The Doing Business 2010 report highlighted how the financial crisis has prompted governments to act in areas where regulatory reform may be more difficult and require more time. The report states that in times of recession, “the more quickly the assets of nonviable firms can be freed up, the easier it is to remobilize those assets.” While the U.S. remained ranked 4th in the 2010 ease of doing business list compared to its 2009 rank, other countries have implemented several reforms that improved their ranking. How has the EU fared?

I [Johnathan Ortmans] post today from Berlin where following the recent elections there is considerable government interest in new start-ups. Germany may rank 25th in the ease of doing business (I learned today in a meeting with their Ministry that it only costs one Euro to start a business), but in “ease of employing workers,” the country ranks 158th out of 183 economies, which can only constrain Germany’s entrepreneurial potential. And the problem is not unique within Europe as you may know. In France, where we found the word entrepreneur, there are not only the same employment constraints (155th in the ease of employing workers), but also the challenge of property registration where France ranks 159th, although it has improved since last year when it ranked 170th.

Ever since innovation became the buzzword du Jour, a lot of people seem to have lost their ability to tell smart ideas from stupid ones. Case in point: the financial "innovations" (read: stunningly stupid loan products) that kicked off the trillion-dollar economic meltdown mess we're currently in. The simplistic notion that "new equals good" has often been a recipe for grand-scale disaster, just as it was in the dotcom debacle at the turn of the millennium. And when the doo-doo inevitably hits the fan, it's all too easy to level the blame at innovation per se rather than admit to being a bonehead. Here's why many ideas that are labeled "innovations" are just plain stupidity.

Simply put, innovation goes wrong (sometimes big time) when an organization over-commits to an idea before validating the key assumptions on which it is based. Let's take the infamous sub-prime mortgage. The assumption here was that a jobless, homeless person who is just out of jail and doesn't even have a bank account can afford to make mortgage repayments of any description, let alone horrendously overpriced ones.

All India Engineering Project Innovation Contest (AIEPIC, pronounced as eye-pic) aims to identify, promote and reward outstanding engineering talent across India. The contest is open to all final year undergraduate engineering students and MCA students in India. This contest is expected to bring together more than six lakh students in their final-year course from 3000+ colleges across India to showcase their projects. This is the only event of its kind being organized for the first time in India. The contest provides a level-playing field for every budding engineer to display his/her technical brilliance.

Eligible candidate's, register yourself, invite your team members, and post a summary of the project you intend to execute. You need to constantly update the progress of your project every 15 days. You can also vote/ comment on projects of other students and network with industry experts for guidance.

Eight winners have been announced in a tender for the New Hungary Venture Capital Program (Új Magyarország Kockázati Tőkeprogram), which will see venture capital funds receiving EU backing to help finance local start-ups.

The eight winners were selected from among 18 applicants, and will be managing nearly Ft 45 billion (€165.75 million), of which the local firms will provide Ft 13.4 billion and the EU Ft 31.5 billion.

According to gazdasagiradio.hu, the winners are Big George's NV Equity Kockázati Tőkealap-kezelő, Central Fund Kockázati Tőkealap-kezelő Zrt, DBH Investment Kockázati Tőkealap-kezelő Zrt, Etalon Kockázati Tőkealap-kezelő Zrt, Finext Startup Kockázati Tőkealap-kezelő Zrt, Morando Kockázati Tőkealap-kezelő Zrt, Portfolion Kockázati Tőkealap-kezelő Zrt and Primus Capital Kockázati Tőkealap-kezelő Zrt.

The US Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture has just released both its PHASE I and PHASE II instruction sheets for the Small Business Innovation Research Program (SBIR) program. The details of these phased programs can be found in PDF format HERE

A plan that proposes a $100-million, five- year pilot federal program to accelerate the commercialization of university-developed technologies was praised by a top White House Office of S&T Policy (OSTP) official last week at a Capitol Hill briefing organized by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF).

The plan is contained in a 14-page white paper, IMPACT: Innovation Model Program for Accelerating the Commercialization of Technologies, prepared by Univ. of Southern California vice provost for innovation Krisztina Holly (also known as ‘Z’). It outlines an initiative that would use federal funding to coax existing university research results into the US commercial marketplace through ten local demonstration sites or centers. Each center would be funded at a level of $2-million per year for five years to “nurture a culture of entrepreneurship within each university, create and enhance the innovation ecosystem around each university, and provide the resources necessary for researchers to effectively translate their ideas into societal impact.”

Welfare Reform For Start-Ups - The EVCA is preparing to ask European governments to withdraw funding for start-ups in favor of raising a pan-European fund of funds, according to our colleagues at Private Equity News. The goal is to “produce a more sustainable sector” by weaning companies off public funding and drawing more private capital to finance innovation.

Kids these days. It seems like they're writing HTML before they learn how to talk. And a lot of them are starting companies before they graduate from high school.

Here's a list of some of our favorite teen entrepreneurs. And please keep in mind that there are lots of startups we've yet to hear about. So if you are a young entrepreneur, make sure to leave a comment below and add your bio and startup information to CrunchBase.

BEIJING — Kai-Fu Lee's recent departure as head of Google China stirred speculation in the tech community here that he finally tired of battling the Chinese government, which has constantly pressured the Mountain View search giant and temporarily shut down some of its services.

But Lee, whose 2005 hiring by Google from Microsoft in China triggered a lawsuit on allegations the move violated a noncompete agreement, says he's simply going after a new opportunity. After nearly doubling Google's market share in China to 31 percent, he has founded Innovation Works, a venture fund that will provide coaching for early stage startups. The organization fills a void in China, where entrepreneurs lack the experience and advice readily found in Silicon Valley, he said.

Every year some of the most brilliant minds from business, science, art, technology, education and government come to the Business Innovation Factory’s BIF Collaborative Innovation Summit in Providence, RI for two days to share their stories about innovation. It’s sort of like the TED conference, but more intimate and relaxed. But, like TED, it blows your head off with new ideas. There are no rules, best practices, methodologies, how-to presentations. Instead, each person takes away something meaningful to them.

Here are 10 patterns and my personal takeaways from the 39 diverse speakers:

Journalism is dying! News has no business model! Reporting is for crap! Ahhhhhhhhhhh!

Welcome to the conversation about news media today. Faced with the onslaught of "citizen reporting" and social media, traditional news media is hemorrhaging resources and wondering if the whole house of cards is about to collapse.

Yet one news organization has not only not collapsed, but is seeing its brand and leverage on the rise. In the last few years, NPR has jumped from favorite of the intellectual commuter crowd to perhaps the most media-savvy news organization in the country.

MANILA, Oct. 10 — In the aftermath of storm “Ondoy,” microfinance will play a key role in the rehabilitation of Metro Manila, which accounts for a third of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP).

Instead of the short-term benefits of dole-outs, microfinance is considered globally as a critical tool in fighting poverty.

In the Philippines, where 40 percent in a population of 92 million are poor, microfinance extends easy credit to entrepreneurs, among them: meat and vegetable vendors in public markets and sidewalk sellers of garments, toys, and household goods. Microfinance enables them to earn enough for their families and for the education of their children.

VNBusinessNews.com - IBM has launched what it calls the System z Competency Centre within the IBM Viet Nam Innovation Centre, strengthening its commitment to supporting clients and business partners in the country as well as the larger Indochina region.

The System z offers the latest IBM System z10 mainframe resources and the high-end IBM System Storage DS8300.

AGRA is a dynamic, African-led partnership working across the African continent to help millions of small-scale farmers and their families lift themselves out of poverty and hunger. AGRA programs develop practical solutions to significantly boost farm productivity and incomes for the poor while safeguarding the environment. AGRA advocates for policies that support its work across all key aspects of the African agricultural “value chain”—from seeds, soil health, and water to markets and agricultural education. AGRA is chaired by Kofi A. Annan, the former Secretary-General of the United Nations. AGRA, with initial support from the Rockefeller Foundation and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, maintains offices in Nairobi, Kenya and Accra, Ghana.

Many global and national leaders have recognised the critical importance of agriculture to Africa’s development, and they are ready to act. In his tenure as Secretary-General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan called for a new “uniquely African Green Revolution—a revolution that is long overdue, a revolution that will help the continent in its quest for dignity and peace.”

These are the 10 books that I believe every entrepreneur should read:

The Entrepreneur's Guide to Business Law
Bootstrapping Your Business: Start and Grow a Successful Company with Almost No Money
Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable
The Art of the Start: The Time-Tested, Battle-Hardened Guide for Anyone Starting Anything
The Innovator's Dilemma: The Revolutionary Book that Will Change the Way You Do Business (Collins Business Essentials)
The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It
Permission Marketing : Turning Strangers Into Friends And Friends Into Customers
Growing a Business
The Cluetrain Manifesto: The End of Business as Usual
Bottom-up Marketing (Plume)

Oct. 12 (Bloomberg) -- Billionaire George Soros, looking to address the “political problem” of climate change, said he will invest $1 billion in clean-energy technology and donate $100 million to an environmental advisory group to aid policymakers.

Soros, the founder of hedge fund Soros Fund Management LLC, announced the investment in Copenhagen on Oct. 10 at a meeting on climate change sponsored by Project Syndicate. The group is an international association made up of 430 newspapers from 150 countries.

Think of this recession as a monstrous hurricane that swept through the job market and is still wreaking havoc. The latest unemployment rate for California is a knee-buckling 12.2 percent, the highest since World War II.

The job market nationwide is the worst it has been in 70 years, noted Robert Reich, the former labor secretary, during one of several conversations that I had with him over the past week. He dismissed the upbeat talk of “green shoots” sprouting in the devastated economic landscape and the dreamy notion that recovery is no longer just around the corner, it’s here.

Braden Kelly has posed another question for us, which is: what roles do engineers and marketers play in an innovation setting, and what conflicts can arise based on their perspectives and approaches?

First, let me say that I am ably suited to answer this question, since I am both an engineer (undergraduate) and a marketer (graduate degree). I've worked in the technical trenches and, frankly, left them as quickly as possible, and worked in a number of marketing roles since my MBA. I left the engineering world because it necessarily demands a level of specificity and exactness that I find boring and tedious, and demands attention to detail that I sometimes lack.

I define innovation as any change in a process or service which creates incremental value for a customer. Notice the definition does not include any reference to technology. Technology by itself is not innovative unless applied to a process or service a customer cares about.

How do you know if something is innovative? Easy. Ask yourself, “Did this change create value for my customer?” The opposite of innovation is the status quo. I find it amusing that Ronald Regan defined “status quo” as Latin for “the mess we are in.” Which seems appropriate. Innovation always involves change.