IBM's Watson supercomputer reached a milestone in artificial intelligence last February when it beat two Jeopardy! champions. Millions watched, and while some experts dismissed it as a publicity stunt, IBM said Watson would soon be helping doctors diagnose illness, and hinted at talks with gadget companies about Watson helping consumers with questions.

As IBM prepares to celebrate the first anniversary of the televised contest on February 16, though, it is not yet offering the question-answering system for sale. Although limited trials using Watson technology are underway in health and financial services businesses, the AI prodigy is having its biggest impact by pulling in new customers for existing business products—as IBM persuades them to organize their data into formats that an AI like Watson can better understand. IBM has created a slogan, "Ready for Watson," to help sell its products that way.

I had the opportunity to interview GE‘s Chief Marketing Officer, Beth Comstock, recently as she was on her way to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. With the Global Innovation Barometer for 2011 just out, I wanted to probe a bit further on what some of the key takeaways were and to get some of her insights on the importance of governments and other members in creating thriving innovation ecosystems.

Here is the text of the interview:

1. Why did you create the Global Innovation Barometer? What were you hoping it would tell you?

At GE, we innovate on a global scale, every day. We thought it would be interesting to explore how executives in different countries view innovation and compare how those views align with how we see the world.

Facebook’s IPO has innovation and entrepreneurship in the news. And the face of Facebook is Mark Zuckerberg. The 27-year old Zuckerberg reinforces the image that many, if not most people, have come to believe is what an innovator looks like – techie and young.

Youth seems to be the major characteristic that dominates the mythological profile of an innovator. Noted venture capitalist Vinod Khosla (who is 57 years old) is quoted in the Washington Post as saying “People under 35 are the people who make change happen…People over 45 basically die in terms of new ideas.”

In San Francisco cafes and bars, even on the street, I overhear people talking about their startup ideas, business plans, and goals. And there are tons of incubators, Angels, wannabe Angels, VC firms, making investments in startups.

And there’s lots of money being made, especially among the Super Angels, the incubators such as Y Combinator, the micro-VCs, and people such as Jeff Clavier, Dave McClure, who have made fortunes selling startups to larger companies. Sometimes startup teams can go from seed to exit in under a year.

For the investors, making dozens of $10K to $25K seed investments, can be tremendously lucrative.

Skip college, work at a startup. That’s the idea behind a new two-year program called Enstittue that started accepting applications Tuesday.

As newspaper headlines about recent college graduates read along the lines of “educated, unemployed and frustrated” and the average college student takes on a record-breaking amount of crippling debt (on average, $25,250), the program isn’t the first to suggest that there might be something remiss with our certification system.

Enstitute has, however, proposed a somewhat unusual solution.

Dwolla founder Ben Milne heard the question more than once while crossing the country pitching his tech startup to potential investors: Will you move the company from Iowa?

Milne said no. While he acknowledges his defense of Des Moines might have cost his company money, the 30-year-old entrepreneur says finding a good match for the company was more important to him.

Why is a prominent game investor betting on health-related startups?

We checked in with Mayfield's managing director Tim Chang after we learned about his obsession for the quantified self movement, where people use gadgets to keep track of their health and fitness.

Chang made the 2011 Forbes Midas List of Top 100 Dealmakers, but in his free time you can see him on-stage performing with rock bands Coverflow and BlackMahal.

Gayle Laakmann McDowell worked at four of today's biggest tech companies, Apple, Google and Microsoft.

She wrote a book, The Google Resume, about how to land a job at the companies and what makes candidates stand out.

Some of the rumored tricks, like having a perfect GPA, are mostly hot air, says McDowell. Others, like attending an elite university, do determine how attractive candidates are to the Google and Apple.

President Obama is urging Congress to support legislation to expand tax cuts for small businesses and free up capital for startups.

His proposed “Startup America Legislative Agenda,” would eliminate taxes on capital gains in investments in small businesses and provide a 10 percent income tax credit on for new hires or to spur job-creation, double the deductions a startup business could take from $5,000 to $10,000, and extend 100 percent first-year depreciation for qualified property. The President will offer details of his proposals in the fiscal 2013 budget that will be submitted to Congress on February 13.

Every company I’m involved in keeps track of numbers. Daily numbers, weekly numbers, monthly numbers. Ultimately, all the numbers translate into three financial statements – the P&L, Balance Sheet, and Cash Flow Statement. While these numbers are sacrosanct in the accounting and finance professions, they are lagging indicators for most startup companies. Important, but they tell the story of the past, not what is going on right now.

I’ve formed a view that every young company should be obsessed about three magic numbers. Not two, not five, but three. Before I explain what those numbers are, I need to tell a story of how I got to this point.

My brain works better with numbers than graphs, so over the years I’ve conditioned most people I work with to send me numbers on a regular basis. Words are good also, but I love numbers. Early in the life of the company I request numbers daily. Some of this is for me; most of it is to try to help the entrepreneurs build some muscles around understanding the data and how to use it.

Too many entrepreneurs develop a new product without regard to market demand, then build an entire strategy based on creating a need, rather than acting on an existing market need. Investors characterize this approach as a “solution looking for a problem.” These don’t get funded.

The best startups find a way to drive the market with their technology, rather than push their new technology-driven ‘solution’ on the marketplace. An example of market-driven technology is the basic automobile, but combining a car with an airplane is technology looking for a market.

As the state’s flagship university, UConn conducts ground-breaking research, works to better the lives of Connecticut’s residents, and educates students who will become tomorrow’s leaders and scholars.

What tends to be less apparent is the vital role that a top public university such as ours also plays in contributing to our region’s economic well-being. As a leading higher education institution, UConn is also responsible for fostering the kind of innovative thinking that will ultimately lead to the creation of jobs and thriving new business ventures.

Trying to figure out how much an IPO prospect like Facebook is worth based on its registration statement can be more challenging than managing the social network friends you’ve accumulated over the years.

Reuters Estimates about the company’s worth have centered around $75 billion-$100 billion in recent weeks. But last Wednesday’s S-1 filing offered some detail about how the company itself thought the market might value it recently.

When you are about to collide into something and manage to swerve away just in the nick of time, what exactly is happening in your brain? A new study from the Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital – The Neuro, McGill University shows how the brain processes visual information to figure out when something is moving towards you or when you are about to head into a collision. The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA (PNAS), provides vital insight into our sense of vision and a greater understanding of the brain.

Researchers at The Neuro and the University of Maryland have figured out the mathematical calculations that specific neurons employ in order to inform us of our distance from an object and the 3D velocities of moving objects and surfaces relative to ourselves.  Highly specialized neurons located in the brain’s visual cortex, in an area known as MST, respond selectively to motion patterns such as expansion, rotation, and deformation. However, the computations underlying such selectivity were unknown until now.

Broken bones in humans and animals are painful and often take months to heal. Studies conducted in part by University of Georgia Regenerative Bioscience Center researchers show promise to significantly shorten the healing time and revolutionize the course of fracture treatment.

“Complex fractures are a major cause of amputation of limbs for U.S. military men and women,” said Steve Stice, a Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar, animal and dairy scientist in the UGA College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences and director of the UGA Regenerative Bioscience Center.

“For many young soldiers, their mental health becomes a real issue when they are confined to a bed for three to six months after an injury,” he said. “This discovery may allow them to be up and moving as fast as days afterward.”

In my last blog, I argued that the world needs more systems thinkers given the scope of problems/opportunities we face. I believe our major systems have a long way to go, and I write from that angle and set of assumptions. But having an awareness of how our systems, and therefore work habits, are changing is a critical skill for anyone in this economy, not just social change enthusiasts.

There are two ways to look toward the future of work:

• What might the world need from us in terms of the companies we build or work we do?

Building on a break-out inaugural year, the 2012 Florida Companies to Watch awards program is back to recognize and award growing second-stage companies, headquartered in Florida, that have established themselves as high performance companies in their marketplace. This year's group of companies will have the opportunity to join an esteemed group of national Companies to Watch honorees recognized from across the U.S. on Friday, October 19, at the Rosen Shingle Creek Resort in Orlando.

Developed by the Edward Lowe Foundation, Companies to Watch was formed as an exclusive way to honor second-stage companies who exhibit innovative business strategies and processes. The companies recognized by this award are leading the way for second-stage companies and prove themselves to be "worth watching".

There actually are “litter twins” in the canine world but the only way you know is to do a DNA test or see them in the same sack at birth. When dog trainers know they are dealing with litter twins they suggest training them separately after weaning to maximize each one’s potential.

In business, you might want to follow the lead of the canine trainers and separate a high potential specialized product or service by creating a separate position and budget. This is what we describe as the Litter Twin Strategy.

With the launch of the Warrior, a large wheeled robot with a hefty mechanical arm, military robots just got significantly larger and more adaptable. The robot rides on caterpillar tracks like a tank. It can climb stairs and cover rough terrain, and perform tasks ranging from the delicate (opening car doors) to the destructive (smashing car windows) with its two-meter-long mechanical arm.

Warrior is the latest invention from iRobot, the Bedford, Massachusetts, company best known for the Roomba robotic vacuum, and its line of remote-control PackBots, used by U.S. combat forces to disable improvised explosive devices and perform other dangerous tasks. The robot could be weaponized—in one test it launched a rocket that trailed explosives behind it to clear mines or other obstacles (see video).

After polling innovation managers and experts from all over the world about the size of the organization in relation to the ease of starting an innovation initiative, Gijs Van Wulfen takes a look at the arguments.

The fuzzy front end of innovation confronts you with a lot of questions. In my new book ‘Creating innovative Products and Services’ I try to solve them with the FORTH innovation method.

In one of my last blogs on InnovationManagement I discussed more than 40 reasons why people struggle with innovation. Corporate culture, uncertainty, a lack of support, a lack of market insights, the absence of an appropriate process, missing the tools and lacking the right resources all matter a great deal.