A visitor to Eastern Europe after the fall of communism would have been awestruck by the massive posters touting Winston cigarettes as “the taste of freedom” that often plastered locations where posters of Chairman Stalin and his ilk has once fluttered. It looked as if Christo had wrapped the Iron Curtain in a project sponsored by R.J. Reynolds.

If there were a taste to energy freedom, it would be salt for sure. Our ancestral mother, the ocean, forms an almost unfathomable medium of mystery — astronaut Scott Carpenter once noted that we know more about the heavens than the sea — but for biofuels, there is every urgent reason to look carefully to salt-friendly projects that can utilize brackish water, or marshes, or the abundant three-dimensional world of the oceans.

Virtually all biofuels projects, at massive scale, run into problems of land and freshwater. A million gallons of this, or even a billion gallons of that, are generally achievable without material changes in land or water usage. Sandia tells us that 90 billion gallons of fuel in the US is feasible from biomass on a sustainable basis.

Although most of my blogs have focused on advice to technology entrepreneurs, I take the chance in this blog to reflect on the role of government in stimulating innovation. I was recently invited to participate in an on-line debate on government’s role in innovation on the Economist.com. The proposition was “This house believes that innovation works best when government does least”

I voted in favor of the motion, for three simple reasons. First, I believe governments are terrible decision makers in the innovation forum; they do not understand it and have access to limited expert help. As a result, much of their activities has, at best, limited impact, at worst damaging effect on the free-market decision-making process. Second, government involvement in innovation is usually slow, motivated by political imperatives and distorts market forces. As a result, it can damage as much as it can help. This is particularly the case when you explore the gestation period of innovation policies, which are longer than the life of government. Finally, by encouraging innovators to respond to government programs and fulfill government requirements, we divert their attention from identifying customers, and expanding internationally. Even with the best intentions, in the words of John Wanamaker

Marla is the consummate creative entrepreneur. She’s a bright creative thinker who follows through and gets things done. Everybody loves her for a reason – she treats everyone she works with, big and small, as a valued collaborator and potential ally. And her creativity is not limited to the artistic sphere – her entrepreneurial vision allows her to conjure new opportunities out of thin air, and she has the business savvy to make her dreams a reality.

Her success – like yours – depends on her ability to master three critical skill-sets:

• Creativity – generating new ideas, evaluating them effectively, taking action to turn them into new products and services.
• Collaboration – connecting and working with partners, clients, and other significant players in your network, which will probably be scattered across the globe and contain more ‘virtual’ relationships than face-to-face ones.
• Entrepreneurship – identifying opportunities in the marketplace and using business skills to turn ideas into products into profits.

Venture capitalists and angel investors can be very useful external sources of capital for established businesses, but the value they bring to new ventures and start-ups is questionable at best. Entrepreneurs should aim to finance their ventures by means other than venture capitalists, private equity and angel investors unless a large fortune is needed to finance business start-up activities or they choose to work with investors specifically focused on very early-stage start-ups. Here are eight strategies in which many entrepreneurs might choose to finance their ventures:

Business Credit Cards
Many successful businesses, such as Under Armour, were financed through credit cards in the very early stages of their venture. While credit cards are not necessarily the most ideal source of financing as they do have their drawbacks, if used correctly they can be a very effective source of financing.

How to use a business credit card correctly:
- Effectively manage cash flow by not having to pay for purchases until the end of the billing cycle. 
- Use to pay for start-up fixed and upfront costs so you can make your first sale 
- Plan ahead on how you will pay off the balance, then create a backup plan

Washington State faces an unprecedented economic crisis and significant revenue shortfalls. Economic recovery and job creation are the top priority. The Commission’s first round recommendations released in February, 2009, focused on augmenting three interdependent components of the innovation ecosystem: talent, investment and infrastructure. Taken together these form the pillars of a new, comprehensive and integrated strategy for economic development. The 2010 legislative priorities adopted by the Commission advance the implementation of this cohesive strategy for the Washington Innovation Economy.

• Commitment to an innovation based economic development strategy;
• Aligning state agencies with the economic development strategy;
• Strengthening local leadership and innovation ecosystems from the bottom‐up;
• Investments in programs that yield a high return (and similarly reducing investments with low or no
• return);
• Well designed and timely outcome metrics;
• Constant adaption to global trends, technologies and market conditions.

The Commission’s first round recommendations released in February, 2009, focused on augmenting three interdependent components of the ecosystem which innovation needs to thrive: talent, investment and infrastructure. Taken together these form the pillars of the comprehensive and integrated approach the Commission has adopted. Below are the 2010 legislative priorities supported by the Commission.

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If you listen to climate scientists — and despite the relentless campaign to discredit their work, you should — it is long past time to do something about emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. If we continue with business as usual, they say, we are facing a rise in global temperatures that will be little short of apocalyptic. And to avoid that apocalypse, we have to wean our economy from the use of fossil fuels, coal above all.

But is it possible to make drastic cuts in greenhouse-gas emissions without destroying our economy?

Like the debate over climate change itself, the debate over climate economics looks very different from the inside than it often does in popular media. The casual reader might have the impression that there are real doubts about whether emissions can be reduced without inflicting severe damage on the economy. In fact, once you filter out the noise generated by special-interest groups, you discover that there is widespread agreement among environmental economists that a market-based program to deal with the threat of climate change — one that limits carbon emissions by putting a price on them — can achieve large results at modest, though not trivial, cost. There is, however, much less agreement on how fast we should move, whether major conservation efforts should start almost immediately or be gradually increased over the course of many decades.

As the economy skids along, and secure, rewarding employment remains out of reach for many, a few young women are creating their own dream jobs, working for themselves.

Erin Estell, 27, took that path when her sales job at Sealmaster Inc., a Northbrook-based fabric-protection company owned by a family friend, evaporated last year in the downturn.

Rather than encouraging her to find another job, Ms. Estell says, her husband pointed her in a different direction. "He said, 'Why don't you start selling your jewelry?' "

Whether you’ve just started your business or been in business for a while, “Smart Business Stupid Business” is a book you’ll want to have. This isn’t one of those books you read for entertainment – it’s a book you’ll want to have on your reference shelf because it answers many (if not all) the financial and administrative questions you might have around starting and running a smart business.

What’s the Difference Between a Smart Business and a Stupid Business?

According to authors Diane Kennedy and Megan Hughes, a smart business is one that can survive a downturn. That’s a rather simple answer, but it’s honest and a lot deeper than it looks. A growing economy might funnel a lot of money into your business, but it can also hide a lot of flaws. A smart business is one that is built on a solid foundation of being clear about the decisions that you make about the structure of your business, the purpose of your business and the systems in your business.

The Association For Manufacturing Technology - AMT provides a link to the listings of those identified State Resources that are focused on helping companies within their respective states develop competitive proposals for various federal programs. Additionally, these state organizations have access to resources that can assist AMT members not only in research and development activities but also in procurement efforts with government prime contractors. These listings are updated as often as we receive information and are kept as current as possible.

Today, everything is social -– social commerce, social business, social CRM. The list goes on and on. But are consumer technologies like Twitter () and Facebook () strategic for implementing a social media business strategy? Can you measure the investment? What are the best options for getting tangible value?

Once you remove the shiny wrapper, there is an incredible amount of depth and value in using social technologies as a way to reach your customers. However, I personally find the word “social” to be a poor descriptor. Terms like community or collaboration tend to be more meaningful. Here are some ways that businesses and tap into the power of online community.

AROUND the time that Apple Computer was making it big in California, Andrey Shtorkh was getting a first-hand look at the Soviet approach to high tech: he guarded the fence keeping scientists inside Sverdlovsk-45, one of the country’s secret scientific cities, deep in the Ural Mountains.

Ostensibly, the cities were closed to guard against spies. Its walls also kept scientists inside, and everybody else in the Soviet Union out. While many people in the country went hungry, the scientific centers were islands of well-being, where store shelves groaned with imported food and other goodies.

Security in these scientific islands was so tight, though, that even children wore badges. Relatives had to apply months in advance for permission to visit. “It was a prison, a closed city in every sense,” recalls Mr. Shtorkh, then a young soldier.

Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI) is once again taking aim at the venture capital industry with a proposal that would require VC, private equity, and hedge funds with more than $30 million under management to register with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Reed proposed this legislation last year, but the Senate’s financial reform bill exempted venture and private equity funds, while requiring hedge funds with more than $100 million in assets to register. Politco reports Reed will offer a similar amendment to the bill, which is awaiting action by the full Senate.

The venture industry lobbied heavily against the registration requirement saying it is unnecessary and would be a burden, especially on small firms.

The U.S. Department of Energy rolled out its Open Government Plan yesterday, pledging to be more transparent about energy policy shifts and to better educate the market about efficiency initiatives. A major part of the latter goal is teaching people about the benefits and importance of the Smart Grid — a concept that consumers and some utilities have yet to rally behind.

Tackling this challenge head on, Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced today that the department will be sinking almost $100 million into 54 different Smart Grid training programs across the country. Targeted at about 30,000 utility workers and electrical equipment manufacturers, these programs will also use $95 million from universities, utilities and industrial groups to design curricula around the modernization of today’s electrical grid.

As some of the oldest and largely unchanged companies in the U.S., utilities move notoriously slow when it comes to adopting new technologies and updating equipment in the field. Some substations and transistors have been in place for decades. One of the reasons for this is that the workforce is older and accustomed to established practices. This new investment in training employees is an attempt by the federal government to shake things up and accelerate change.

I’ve [Matt Marshall] just wrapped up a visit of three cities — Boston, New York and Washington, D.C. — and saw significant startup action happening in each one of those cities.

In New York, several people told me the NY startup community is in fact now as vibrant as ever. Some 500 people joined us at an after-hours party we co-sponsored in Manhattan after the New York Tech Meetup. Even in smaller cities, such as Boston and Washington, we had about 100 people show up to events we’d arranged just days before.

These were informal meetings, but in Boston and Washington, we invited entrepreneurs several entrepreneurs to give three-minute pitches, which was the funnest part (nice write-up of the Boston companies here in BostInnovation). At one point in Washington, the mic went dead, but folks didn’t mind, and kept getting up and shouting out their pitches over the crowd’s noise and background TVs. Below are videos we taped of a few entrepreneurs after our cocktails in Washington: Kevin Dewalt (who is working on a bioinformatics startup, focused on the cloud), Scott Brown (co-founder of TapMetrics, acquired last month by Millennial), and Frank Gruber (working on a new umbrella of startups).

These Innovators and Influencers have had such a significant impact on the wind industry that the staff of Windpower Engineering would like to celebrate their success in this first annual Innovators and Influencers of Wind Power special section.

Wouter van Kempen – president of Duke Energy Generation Services (DEGS), leads Duke Energy’s commercial business that develops, constructs, and operates renewable power facilities, and provides on-site generation for users throughout the U.S. The company owns and operates 733 MW of wind energy as part of its more than 6,500 MW of power generation assets. Van Kempen is responsible for managing the nine wind plants and adding others as needed. He came over to Duke Energy in August 2003 as managing director of mergers and acquisitions.

Before joining the company, van Kempen was employed by General Electric. He joined GE Plastics in 1993 in the Netherlands where he managed European manufacturing productivity programs. Van Kempen was named GE Plastics audit manager for Europe and Asia in 1996 after a series of promotions within GE International, GE Lighting and GE Plastics in Belgium, the Netherlands, London (U.K.), and Pittsfield, Mass. He then assumed the role of senior analyst for corporate financial planning and analysis at GE’s headquarters in Connecticut in 1998, where he was responsible for the company’s operating plans and strategic forecasts. He was named staff executive for corporate mergers and acquisitions in 1999. In this role, he was responsible for managing all aspects of acquisitions and dispositions, including deal activity for several GE divisions.

In most workplaces, there are three generations of workers. The first group we'll consider are the Traditionalists, those who were born some time before 1965. They are likely, at this stage of their careers, to be extremely influential and senior in their organizations. The name Traditionalists, though, is applied because this is a group which embodies the sets of values one most often sees amongst the "old school. They will, most likely, prefer to communicate through structured and rigid hierarchies, and will certainly prefer command-and-control mechanisms in the way they distribute tasks between themselves. As innovators, this group will normally prefer to solve problems they've been directed to examine, and will usually come up with solutions along trajectories which are well established by their organizations. This, naturally, makes them ideally suited to innovation teams which have elected to follow a Play-Not-2-Lose strategy, and whose primary focus is on incremental innovation.

Working RemotelyRemote working is a topic that’s been on my mind a lot lately. First, because of a project I’ve been working on with Microsoft to develop an e-book, “Work Without Walls,” that examines the best practices of small and midsized businesses with remote-working policies. A survey conducted by 7th Sense Research that we used in preparing the e-book had some interesting results.

Among the small businesses surveyed:

• 60 % of employees said they could do their jobs remotely, and 72 percent prefer to work at home;
• 73 % of companies surveyed didn’t have a formal policy allowing employees to work remotely;
• just 14 % of employees said their employers were “fully supportive” of remote working.

By comparison, more than 50 percent of big companies in the survey had formal remote-working policies in place.

We recently covered the mobile web traffic of India (which stands next to US) and the emergence of non-US geographies has simply added to the fact that emerging economies will drive the next wave of web consumption.

A UK mobile analyst firm has predicted that there will be more than 1.4 billion mobile Internet users in Asia by 2015. The announcement indicates a significant growth that mobile industry is likely to witness on Asia’s developing landscape. Even the Telenor Group – whose investments include DTAC in Thailand, Uninor in India and DiGi in Malaysia – said at a press conference last week “Asia is the future”.

From the end of 2009 to the end of 2015, the number of mobile Internet users will increase by 233%, making mobile the primary Internet access channel for brands and businesses to communicate with customers. Asia has long been regarded a market with much potential for mobile internet. mobilesquared

There's a great post on the Harvard Business Review blog called "Should Entrepreneurs Lie?"

Chris Dixon tweeted it, saying "is this a joke? of course they'd shouldn't."

But everyone knows the reality is more complex, so I'm calling this "When Should Entrepreneurs Lie?"

Many times entrepreneurs lie because they expect that the people they're talking to will discount what they're saying in any case. This seems to be generally considered acceptable. The first time I did work for a startup I helped them sell advertising. I was shocked (shocked!) to discover that we weren't actually charging what we claimed we would charge. Our rate card was just a guideline, or rather a basis for a negotiation (and never negotiate up). And in fact, this is standard practice for selling online ads.

And of course there are many more businesses where nobody pays the list price. Consultants and investment bankers, especially in the wake of the econopocalypse, don't get paid what they claim to charge. Some of the big hushed stories are about the heavy discount such or such veeeery prestigious firm took to get a gig that would supposedly be beneath them.

In states across America, higher education institutions and systems are working to become key drivers of economic development and community revitalization. They are:

• Putting their research power to work by developing new ideas that will strengthen the country’s competitive edge in the new economy — and then by helping to deploy those innovations into commercial use.
• Providing a wide range of knowledge-focused services to businesses and other employers, including customized job-training programs, hands-on counseling, technical help, and management assistance.
• Embracing a role in the cultural, social, and educational revitalization of their home communities.
• And, most fundamentally, educating people to succeed in the innovation age.

Together, these trends suggest a new paradigm for economic development programs — one that puts higher education at the center of states’ efforts to succeed in the knowledge economy.

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Authors: David F. Shaffer and David J. Wright