead enjoying a night on the town with this thing.