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.

Download the PDF

Authors: David F. Shaffer and David J. Wright

Meet the new guy on the venture-capital block: Steven A. Cohen of SAC Capital Advisors, a billionaire hedge-fund manager whose net worth is estimated at $6.4 billion.

Cohen is looking to hire a general partner to run his own, personal venture-capital fund, according to sources who spoke to VentureBeat confirming DealBreaker’s earlier report. DealBreaker suggested that the fund will be around $100 million in size. But it’s our understanding that the fund will invest Cohen’s own money, not SAC’s.

If that’s the case, it will be more open-ended than the traditional venture-capital fund. Cohen could end up spending nothing on startups. He could — in theory — go all-in with his entire fortune. Anyone need $6.4 billion?

We recently posted a piece about Dwayne Spradlin’s participation in The Economist’s The World in 2010 Event.  One of the commenters on this piece pointed us to a video created by the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Enterprise and Industry.  The video is a charming illustration of, literally, breaking down fences in communication and opening new channels of communication to accelerate innovation and problem solving.  Enjoy!

As an entrepreneur, what do I need from an incubator?

Of late, there has been a lot of discussion in this forum about incubators, what measures they use for their own success, their business models, and so forth. In this post I discuss five things that I, as an entrepreneur, need from an incubator.

I fully understand that there are incubators sponsored by a state, county, or city, sponsored by a university or a country, or that non-profit or for-profit. In this case, I am only talking about a for-profit incubator that does not take any subsidy from any government or university. Its sole agenda is to enable the companies that it incubates become “successful.”

By an incubator’s success I mean precisely this: to enable the incubated company raise enough money either from organic growth or by raising additional investment monies from angels or venture capitalists to move out of the incubator. I also define an incubator is some entity that helps an entrepreneur or a team to develop a business out of ideas on paper and then send it out to face the world on its own.

This credit is based on a certificate issued by Finance Authority of Maine, which is equal to 40% of qualified investment (60%, if the investment is in a business located in a certain high- unemployment area). Limitations: the taxpayer can only take 25% of the credit in the year of the investment and 25% in each of the following three years. The amount of the credit taken in any one year cannot exceed 50% of the tax otherwise due. The credit cannot be carried back, but can be carried forward up to 15 years.

This guy should star in Kill Bill 3. But he would probably be more effective working for Joel.

We’re guessing the out-takes run considerably longer than this clip.

Augusta National keeps one eye on history, the other on the future

If you asked any longtime observer to associate one word with the Masters Tournament, it would probably be "tradition."

Is there another sporting event in the world so bedecked with so many enduring traditions? From the legends who act as honorary starters, to the pimento cheese sandwiches to the green jackets and more.

Those are all enduring. But perhaps the most endearing tradition is the Par 3 tournament on Wednesday of Masters Week. Set amidst scenery too beautiful to be a painting, the Par 3 is an unequaled opportunity to see the world's greatest golfers in a competition so lighthearted that many have their smallest children or grandchildren finish the holes for them. It makes for great laughs and crowd roars approaching what you might expect for a player's hole-in-one.

To question whether social entrepreneurs can achieve large-scale change is to doubt the existence of Florence Nightingale, Maria Montessori, William Wilberforce, Fazle Abed, Jimmy Wales, or the 2,700 Ashoka Fellows!

After all, what defines the true social entrepreneur is that he or she simply cannot come to rest in life until his or her vision has become the new pattern societywide. Scholars and artists are satisfied when they express an idea. Professionals are when they serve a client well, and managers are when their organization succeeds. None of this much interests the entrepreneur. The life purpose of the true social entrepreneur is to change the world.

Ashoka creates detailed life histories of every serious candidate it considers for election into its world community of leading social entrepreneurs. We have learned to look for this central, gyroscope-like quality because it is so predictive of who will ultimately meet our standard for election, which is to create at least continental-scale pattern change in an important field such as the environment or human rights. This gyroscope kicks in as far back as childhood and continues to define the social entrepreneur’s life decade after decade.

Some people act as if they know it all. In reality when people “act” like they know it all they are acting out a part in life they wish they had.

Collaboration can be difficult because it is centric to people sharing knowledge about something or someone. The sharing of knowledge can sometimes create conflicts when some people sharing think they know it all.

Ever witnessed someone sharing something grounded in knowledge only to be confronted by someone who thinks they know more? It happens all the time and especially in the ecosystem of business.

The ecosystem of a business is built around the hierarchy of power by influence, not by knowledge. Just because someone carries the title of CEO or King doesn’t mean they know it all it just means they have more influence, power.

Vanderbilt and ICOS have been locked in an inventorship dispute for several years over patent rights to tadalafil, the active ingredient in Cialis. The University argues that its scientists should be listed as inventors on the patents because they provided provided the building-blocks that Glaxo used in its discovery of tadalafil. (ICOS now holds the patent rights).

The district court ruled against Vanderbilt – holding that the Vanderbilt researchers could not be inventors because they did not have an independent understanding of the "complete compound claimed." On appeal, the Federal Circuit rejected that misinterpretation of the law of joint inventorship, but affirmed the final holding based on its conclusion that Vanderbilt had not provided clear-and-convincing evidence that it contributed to the invention.

Most technology startups seem to be founded by three types of people: product managers, engineers or biz dev types (MBAs and the like). Very few of them are started, in my experience, by sales people and very few early stage companies really understand sales. That’s why I started the Sales & Marketing Series and at one point I will do a bunch of posts on the sales methodology we developed at my first company called PUCCKA.

Today I want to talk about sales executives and a model for thinking about them. If you ever have to interview, hire, judge the performance of, decide whether to promote, assign clients/regions to them or have to decide whether to fire sales people, I think having a framework for thinking about them is helpful.

There are no direct financial fruits from merely owning a patent. There are a lot of patents and products which are lying useless in federally funded universities and research laboratories across the country. A patent or product must be adopted, purchased or leased by a corporation for development.

The Technology Transfer Agents are present to complete the cycle of innovation by bringing to the market, products and services resulting from federally funded research institutions. They are also considered the catalysts for innovation.

The only reason for being a transfer agent is to make federally funded research available to private industry, for discovering new applications for new inventions, technologies, and products. To return royalties and revenue back to the research agency.

There was an interesting story in today's New York Times entitled China Again Hopes to Drive U.S. Rail Construction

Nearly 150 years after American railroads brought in thousands of Chinese laborers to build rail lines across the West, China is poised once again to play a role in American rail construction. But this time, it would be an entirely different role: supplying the technology, equipment and engineers to build high-speed rail lines.

Specifically, Chinese companies have signed an agreement with California and GE to build the system using Chinese technology and Chinese banks would finance it.