Bill Gates, co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation One of the big topics in Davos is the economy. In panel discussions and hallway conversations, people are talking about the long-term effects of the recession. While it's true we will see lingering unemployment and huge government deficits for some time, the big story is much more positive. We can make amazing progress in the years ahead to improve lives around the world. The key is to keep investing in innovation. This makes the difference between a bleak future and a bright one.

During the past two centuries, innovation has more than doubled our life span and given us cheap energy and more food. If we project what the world will be like 10 years from now without continuing innovation in health, energy or food, the picture is dark. Health costs for the rich will keep escalating and the poor will be stuck in the bad situation they are in today. We will have to increase energy prices to reduce consumption. The poor will suffer from the higher cost and the effects of climate change. We will have food shortages because we won't have enough land to feed the world's growing population.

Earlier this week we told you how New York Times op-ed contributor and author Thomas Friedman urged President Obama to take steps to help foster a new age of innovation and entrepreneurship. Well it seems that Obama may have received that message, as Wednesday night during his State of the Union address to Congress the president proposed a bill to help small businesses and entrepreneurs.

Perhaps Obama listened to Friedman, or maybe he saw the frenzied excitement that grows around new innovations like the iPad - either way, the president seems to have taken the first baby steps toward a more entrepreneurial culture in America.

Plans to unveil an Innovation Act in time for the spring meeting of EU leaders have been stalled while the new European Commission beds down and looks at broadening the scope of the strategy.

The document is now expected to be published in June and will fit into the 'EU 2020' strategy for growth and jobs. By that time, a clearer picture will also have emerged of the roles of the new European commissioners.

The first clear sign of a delay came when MEPs grilled incoming Industry Commissioner Antonio Tajani at his parliamentary hearing earlier this month.

There’s a lot to consider when redesigning your Web site. Are you simply updating the look? Do you need to improve search-engine friendliness? Are there accessibility issues you’re trying to address? Whatever the redesign is aiming to accomplish, you want to make sure you get it in the first shot. There’s nothing sadder than a business that invests time and money into a redesign only to find out it doesn’t meet their needs. Or worse, that it completely blocks off search engine traffic and they have to start over! Unfortunately, we’ve seen it happen far too many times.

So, what are some questions to ask yourself before redesigning your site? Here are six questions we always ask prospective clients.

Innovative ideas - the kind that can transform your company - are inadvertently being demolished. When first presented, many ideas meet wrecking-ball comments such as:

* "How's that going to work?"
* "Good luck getting that done!"
* "We don't have time for something like that." And the classic,
* "Doesn't work... Trust me... We tried that years ago."

We've all heard (or perhaps said) killer phrase comments like these. These are offered as a "public service" to the team to prevent us from going off track and wasting time.

Harrisburg – Governor Edward G. Rendell today announced a $5.7 million investment that will expand upon university research efforts, bring new products to the marketplace, and educate the next generation of high-tech workers.

The funds, approved by the Ben Franklin Technology Development Authority at its quarterly meeting today, will help to strengthen Pennsylvania as a leading nanotechnology state and lay the groundwork for continued progress once the economy rebounds.

“Pennsylvania has been at the cutting edge of nanotechnology for years,” Governor Rendell said. “Our high-tech sectors are a cornerstone of our growth, and these latest investments will go a long way in supporting our tech-based economy by giving our partners the resources they need to incubate innovative ideas, and get them to the marketplace.”

An important element of individual and organizational ability to build productive market relations is the possession of social acumen. Acumen implies a keen understanding of a subject matter or knowledge set required to accomplish a goal.

The new dynamics of the social web is accelerating organizational and individual needs to gain social acumen. Social acumen reflects a keen understanding of the dynamics caused by interactive communications and relational connectivity fueled by social technologies and the subsequent impact on business as unusual.

Most organizations are using social technology today without consideration of “being social”. Subsequently their acumen reflects a lack of understanding of “social dynamics” or the knowledge set required to use social technology to accomplish a specific goal.

When President Barack Obama took the oath of office about a year ago, he inherited the biggest economic mess since the 1930's: millions of Americans losing their homes to foreclosure and their jobs to a steadily deteriorating economy, huge budget deficits fueled by tax cuts for the wealthy and two wars his predecessor simply put on the national credit card, mushrooming national debt and some of the biggest barons on Wall Street in financial collapse.

A year later, we take stock. The President's State of the Union speech provided a good overview. A new document just released by the U.S. Senate's Democratic Policy Committee, which I chair, takes a similar look at the challenges we faced in 2009 and the work the President and Democrats in Congress accomplished to keep the economy from completely collapsing.

Despite drawing $4.42 billion in venture capital in the last six years, Pennsylvania must attract much more early-stage investments in order to transition to "the next economy," said a study by the Brookings Institution released today.

The amount of capital invested in Great Lakes states, such as Pennsylvania, is "too small" relative to what early-stage companies require and how much is needed to "create new deals that will achieve good financial returns," said the report.

Brookings' report suggests Great Lakes states create a "fund of funds" of between $1 billion and $2 billion in investment capital to help transform their economies in the 21st century. The idea would be to leverage entrepreneurial resources, especially those spawned by universities, to grow early-stage companies.

Early stage capital investments worldwide were hit hard by the financial crisis of 2009, but according to the Ohio Third Frontier, an unprecedented and bipartisan commitment to create new technology-based products, companies, industries and jobs, Ohio is bucking the international trend – increasing seed and early stage investments by 67 percent in 2008 while the nation declined 20 percent on average. Ohio’s current venture capital environment has experts and industry analysts optimistic that the state’s record of success will continue to grow throughout 2010 and beyond.

“In Ohio, there is a proven need for new capital, and that need will only increase in 2010,” said Dr. Michael Camp, academic director for the Center for Entrepreneurship at Ohio State University’s Fisher College of Business, and author of “2008 Ohio Venture Capital Report – Steady Focus in Uncertain Times.” “Overall investment nationally may decline for the next several years, but both public and private efforts in Ohio must continue to focus sharply on making the state’s portfolio companies highly attractive to follow-on capital if these positive results are to continue. Capital is the lifeblood of any business, and is a critical factor that often determines whether a great idea ever becomes reality.”

John Hopkins was at a cocktail party chatting with a fellow physicist about electric guns when he had a crazy idea: a massive, kilometer-long cannon powered by hydrogen, submerged below the surface of the ocean.

It was at a cocktail party that Dr. John Hopkins, a fast-talking 54-year-old physicist who once worked at Lawrence Livermore National Lab, had a crazy idea.

As sometimes happens over a third martini, a colleague suggested that gas-powered guns are much more powerful than conventional guns: When ignited, a gas gun can shoot a projectile at insane speeds of over 11 kilometers per second -- or roughly 25,000 miles per hour.

And that got Hopkins to thinking . . .

What if he could build a massive, 1-kilometer-long cannon powered by hydrogen that could be housed below the surface of the ocean? The sort of device Jules Verne wrote about in 1865 in his novel "From the Earth to the Moon"?

In a new report, ITIF makes a compelling case for creating over 162,000 jobs in the short run by simply expanding a tax credit that has been working well for almost 30 years.

In a report titled, “Create Jobs by Expanding the R&D Tax Credit,” ITIF President Robert D. Atkinson analyzes how expanding the Alternative Simplified tax Credit (ASC) for research and development  from 14 to 20 percent would not only spur job creation at a time when this is desperately needed but also boost the country’s long-term innovation capacity.

EU countries want to open the debate about increasing funds for low-carbon technologies in the next EU budget for 2013-19, but they are not willing to make any concrete commitments at this stage, shows a draft paper discussed by national experts on Wednesday (26 January).

The draft paper is member states' response to a European Commission proposal to finance the Strategic Energy Technology (SET) plan, presented in October last year (EurActiv 07/10/09).

The plan called for the EU's energy research budget to be increased by €50 billion over the next ten years, requiring yearly public and private investment to almost triple.

Previously known as Innovation and Economic Development Sherbrooke – IDES, an IASP Full member in Sherbrooke, Canada, has unveiled their strategic plan of action and new name: SHERBROOKE INNOPOLE.

The announcement was made on 8th January by Executive Director Mr. Pierre Bélanger, who was accompanied by Luce Samoisette, Rector of Sherbrooke University, Sherbrooke city councillors, directors of the former IDES, and regional economic leaders.

According to Mr. Bélanger, the new name reflects the positioning sought for Sherbrooke better, clearly identifying it as a city of innovation. The new name is but one element in a larger action strategy to ensure Sherbrooke’s development efforts. Other aspects of the action plan include a new communications strategy, including the development of a new website using Web 2.0 technologies that will be launched next June, and new cooperation tools between the city and the main institutions forming the University Cluster.

We congratulate our colleagues and look forward to hearing about further progress and achievements at Sherbrooke Innopole.

URL: http://www.sherbrooke-innopole.com/

The Chinese government will be sinking $7.3 billion into the creation of a cleaner, more energy efficient Smart Grid in 2010, actually beating out the U.S.’s investment in the same area by more than $200 million, and rising to the top of the global list of Smart Grid leaders.

The news indicates how Asia’s largest country is getting serious about distributed energy generation, renewable sources like solar and wind, and transmission inefficiencies — all of which a more developed Smart Grid would tie together. It has become such a priority there, that China is actually spending more on grid improvements than it will on power generation projects. This is a major turnabout for the nation, which has been growing its energy infrastructure as fast as it can to promote economic growth.

Still, the sum committed to building a smarter grid may not be enough. Last year, Bloomberg released a report recommending that the country invest $10 billion a year at least for the next decade in order to successfully deploy smart meters, demand response programs, and home energy management systems.

As we’ve struggled with low conversion numbers at The Cost Savings Guy (CSG), it has become increasingly clear that our biggest problem is site design.change

We purposely created CSG with multiple ways to enter potential areas of interest and just as many to demonstrate the site’s value. While this made sense to us as designers, it doesn’t seem to have had the same effect on site visitors – and I’ve concluded that it’s not the way to build sales.

Even though users engage with the service, this design flaw seemingly prevents them from moving through the complete process – to the point where a sale occurs. We lose numerous prospects every day.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 appropriated $7.2 billion and directed the Department of Agriculture's Rural Utilities Service (RUS) and the Department of Commerce's National Telecommunications Information Administration (NTIA) to expand broadband access to unserved and underserved communities across the U.S., increase jobs, spur investments in technology and infrastructure, and provide long-term economic benefits.  The mission is carried out through two programs:

• RUS’s Broadband Initiatives Program (BIP) - will make loans and grants for broadband infrastructure projects in rural areas.
• NTIA’s Broadband Technology Opportunities Program (BTOP) - will provide grants to fund broadband infrastructure, public computer centers and sustainable broadband adoption projects.

Today, I am following the technology track at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos.

At this morning's Technology Pioneers breakfast, the technologists attending the World Economic Forum discussed how successful technology startups must be flexible--how, whatever they thought they were at their founding, such companies change as their customers use their products and they come to understand the business models that will support their business. (An idea close to my heart.) We discussed the different "exits" currently possible for a startup, other than an initial public offering or an acquisition. (One founder of a popular online video platform company suggested that a company with a particularly rich cash flow could repurchase the shares of its investors, and essentially "go private.")

I was catching up over breakfast with a friend who’s now CEO of his own startup. One of the things he mentioned was that when it came to decision-making he still tended to think and act like an engineer. Each and every decision he made was carefully thought through and weighed. And he recognized it was making his startup feel and act like a big ponderous company.speed2

General George Patton once said, “A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan next week.” The same is true in start-ups.

Most decisions entrepreneurs handle must be made in the face of uncertainty. Since every situation is unique, there is no perfect solution to any engineering, customer or competitor problem – and you shouldn’t agonize over trying to find one.

Would-be entrepreneurs can test their mettle through a new online learning program developed by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation and a partner.

In conjunction with The Entrepreneurial Learning Initiative, an Ohio-based company that develops multimedia online education programs, the Kauffman Foundation is offering “Mindset: Tapping Your Entrepreneurial IQ.”

The program “provides an inside look at what it really takes to start and grow a successful new business,” according to a Wednesday release from the foundation.