Entrants are encouraged to submit their applications prior to the February 12, 2010 deadline.  Participating companies to be matched with test and early adoption partners.

Entries for the Utility Technology Challenge, identifying the top commercial and near-commercial innovations in energy generation, management, and conservation, are already being received from companies worldwide.  The Utility Technology Challenge (UTC) is supported by organizations committed to the development and adoption of clean energy solutions, including the US Department of Energy, Austin Energy, Accenture, the City of Anaheim, San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E), National Grid and Lockheed Martin.  Managed by The Clean Technology & Sustainable Industries Organization (CTSI), the Utility Technology Challenge will give needed visibility to the companies that can make a short-term impact on our energy future.

"In our role as trusted advisor for more than 40 smart grid initiatives, Accenture has a strong appreciation for the value of collaboration," stated Sharon Allan, Accenture Smart Grid Services Executive.  "This encompasses the sharing of information, experience and insights between utilities and the citizens served by them, utilities and their technology providers, and utilities and the regulators and policy-makers who impact strategic decision-making.  It is for this reason that we embraced the opportunity to participate in the Utility Technology Challenge.  We believe that participation in this initiative offers many opportunities to both leverage lessons learned and to identify and test new technologies that can help the industry achieve its goal of a more sustainable energy future."

Opportunities to build angel investing in China’s fast growing early stage businesses and develop new cross-border investment links was the focus of a major conference and study visit to Beijing between 5th and 8th December 2009 attended by Business Angel investors from over 20 countries, including UK, US, Australia, New Zealand, South America and continental Europe.

The World Business Angels Association (WBAA), which was set up in 2008 and formally established in January 2009 brings together national federations of business angel networks and individual investors across the world to raise awareness about the importance of angel investing in entrepreneurs and with a view to creating a global environment to stimulate opportunities for international investing. The conference in Beijing which was WBAA’s first major event attended by over 250 delegates, was co-hosted by the newly formed China Business Angels Association and the World Returning Scholars Association which represents Chinese individuals or “sea turtles” who have studied and worked in other parts of the world and who bring back their skills and international experience to support the growing economy in China. Senior politicians from the Beijing Government and regional Governments were key note speakers at this event and presented the current policy and initiatives taken in China to support growth and investment in enterprise.

GRAND RAPIDS -- The president of the Michigan Economic Development Corp. is looking forward to 2010.

Unlike some economists who say a recovery won't appear until 2011, Greg Main thinks next year will be the turning point.

"Michigan appears to be on the edge of crawling out of this," Main said. "I think we're going to see pretty strong growth over the next year."

Have you given up on innovation? MIT's Michael Schrage says that can be fatal to any company, no matter the industry.

Schrage offers an interesting counterpoint to a famous statement by Columbia Business School's Bruce Greenwald, who said, "In the long run, everything is a toaster." Schrage disagrees, citing the evolution of two-sided toasting (1919), toaster ovens (1950s) and digital toasters (1990s), among other advances.

As the recession continues to loom and as unemployment rises, we have seen an increased interest in executives wanting to start their own businesses. They want to transition from executive to entrepreneur.

December 19, 2009 ( PowerHomeBiz.com ) - As the recession continues to loom and as unemployment rises, we have seen an increased interest in executives wanting to start their own businesses. They want to transition from executive to entrepreneur.

You may be interested in becoming an entrepreneur because you lost your job, or because you have a great idea, or because you cannot find a job you are interested in.

Regardless of the reason, however, you will find there is more information available today concerning starting a business than the average human being can consume in a lifetime. Standard advice includes:

Geeks love gadgets and this flowchart will help our geeky friends decide on their new gadget.

This is the age of social networking with Facebook, Twitter and mobile technologies enabling people to connect with millions in geographically dispersed locations worldwide. Enterprises from home-based startups to Fortune 500 companies are restructuring workforce and productivity models using efficient collaborative network tools.

Government institutions are undergoing historic generational shifts in leadership with the election at age 48 of the first African-American president. It is truly a brave new world both economically and socially under construction, with new hopes, leadership and definitions of what I call “The Five E’s of Success”: Education, Empowerment, Excellence, Entrepreneurship and Ethics.

More than half of all U.S. businesses are home-based. These firms are often dismissed as hobbies or part-time ventures with limited economic impact.

But our research shows otherwise. We estimate that about 6.6 million home-based enterprises provide at least half of their owners’ household income and together employ more than one in 10 private-sector workers.

The rise of the homepreneur is a long-term trend that will continue to accelerate over the next decade. Fueled by technology and enabled by low costs, businesses of all kinds are finding there is no place like home.

After all I [Jeffrey Phillips] read on the blogs and on Twitter, and all the new innovation programs and initiatives in state and local governments, I feel the need to revisit the definitions of these key words. While innovation, invention and entrepreneurs are important and somewhat interconnected, they aren't synonyms and they have different needs, intents and purposes. Whether accidently or on purpose, we can't allow them to mean the same things.

Entrepreneurship: the process through which entrepreneurs create and grow enterprises: Entrepreneurship development…the infrastructure of public and private policies and practices that foster and support entrepreneurship.
Some of the entrepreneurs are:

1.Survival entrepreneurs: who resort to creating enterprises to supplement their incomes because there are few other options available. Sometimes called “entrepreneurs by necessity”

2.“Lifestyle entrepreneurs” are people who chose self-employment because they no longer want to work for someone else, or because it provides a better way of balancing work and home demands, or because it enables them to stay in communities to which they have great attachment. The focus is usually on providing a living for the entrepreneur and her or his family. They are often called “Mom and Pop” businesses,

...

The European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT) has unveiled three major new innovation clusters focusing on climate, energy and information technology. Each of the initiatives will bring together academia and industry at several locations across Europe.

The Knowledge and Innovation Communities (KICsexternal ) will receive start-up funding of €3 million and will report to the EU's commissioner for education, culture, multilingualism and youth.

The EITexternal headquarters in Budapest is expected to be fully up and running by April 2010, but the KICs will be autonomous and will be run "like a business", according to the Institute's chairman, Martin Schuurmans.

With over 80% of people using search engines to find local information, it is impossible to imagine a brick and mortar business that couldn’t benefit immensely from local search. On the other hand, having no local search presence could potentially end a local business.

According to comScore/TMP, Google grew their local search market share from 15% in June 2008 to 26% in June 2009.

What is your share of that traffic and potential leads ?

If you read and apply these 10 tips your Google Maps traffic will have no where to go but up.

This book provides a principled approach for the effective management of innovation tournaments – identifying a wealth of promising opportunities and then evaluating and filtering them intelligently for greatest profitability. With a set of practical tools for creating and identifying new opportunities, it guides the reader in evaluating and screening opportunities. The book demonstrates how to construct an innovation portfolio and how to align the innovation process with an organization’s competitive strategy.

Innovation Tournaments employs quirky, fresh examples ranging from movies to medical devices. The authors’ tool kit is built on their extensive research, their entrepreneurial backgrounds, and their teaching and consulting work with many highly innovative organizations.

For more information, click here.

You can find this title at IESE’s Library catalog.

With traditional biofuels under fire for driving up food prices and wreaking environmental havoc, industrialists are stepping up research into algae as a sustainable alternative - but many obstacles remain before algae oil finds its way into our cars and planes.

BATON ROUGE, La. (December 7, 2009) – The Baton Rouge Area Chamber (BRAC) announced today that it has released the second part of its two-part white paper series detailing a strategy for developing an innovation-driven economy in Louisiana. Together, the series fully details how Louisiana’s strategic focus on innovation as a basis for economic development can ensure that the state is prepared to compete in a 21st century environment. The Innovation Economy in Louisiana, Part 2 continues the analysis of part one, which advocated for greater support of research and development (R&D) that would generate commercially-viable innovations. In Part 2, BRAC describes how entrepreneurship, workforce development, risk capital, and coordinating authority at the state level are the remaining components necessary for a comprehensive strategy for a statewide innovation ecosystem.

A new venture capital foundation aiming to raise money for China’s small businesses to help relieve their financing hardships is a model that Australia should consider, says the Council of Small Business of Australia.

“The new venture capital foundation being established by Chinese authorities to help their small business community deal with the impact of the tightened credit and financing market is a model that the Australian Government should consider,” said Jaye Radisich, CEO of the Council of Small Business of Australia.

BioCrossroads, Indiana Teachers Retirement Fund, Lilly, Fairbanks Foundation, IU, Purdue, Notre Dame, and Credit Suisse announce new $58 million venture capital fund to fuel innovation

INDIANAPOLIS, Dec. 16 /PRNewswire/ -- Capitalizing on the continued strong growth of Indiana's life sciences industry and an active venture capital market, leaders from BioCrossroads, Eli Lilly and Company, Indiana State Teachers Retirement Fund, Indiana University, Purdue University, the University of Notre Dame, Richard M. Fairbanks Foundation, and Credit Suisse today announced the establishment of the INext Fund, a $58 million venture capital fund of funds.

Organized through BioCrossroads, Indiana's initiative to grow, expand and invest in the life sciences, and managed by the Credit Suisse Customized Fund Investment Group, the INext Fund includes investments from Lilly, the Indiana State Teachers Retirement Fund (TRF), IU, Purdue, Notre Dame, and the Fairbanks Foundation. This fund of funds is a capital pool that will invest in venture capital funds that are focused on the life sciences, thus encouraging and facilitating direct investment in Indiana life sciences opportunities.

University researchers often have no idea how to get the science they've developed to the marketplace where it can benefit real people.

Most prefer to stay in the lab and let university officials bring in off-campus entrepreneurs to create companies to market that research.

A decade before he came to the University of Utah as dean of the David Eccles School of Business, Jack Brittain started to think about another way of creating business ventures based on university-developed technology.

"We wanted to ... support the research mission, the educational mission and the service mission of the university," he said.

There is no need to wait millions of years for deceased organisms to compress into fossil fuels to burn. Forget about how the wind doesn’t always blow hard enough to move wind turbines, or that the sun doesn’t shine on solar panels at night. A typical U.S. dairy cow is a renewable energy machine, producing 150 pounds of “fuel” in the form of manure…every single day. There are no intermittency issues as there can be with wind and solar; as one dairy farmer said to me: “cows crap 24 hours a day.”

The U.S. dairy industry produces a staggering amount of manure every day, to the tune of 167 million gallons of manure from some 9.3 million cows. That is enough manure to fill 250 Olympic size swimming pools every day of the year, generated by a population of cows that is more than three times the number of people in Chicago. (This is definitely something to impress your friends with the next time you they ask you to pass the milk for their coffee.)

I have been delving into the brand new Report on The Creative Economy of the Los Angeles Region,* just released a couple weeks ago. For a copy go here. As a relative newcomer to Los Angeles, I continue to be amazed by the spirit of creativity that surrounds us here (and I came here from a pretty creative place—Silicon Valley). Of course here in LA we see creativity manifested in the entertainment and performing arts areas in a big way. But I believe we also see it in little ways like the incredibly effective and striking logo on a vehicle of a small landscaping company or the way young people express themselves through fashion, mixing up styles from different parts of the world or mixing modern and vintage into a stylish and cohesive whole. Creativity, diversity, color, inventiveness truly permeate the LA culture. And it shows.