China's first offshore wind farm, a 102-megawatt array that's set to come to full power this month in the Yangtze River delta near Shanghai, looks to be the start of something big. Chinese officials announced plans last month to request bids for three to four large-scale offshore wind power projects generating up to 1,000 megawatts total. Beijing-based energy consultancy Azure International predicts that China will install 514 megawatts of offshore wind over the next three to four years, and by 2020 will have invested $100 billion to install up to 30,000 megawatts. That's equal to all of the onshore wind farms currently installed in China, already the world's largest market for wind power.

China's offshore winds are slower than Europe's because they cross Asia before striking out to sea, whereas the North Sea's winds travel an unimpeded transatlantic path. But 40 percent of China's population lives along the eastern seaboard. China is building a transmission supergrid to bring in hydroelectric, coal, and wind power from western China, but Meyer says leaders of coastal provinces see offshore development as a means of local investment. "China still has a very locally protectionist economy. There's an interest from provincial governments to support the coastal economy and jobs by supporting a wind industry in their backyard," says Sebastian Meyer, Azure's research director.

Here are some examples of the ways our Most Innovative Companies are taking advantage of Apple's new tablet.

Facebook: Interestingly, Facebook hasn't released a dedicated iPad app yet--but "Facebook Ultimate," a Facebook iPad app with no connection to those behind Facebook, has managed to crack into the top 10 paid apps in just two days' time. It's made pretty clear that this is an unofficial app, so once Facebook does enter the fray, they'll probably knock Facebook Ultimate way down the list.

Amazon: Amazon's got two official apps in the iPad App Store: one for their essential movie-and-tv listings property, the Internet Movie Database, and one for the Kindle. Though the Kindle may not have fancy-pants page-turning animations, it does have a catalog that positively dwarfs the iBookstore--450,000 titles to Apple's mere 60,000. Plus, most of the titles still hold to Amazon's cheaper $9.99 pricing. It's surprising that Apple even let the Kindle app into the App Store--especially since it's more established and even preferable to Apple's own offering. And the IMDb app is surprisingly excellent: it's easy to navigate with fingers, and it gives access to HD movie trailers, galleries, and even local showtimes.

Netflix: Possibly the killer iPad app, Netflix's entry in the app store is one of the most exciting iPad apps ever (granted, it's only two days old, but still). Stream Netflix Instant Watch titles over Wi-Fi anywhere you take your iPad, customize your queue, and take advantage of Netflix's unbeatable library. Until that rumored Hulu app hits the App Store, Netflix is the king of iPad streaming video.

We cover a lot of robots here on Fast Company, sometimes exciting tech, sometimes promising for healthcare, or the future of daily life...and sometimes outright creepy. The latest Japanese android is firmly in this category.

She's a product of the Intelligent Robotics lab at Osaka University and robot builders Kokoro Co. Ltd., and she's dubbed Geminoid F (the "f" is for female.) And all that use of the word "she" is justified, as the bot is quite definitely convincingly female--which technically makes her a gynoid rather than an android. All this super realism is because she's modeled after a real twenty-something Japanese woman--on the right in that image above--via a sophisticated scanning system. Silicone realistic skin, convincing hair, and teeth that seem so real they make Geminoid F have a nearly human smile. Add in subtle movements, driven by a batch of servos, that give the robot the ability to raise an eyebrow, or mimic those tiny tics that our fallible flash-and-blood bodies get up to all the time without us realizing, and you've got a machine that is freakishly real. She truly delves into that uncanny valley between detectably artificial and undetectable human-mimicing. 

American academic leaders are casting a wary eye on developments in higher education in the rest of the world. Will the Bologna Process give Europe an edge? Will the development of research universities in countries outside the West stop the best talent from coming to the United States? What does it mean when American colleges and universities open up campuses thousands of miles away from their home base?

Ben Wildavsky argues that these and many other changes are indeed significant and are bringing about a "globalization" of higher education. But while some observers fear these developments could hurt American higher education, Wildavsky argues that the changes have the potential to be a win-win for all involved (and that these and other forms of globalization are now inevitable). He makes his case in a new book, The Great Brain Race: How Global Universities Are Reshaping the World (Princeton University Press). Wildavsky, a senior fellow at the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, answered questions about the themes of the book.

princetonacademics — March 25, 2010 — A Keller Center panel discussion on technology commercialization of university scientific and engineering inventions. The panel is moderated by Professor Ed Zschau, who has been an entrepreneur and a venture capital investor, as well as a two-term U.S. congressman. Zschau currently teaches the popular "High-Tech Entrepreneurship" course at Princeton.

It’s been an under-reported, or at least under-emphasized fact as we pull out of the economic collapse.

Rising employment and productivity in the manufacturing sector is leading this country back to health. Just plain ‘ol nuts and bolts, get your hands dirty, manufacturing. Making things.

Some data points to consider.

• March employment data released today confirms that manufacturing activity is growing at its fastest pace in five-and-a-half years, helping the nation avoid a double-dip recession.

I recently wrote a blog post on understanding how the size and age of a venture capital fund might affect you when you’re raising money.  Because it is a “series” I plan to get into some of the deeper complexities of funds such as “cross over funds” and “why VC’s hate to price their own deals” at a later stage. The last post was a high-level primer.  I know many super experienced entrepreneurs who don’t understand the basics of how fund size and age can affect them so I thought it was worth establishing a baseline.

Chris Dixon provided some commentary on Twitter that he believes my last post missed “the most important point about fund size.”  He’s specifically referring to his point of view that entrepreneurs shouldn’t take seed money from “big VC’s” (he defines them as > $100 million).  It actually wasn’t the point of my post – my point was just to get people thinking about the issues of size and age in the first place.

But I understand Chris’s sentiment and in certain situations I agree. But while he’s directionally right that there are risks, he’s wrong to rule out all VC’s who do seed investing. Yes, I’m a VC who does seed investing so I have a bias. But Chris is a seed investor who competes for deals with VCs so the bias runs both ways. I bet if we discussed the issue live we’d probably end up agreeing more than disagreeing.

Thomas L. Friedman, The New York Times's op-editorialist extraordinaire, penned a Sunday column about a topic that could affect the future of the U.S. economy. But while his overall point is on target -- he misses the mark in a key way.

I agree with Friedman (pictured) on the main point, that a recovery depends on small companies creating jobs. However, his prescription -- increasing the number of what he calls "high-IQ risk-takers" in the U.S. -- won't do the trick. Instead, jobs will result when entrepreneurs can get the capital they need to start and build successful ventures. And getting that money takes more than just smart people.

Friedman's argument springs from what appears to be an interview with Craig Mundie, the chief research and strategy officer of Microsoft (MSFT). Although Microsoft has been a relative laggard technologically for at least the last decade, Friedman appears to be swept away by Mundie's viewpoint.

The Microsoft exec suggests that the problem with the U.S. economy is that so-called high-IQ risk-takers (a phrase that Friedman repeats eight times in his column) in business and government are being discouraged by "cutbacks in higher education, restrictions on immigration and a toxic public space that dissuades talented people from going into government." Moreover, Mundie argues that the common element that explains the "above-average returns as a country" for Singapore, Israel and America has been those high-IQ risk-takers.

Question: I liked your article on VentureBeat a couple of weeks ago about what to watch-out for as a buyer of a business. What about if I’m a seller? I’m the founder of a web-based music business, and I’m ready to sell and move onto my next venture. Any advice would be appreciated.

Answer: Thanks! Here are five quick tips in connection with selling a venture:

Be Careful with Private Equity Buyers. Private equity firms are in the business of buying and selling companies. Accordingly, they are extremely sophisticated and savvy and are often represented by large, aggressive law firms. Deals with private equity buyers are generally more complex than those done with strategic buyers due to, among other things, the level(s) of debt added to the target and/or financial engineering.

Moreover, unlike most strategic buyers, private equity buyers usually require the selling entrepreneur to rollover part of his/her equity into the acquirer (or, in other words, to maintain skin in the game) and may include a financing condition in the acquisition agreement – which in today’s choppy debt markets adds a level of uncertainty to closure.

140 Apply for 25 Openings in Unique Initiative by NYU-Poly and NYSERDA to Nurture Leaders for New York’s Clean-Tech Future

NEW YORK, April 5, 2010 – An elite and diverse group of 25 New York business leaders — each with more than 20 years of experience — is going back to school to learn the tools of the new clean-tech economy. Selected from a highly competitive pool of 140 applicants, these executives are participating in the inaugural program – a rigorous academic initiative aimed at turning them into clean-technology business leaders and entrepreneurs.

CleantechExecs is a unique executive education program created by the Polytechnic Institute of New York University (NYU-Poly) with the New York State Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA). It prepares top talent to help build a clean-tech business cluster in New York City.

“The response to our call for applicants was remarkable, in large part because the business community recognizes that clean technology will soon touch every business in America, not just those dedicated to producing ‘green’ goods and services,” said Dr. Mel Horwitch, professor at NYU-Poly’s Department of Technology Management. Horwitch, who headed the curriculum design, said that enrollees seek to prepare themselves for issues ranging from energy efficiency to project development, analytics and financing.

Turkey offers quite a sophisticated platform for entrepreneurs. It has a diversified industrial base, a relatively stable political and economic environment, a critical mass of willing early adopters, a considerable talent pool, a strong domestic market and underserved neighboring markets. Yet, currently only 6 out of 100 people are entrepreneurs – a very low rate given the country’s level of development. What challenges does Turkey need to address in order to unleash entrepreneurship as a force for economic growth?

Endeavor Turkey has identified many obstacles, including the high costs of navigating the inefficient and inconsistent bureaucracy, the difficulty in protecting intellectual property rights, and monopolistic marketplace dynamics in which dominant players abuse smaller suppliers. It is also difficult to hire and fire in Turkey. According to the World Bank’s Doing Business indicators, Turkey ranks among the most difficult countries in this regard (143 out 183 countries). Then there is the problem of limited access to capital. For Turkey’s youth, entrepreneurship seems like a pipedream given this financial limitation. Accordingly, Endeavor’s entrepreneurship experts recommend that the government launch alternative capital markets, incentivize small business lending and enact regulatory reform labor laws (to allow for part-time, flex-time and long-term consultants).

Perhaps most difficult to change, as is often the case around the world, is culture. Although entrepreneurs “by necessity” are generally respected for their work ethic, entrepreneurs “by choice” who have other promising career options are often discouraged by their families. High-impact entrepreneurs are admired but considered “lucky.” In addition, the absence of a “win-win” social and business culture undermines entrepreneurship and innovation. Thus, Turkey is in as much need for cultural capital as financial capital.

"I've seen thousands of information technology innovations," said Richard Caruso, "and as an Ernst and Young 'Entrepreneur of the Year,' an annual competition judge, creative finance entrepreneur, and developer of Mentorsphere, I review countless executive summaries and business plans. Through this process I've encountered probably every variation in business plan templates, formats, technologies, and technical service providers. Unismart Capital Software's Funding Roadmap Business Plan and Due Diligence Reporting System is a standardized, focused plan development approach and I see it as having the potential to become the next basis for business planning, due diligence, and collaboration.

I look forward to working with Ruth Hedges and the entire PELT100 Pilot Project UnleashPA with the Innovation America team, as we incorporate all of the revolutionary technology provided by www.Mentorsphere.com, www.Fundingroadmap.com, and the Adreamz Institute.”

The Funding Roadmap is setting a new industry standard with their reinvention of the business plan. Ruth Hedges, Unismart Capital Software CEO says, “We realized the limitations of the business planning model, looked at the accelerating social networking environment, and the lights went on!”  Now the Funding Roadmap is being promoted by the Intuit Small Business Community, the SBDCNet and Start-up Weekend, whose founders Marc Nager and Clint Nelson are enthusiastic: “Here is an awesome way to collaborate with your peers while aligning your strategy, setting goals and finalizing your vision.” Users are now located in countries around the world.

Algae biofuels are often considered one of those technologies --- like hydrogen fuel cells --- that are always "ten years away." Well, one company says it might have just cracked the code and could be supplying lots of algae jet fuel and diesel in the coming years. In the race for algae biofuel commercialization, people usually compare open ponds with photobioreactors. Solazyme, however, bypasses photosynthesis (and conventional wisdom) by growing algae in dark fermentation tanks. Grow algae in dark tanks?! Isn't that like putting solar panels on the dark side of the moon?!

For several years there has been growing consensus among economic developers about the importance of the creative economy, and many organizations have sprung up to examine and promote its concepts. In Canada, for example, the Creative City Network of Canada (www.creativecity.ca) offers many kinds of resources to municipal staff and the recent annual conference of the Economic Developers Council of Ontario (www.edco.on.ca) was built on the theme of “Defining and Capturing the New Economy,” with Rebecca Ryan, founder of Next Generation Consulting, as the keynote speaker.

In the US, preparations are under way as this is written for the third annual Creative Cities Summit to be held April 7-9 in Lexington, KY. Another thought-leadership organization, the Seattle-based International Regions Benchmarking Consortium http://www.internationalregions.org, released a report in December 2009 confirming that the springboard for economic growth these days is talent, not industrial resources or infrastructure.

The report, A Tale of 10 Cities: Attracting and Retaining Talent, lays out the typical growth pattern in the creative economy: “A region begins by attracting capable people though existing employers, its university system and an attractive local lifestyle. A growing talent pool then attracts new employers who seek a skilled workforce. This growth in knowledge-based industries, in turn, attracts even more well-educated and skilled people, and so on.

Sunshiny days have come to government, as transparency Web sites, iPhone apps, online dashboards and data feeds have proliferated across the Internet. The movement is changing the playing field for how citizens obtain government information. Since President Barack Obama made transparency and open data early priorities of his administration, public agencies have put thousands (if not millions) of data sources online, creating a rich pool of material that once was hidden in dusty file cabinets and available only through freedom-of-information requests.

Although most agree that openness is a welcome aim, this newfound abundance of data has spawned new questions and challenges: Can government agencies link together these far-flung data sources coherently so that citizens can find what they're looking for? And can open data be packaged and presented in a manner that decision-makers and the public can use to affect policymaking?

This is part of my series on Understanding Venture Capital.  I’m writing this series because if you better understand how VC firms work you can better target which firms make sense for you to speak with.

It is not uncommon to see a VC talk about “total assets under management” as in “We have $1.5 billion under management.” I don’t really understand why VCs do this since it’s mostly a meaningless number. I’m writing this post to explain to entrepreneurs what you should be thinking about in terms of the VC’s you approach and the size and stage of their funds.

What is total assets under management? - VC’s often talk about this term as in the total amount of funds EVER raised by that VC. Example: if a VC is on their fourth $200 million fund that they just raised in 2009 then you might hear them talk about $800 million under management. This is ONLY relevant in so much as it will tell you that they’ve been able to raise a lot of money historically. But without knowing whether they had a $700 million fund and now have a $100 million fund or whether they’re a first time fund of $800 million it’s pretty meaningless. It’s also meaningless if they had four $200 million funds and the last one they closed was in 2000.

There’s nothing like a tough economy – and unemployment – to encourage people to take the plunge and open their own businesses. Some have more business experience than others. Some have more education than others. When I started my company, I went through a series of surprises and shocks and the occasional nightmare. With all of the recent interest in entrepreneurship, I thought I would highlight six warning signs that you are about to be broadsided by one of the classic and inevitable struggles of business ownership. If you hear yourself saying these words, take a step back and think about what you’re doing. My hope is that by being more aware you will be better prepared.

1. “Where’s all the business from our marketing launch?” Marketing can be very expensive, and it is difficult to know what will work. It can propel your company, or it can have minimal or no impact. There will be no shortage of people looking to take your money to help you with your advertising and marketing. The people who sell advertising are usually not marketing experts — they’re salespeople. It is their job to sell. It is your job to be discerning. If you can, test before you invest.

2. “The accountant must be wrong! We must be making money! We’re so busy I can hardly keep up.” You can’t just be a salesperson. You need to do the math. It’s about margins, cost accounting and discounting. It is about the bottom line, not the top line. Plenty of people are very busy right up until the day they run out money. Accounting can be exciting — exciting like finding out you are going broke, or exciting like driving a big profit.

No longer are the rigors of entrepreneurship meant only for the young and restless. Youthful energy has been dethroned by experience and pragmatism. Increasingly, senior citizens close to retirement are trying their hand at small businesses and making their mark too. So if you think you’re past it…take heart!

Why the surge in the number of older people turning entrepreneurs, one might ask. The reasons are not too hard to guess…..

Security: Senior citizens look for financial security as they approach retirement. Starting their own enterprise gives them the kind of security that a hot-shot job with a mega corporation does not guarantee anymore.

In the bad old dotcom days, startups used to be hatched in incubators — idea factories that spewed out companies to meet the ’90s bull market’s demand for tech stocks. (The most famous one, Idealab, was once valued at $8 billion.) Now there’s a new kind of startup booster: the accelerator, a camp-like program that brings entrepreneurs together to benefit from both mentors and peers.

Accelerators have proliferated recently, bringing more opportunities to entrepreneurs who need guidance as much as money. But the sector’s growth means picking one is no longer a simple choice. And now’s the season when many of them start taking applications (including my own accelerator, Capital Factory). How do you choose?

Each program has its own flavor, and no two are really alike. One key consideration: location. Accelerator participants must pick up and move, at least temporarily, to the program’s home base. (Face time is the whole point, after all.) So think about the city in which each program is located. Does it fit your style?

San Francisco — Clean technology venture capital investments in North America, Europe, China and India during the first quarter of 2010 totaled $1.9 billion — a record high — according to statistics just released by The Cleantech Group and the financial advisory and accounting firm Deloitte.

One hundred eighty companies in the clean technology and smart grid sectors obtained venture capital financing during the most recent quarter, with new transportation and energy efficiency being the largest two recipients of VC investment by sector, according to the report.

There were 13 initial public offerings of clean technology companies during the quarter, raising a total of $1.5 billion, which was a decrease from the $2.9 billion raised by clean technology firms in their initial public offerings during the fourth quarter of 2009. The largest single IPO of a clean technology business during the most recent quarter was that of Sensata Technologies, a Dutch producer of sensors and controls for solar panels and alternative fuel vehicles, which raised $569 million in its IPO on the New York Stock Exchange.