U.S. Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra to speak at "Funding Innovation: Accelerating the New Economy"

WHAT: The National Association of Seed and Venture Funds (NASVF) will host its 17th Annual Conference, "Funding Innovation: Accelerating the New Economy," October 13-15, 2010 at the Marriott Baltimore Inner Harbor at Camden Yards. Speakers include Aneesh Chopra, U.S. Chief Technology Officer, Sean Green, Associate Administrator for Investment and Special Advisor for Innovation at the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) and Steven D. Welch, Co-founder of Dreamlt Ventures and author of "We are all Born Entrepreneurs." The Maryland Technology Development Corporation (TEDCO) is a host and major sponsor of this year's conference.

Topics Include:

· State of Investing: A Current Perspective: features industry leaders from the national and international innovation capital associations.
· Novel Federal and Local Initiatives Driving Economic Development
· A Woman's Place: Does Gender Matter in the World of High Tech Entrepreneurship?
· University Tech Transfer: Overcoming the Myth and the Challenges
· Early Stage Business: Building Strategies that Work

For more information on the NASVF Annual Conference, and to download a detailed agenda, please visit www.nasvf.org.

WHEN: Wednesday, Oct. 13 through Friday, Oct. 15, 2010

What do passport photographs, workouts and e-books have in common? You can easily get all three at no cost, according to Kiplinger.com, which recently released its fourth annual list of 33 quality freebies.

We’ve highlighted 10 of the free ideas below from Kiplinger.com’s full list and please share your favorite freebies, if we missed them, in the comments section below.

1. Passport photos: Here’s how to get a passport photo free, according to Kiplinger.com. Take a photo with your own digital camera and then upload it to ePassportPhoto.com.

Earlier this year, Mark Zuckerberg suggested that privacy was no longer a social norm. "People have really gotten comfortable not only sharing more information and different kinds, but more openly and with more people," the Facebook CEO said at the Crunchie awards in January. However, a new Zogby poll shows that younger Internet users are far less comfortable with the state of our privacy online than Zuckerberg's statement suggests.

The results of the poll, which surveyed 400 teens aged 15 to 18, suggest users are looking for more control over their personal information. The vast majority of teens understood that search engines (88%) and social networks (79%) were tracking their browsing habits for ads. However, many were not sure whether their data was secure: More than half of the respondents said they either did not think their personal information was private or were not sure.

Dragons Den has done as much to misrepresent the real structure of angel investment in the UK as “The Apprentice” has done to maim management training and development. The reality of investment both in the UK and the USA is much at odds with the “pitch and ditch” format of the TV show.

A study of angel investment in the USA “Fools Gold : The truth behind angel investment in America” Scott A Shane, provides a much more realistic picture of the investor reality then any prime time business soap.

To understand what we mean by an angel investor, we define an angel investor as a person who provides capital in the form of debt or equity, from his or her own funds to a private business owned and operated by an individual or group who is neither friend or family.

Venture capital fund-raising through the first nine months of 2010 was only a bit ahead of last year, as the industry continues to wrestle with a lack of liquidity and limited-partner caution.

U.S. venture firms raised $9.2 billion for 103 funds during the first three quarters, according to Dow Jones LP Source, an industry database that tracks private equity fund-raising. This is slightly more than the $8.9 billion raised for 105 funds during the same period in 2009. Venture fund-raising for all of last year totaled $13.5 billion, the lowest since 2003. Dow Jones & Co., owned by News Corp., is publisher of this newsletter and newswire.

To most, the world of venture capital appears to be in the midst of chaos. Poor 10-year returns. Many bloated GPs. The super angel/micro VC "phenomenon" (if it can be called that). Rumors of collusion. A largely closed IPO market. Stock market uncertainty. An uncertain regulatory climate. And on and on. A crazy time to be a venture capitalist, right? Well …

I contend that venture capital, like every other asset class, moves in cycles. It's only that most of our perspectives are so short that we tend to lose sight of the fact that what appears to be "historic" is, well, ordinary when viewed through a longitudinal prism. But as is the case with self-correcting systems, it will, in fact, correct (and likely overshoot as trend-shifts generally do).

Startup companies call it the Valley of Death—the arduous terrain between proof of concept and the beginning of mass production and significant sales. In good times, just 40 percent of companies go public or get acquired, according to John Taylor, head of research at the National Venture Capital Assn. in Arlington, Va.

Now the Valley is even deadlier. Hundreds of U.S. cleantech startups find themselves stuck on the road to serious revenues because of the toxic combination of a stalled economy, scarce funding, and Washington's failure to enact comprehensive climate and energy legislation. The market for initial public offerings is frozen and venture capital is drying up because of uncertainty. Faysal Sohail, a managing director at CMEA Capital, a San Francisco fund that helps oversee $1.2 billion in venture capital investments, says that at the start of the year he had six profitable companies that were ready to go public but couldn't. "It's a sour mood," he adds.

North Carolina is buzzing about creativity, and we are thrilled to share some highlights with you in the NC Creativity Report.

 

At the 25th annual Emerging Issues Forum in February, speakers and attendees agreed that our state needed more creative thinking to restart our economy and enhance our quality of life. More than 1,200 people left the Forum committed to celebrating and improving North Carolina's culture of creativity. It was no idle promise. North Carolina is moving ahead in remarkable ways.

Other states are taking notice – in November, IEI will share the impressive developments in North Carolina at the Creativity World Forum. But it is more important for IEI to call attention to the state's progress with all of you. We have captured some of the inspiring post-Forum activity taking place across North Carolina in our
NC Creativity Report. The report highlights how you are capitalizing on the state's creative potential, but also reveals there is still work to be done in harnessing North Carolina's creative assets.

 

To read about creativity work taking place in North Carolina, download the NC Creativity Report and share your feedback on our Facebook page – www.facebook.com/emergingissues.

Apple and Google will soon have more than just each other to worry about in the race to provide the software for smart phones and tablets. Later this month, Intel will announce that its MeeGo operating system is ready to run devices including touch screen tablets and phones.

Devices running MeeGo are likely to start appearing in early 2011. Netbooks are expected to appear first, then tablets and phones. MeeGo is different from Apple's iOS platform for the iPhone, iPod and iPad or Google's Android operating system, says Intel's head of open source strategy, Ram Peddibhotla, because it is intended to seamlessly link multiple devices. "MeeGo is ground-up designed and targeted at multiple devices--netbooks, phones, and TV devices," he says, describing a world in which a consumer could own multiple devices running the new operating system. "This allows these devices to work together more simply," he says. "For example, with a flick of your finger, transferring a movie or any other content onto another device."

Entrepreneurs and educators agree on two fundamental points. The first is so obvious that it hardly bears repeating but let's restate it anyway: entrepreneurship is very, very important. Entrepreneurs are the critical driver of job creation and economic prosperity.

The second is equally important and often left unsaid: academic institutions can and should play a more central role in improving the quality and quantity of entrepreneurs. While many conversations we have on this topic start by someone asking whether entrepreneurship can be taught, they typically end with an impassioned discussion on how to improve entrepreneurship education in the United States and around the world. Why not learn lessons from successful and failed entrepreneurs and the many entrepreneurial "experiments" they have undertaken? To ignore this wealth of knowledge and expertise, to insist that entrepreneurship is an art learned only through experience is to ignore the potential to develop systematic lessons, to ignore the power of analysis and to fail to apply tools of social science to a critical part of our economy.

In 2008/09, £44.9m was invested by UK Business Angels registered to Angel Networks in UK based companies. Across the 5,500 registered Angels that is less than £10,000 per Angel. These figures are very poor and do not bode well for future economic growth. So what is a UK based digital company looking for funding to do?

I have invested in 20 companies in the UK over the last six years, and three companies in Canada as a Business Angel. I am by no means an expert but with the experience I have had in Canada with Angel groups and as of recently with Seedcamp, I do find the UK ‘organised’ angel scene very depressing.

Despite the hype and the near-ubiquity of the Toyota Prius (pictured), most Americans remain leery of buying alternative-fuel vehicles. That’s probably because they don’t have the basic knowledge to understand it, according to a new survey conducted by Harris Interactive.

The survey, which sampled 2,242 adults in July, took a look at consumer opinions on alternative fuel vehicles on the market — hybrids, all-electric, hydrogen electric and diesel and biodiesel-compatible cars.

The good news: Almost half of those surveyed would be interested in buying some kind of alternative-fuel car. The bad news — nearly three-fourths said they don’t really understand the differences between the various categories, saying they were either not at all or only somewhat knowledgeable about the topic. And almost 60 percent said they had never considered buying one.

Forbes' power lists are synonymous with moguls and movie stars, heads of state and captains of business. One look at the 2010 World's 100 Most Powerful Women list and it is clear that we've come up with a new ranking of the female power elite that reflects the New Order of now.

When we set out to identify this year's list, we decided it was time to look up and out into the broader culture. Our assessment is based less on traditional titles and roles and more on creative influence and entrepreneurship. They have built distinctive companies and brands and championed weighty causes, sometimes through unconventional means; in other cases they have broken through gender barriers.

Philadelphia's Science Center battles the powers that be from TheDeal TV on Vimeo.

Philadelphia's University City Science Center is the oldest urban research park in the nation and a powerful engine of growth for the region's economy. Founded in 1963 as a not-for-profit owned by the city's leading universities and hospitals, the Science Center lets laboratory and office space to startup companies focused on the life sciences. But some of the undeveloped land that the center sits on in West Philadelphia is under siege by the city's Redevelopment Authority, underscoring the difficulty that governments and corporations are feeling in the wake of the financial meltdown.

This Techventure event serves to bring together the various players of the entrepreneurial eco-system.

Among us today are high-tech entrepreneurs who work in exciting young companies at the frontiers of technology, making new products and services that may well change the way we live, work and play.

Other participants are business angels and experienced technology incubator managers, who provide the seed capital for startup companies and, more important, the valuable guidance and mentorship to help these risky ventures grow.

While bonuses, paid holidays and other formal employee benefits are good for business, they are not a guarantee of employee or team performance. In fact, studies have proved that “soft” benefits, such as employee incentive programs, are directly responsible for driving increased efficiencies and productivity among employees.

And while “employee-friendly” business practices have traditionally been perceived as frivolous or a distraction, when structured and managed effectively they not only boost morale, but produce motivated teams dedicated to the success of your business.

So much of our energy is spent trying to attract new customers. We want to increase brand awareness, make new connections and woo new customers into our stores. But we’ve all been told that keeping an old customer is cheaper than acquiring a new one. So what are you doing to make customers swoon once you’ve already attracted them? What are you doing to turn new customers into repeat and even lifelong customers?

Here are 4 tips to help you do just that.

1. Offer return shopping discounts.

One way to give people an incentive to keep shopping with you is to offer discounts to help get them back in the store. That may mean throwing a coupon in with their order or sending them a targeted mailing two weeks after their first purchase. Either way, the coupon gives them a reason to seek you out again and gives them something branded to hold on to and associate you with. Leaving customers with something tangible they can use helps to build your brand and keeps their experience with you fresh in their minds. If you’re going to use discount coupons as a way to target repeat customers, make sure the discount is sizable or unique enough that it will stand out from more generic offers. You need to give someone a reason to use the coupon. Otherwise it (and your brand) will get stuck in their junk drawer.