Cleveland BioFund, a new venture group in Cleveland, is launching a partnership with Newsummit Pharmaceutical Group, a Shanghai-based biotechnology development company, to fund and support revenue-stage US medical device companies looking to enter the China market, and Chinese medical device companies looking to enter the US market.  The partners announced that $30 million of a targeted $100 million in funding is available now.  BioEnterprise will assist the groups in identifying and supporting opportunities.  Cleveland BioFund is a new project launched by the group behind the Cleveland International Fund, a real estate investment fund.

Startup companies are developing a wide range of new — and sometimes exotic — sustainable-energy technologies to help countries move away from their dependence on dwindling and greenhouse-gas producing fossil fuels. In this special report from the 2011 Wharton Global Alumni Forum in San Francisco, Knowledge@Wharton surveys the role and limitations of venture capital in contributing to this transformation.

O ver the past several years, Florida's bioscience industry has continued to grow, attracting some of the world's leading research institutes. That momentum began in the mid-2000s when former Gov. Jeb Bush, recognizing biotechnology as a growth industry for the state, successfully attracted an expansion operation for the Scripps Research Institute to Jupiter through $300 million in incentives that were matched by Palm Beach County. Since that time, more than $1 billion in incentive investments has contributed to the attraction of other prestigious research institutes such as Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute, Torrey Pines Institute for Molecular Studies, Vaccine & Gene Therapy Institute, Draper Laboratories, Stanford Research Institute and Max Planck Institute.

These organizations have established or are currently building hundreds of thousands of square feet of new laboratory and office facilities and employ more than 1,000 researchers, administrators and other workers. Over the last six years, when construction cranes have been silenced in many industries and regions, activity in Florida's bioscience industry has remained strong. In fact, Florida is now one of the fastest growing states for creation of biotechnology, medical device and pharmaceutical companies.

DURHAM, N.C. (AP) — Sleeping on a futon and living off about $1,000 per month was how Ryan Allis said he and a co-founder started the email marketing business iContact without startup capital, while still in college.

Allis, whose company now employs about 300 people in offices in Morrisville, was part of a three-person panel of entrepreneurs under 30 years of age who are now running North Carolina-based companies.

The other panelists were Rachel Weeks, founder of the Durham-based collegiate apparel company School House, and James Freeman, a co-founder of Pembroke-based restaurant Mighty J's.

A solution is gaining steam to help spur small-business growth and the anemic state of job creation. It requires updating Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) regulations regarding general solicitation and accreditation so average Americans can choose to invest in small businesses.

Crowd-fund investing is a common-sense solution that has attracted the interest and support of President Obama. Republican Rep. Patrick T. McHenry of North Carolina recently introduced H.R. 2930, the Entrepreneur Access to Capital Act, legislation that aligns with the general framework supported by the president. So here we have a common-ground idea over which both sides of the political aisle agree on many key details. It’s time to move forward quickly so crowd-fund investing can help capital-starved businesses and our gasping economy.

The Institute of Directors yesterday published its response to the Treasury’s consultation document “Tax-advantaged venture capital schemes”. The Institute’s main concerns are as follows.

Growth must be promoted across the board, by keeping tax rates down for all businesses. A new scheme for seed capital may help some, but it is not the most important thing to do.

Knowledge is power - economic power - and there's a scramble for that power taking place around the globe.

In the United States, Europe and in rising powers such as China, there is a growth-hungry drive to invest in hi-tech research and innovation.

They are looking for the ingredients that, like Google, will turn a university project into a corporation. They are looking for the jobs that will replace those lost in the financial crash.

Nike Inc. (NKE), the world’s biggest sneaker company, is taking a page from Silicon Valley’s playbook in an effort to cut production costs and foster a new generation of green-technology businesses.

The company is setting up a venture-capital offshoot called the Sustainable Business & Innovation Lab to back startups focused on alternative energies and more efficient approaches to manufacturing. The lab also will seek out companies that promote healthy lifestyles, according to a description on Nike’s site.

The concept of innovation has been especially trendy at business school over the last decade, with business schools launching everything from design labs to classes devoted to the topic. The Wharton School has been part of this wave of interest, hosting events like the Wharton Sports Innovation Conference and creating the Mack Center for Technological Innovation. They’re now adding to their offerings in this field this fall with the launch of the new Wharton Innovation Fund, an initiative to encourage students, faculty and staff to come up with inventions or services that “show promise for making a substantial impact on business or society as a whole,” according to a Wharton press release. Alberto Vitale, a Wharton alum and former CEO of Random House, has provided the seed money for the fund, which will provide approximately $125,000 worth of grant money each year for projects. Vitale says he views the fund as “a catalyst to stimulate innovation at the school and to surface the brainpower of its students.”

INNOVATION AMERICA IS PROUD TO HAVE ASSISTED THE STATE OF IOWA IN DEVELOPING ITS COMPREHENSIVE INNOVATION ROADMAP AND CONSULTING ON ITS WINNIG i6 PROPOSAL.

WASHINGTON – The Obama Administration today announced the six winners of the i6 Green Challenge, an initiative to drive technology commercialization and entrepreneurship in support of a green innovation economy, increased U.S. competitiveness and new jobs.

Projects in Florida, Iowa, Louisiana, Michigan, New England and Washington will each receive up to $1 million from the U.S. Commerce Department’s Economic Development Administration (EDA) and up to $6 million in additional funding and technical assistance from the U.S. Departments of Agriculture and Energy, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the National Science Foundation, and Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology and United States Patent and Trademark Office.

TIANJIN ECO-CITY, China -- Three years ago, this coastal area fit perfectly into the dictionary definition for "wasteland." Its soil was too salty to grow crops. It was polluted enough to scare away potential residents. Sometimes the few fishermen who lived here saw investors driving in, but they quickly turned around and left, leaving nothing behind except dust.

But then some people showed up to buy a piece of this land. It is about half the size of Manhattan. They restored the soil, cleaned up water pollution and began preparing the once-deserted place for a city that will host green businesses and some 350,000 residents by 2020.

HARRISBURG, Pa., Sept. 29, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- As promised in his budget address, Governor Tom Corbett today announced he has created a new Governor's Advisory Council on Privatization and Innovation to explore if any functions now performed by state government might be better and more cost-effectively performed by the private sector.

"We have an obligation to taxpayers to find new and innovative ways to make government more efficient," Governor Corbett said. "This panel will further evaluate potential privatization, public-private partnerships or managed-competition opportunities with the ultimate goal of streamlining government and saving taxpayers' dollars."

Renée Winsky, chief executive officer of the Technology Council of Maryland (TCM), has been elected to the board of trustees of SSTI. Prior to joining TCM in 2009, Winsky served as the president and executive director of the Maryland Technology Development Corporation. An SSTI member since 1999, Winsky has been a speaker at SSTI conferences and accepted the 2008 Excellence in TBED award for Commercializing Research Category on behalf of the Maryland Technology Transfer Fund. She previously held positions at the Information Technology Association of America, the National League of Cities and its affiliate, and the National Association of Telecommunications Officers and Advisors.

Global mobile app downloads will reach nearly 18 billion this year with sales of $15.1 billion, nearly triple last year’s revenues, according to Gartner Research.  How much of that $15.1B went into the pocket of carriers (versus Apple and Google)?  We would expect that number to be close to zero!

Having missed the first wave of mobile ecosystem value creation, global telcos are coming to Silicon Valley in droves, looking to partner with entrepreneurial companies that are developing innovative technologies that might complement their networks.  15 of those telcos disclosed what they were looking for at the Sept 15, 2011 Telecom Council Carrier Connections (TC3) meeting in Mt. View, CA.  Several of the telcos presenting were paired with partner startup companies to discuss their collaboration and process of engagement.  This provided the audience with selected case studies of how startups could work with carriers to pursue meaningful partnership opportunities.

Mineral-rich states, often those with tiny populations, have had the strongest state budgets in the nation over the last decade, according to a new study from a Virginia-based budget research and advocacy organization.

Wyoming, North Dakota, West Virginia, Texas and Alaska had the largest "total funds surpluses" during the 2000s, the study by State Budget Solutions concludes. By contrast, the states with the biggest "total funds deficits" during that time were Wisconsin, Oregon, Ohio, Hawaii and California.

Donn Rubin will tell you it’s not very flashy.

“We’re not trying to build an empire here,” he laughs.

A nondescript Clayton storefront on Forsyth Boulevard seems an unlikely place from which to run an imperial entity anyway. Yet for the dozens who gathered Tuesday afternoon to celebrate the birth of the organization Rubin now runs -- BioSTL -- there was plenty of excitement.

“We have lots of companies being formed, lots of things going on,” Dr. William Danforth, chancellor emeritus of Washington University, told the assembled group. “One of the things we lack is sufficient funds to give the right help to companies that are starting up and enough money to invest in those startup companies.”

Nokia plans to drastically reduce its workforce by another 3,500 positions, the company announced today.

The slashed jobs will be added to the 4,000 jobs Nokia already announced it would cut in April. At that time, Nokia said it would cut 4,000 positions by the end of 2012 and transfer 3,000 jobs to Accenture.

On Wednesday, Amazon's Jeff Bezos introduced the Kindle Fire tablet. The Fire, priced at $199 and lacking many of the features of Apple's iPad, garnered a mixed response from analysts. On the one hand, they noted that Barnes and Noble and many of the Android-based competitor tablets should be worried. On the other hand, the consensus was strong among market observers that Apple should not be concerned at all and that it should keep on doing exactly what it's doing — making more powerful tablets. Many analysts believe that Amazon failed to unveil the iPad killer that many anticipated the Kindle Fire could be.

After all, how could the Kindle Fire kill the iPad? It has no camera, no microphone, limited memory (8 GB), a dramatically smaller app pool, and no mobile broadband. The majority of market observers reckon there is no way that it could slay the giant.

It’s hard to be a health IT investor.

Bloated valuations. Fat investing rounds. Big new funds ready to spend. It’s enough to make you say bubble. And it’s harder than ever to find the hidden (read: low cost) health IT and mobile health gems that will make for the next big exits.

Then again, how can promising startups be heard against the din of billions in federal dollars fueling a health IT craze that’s churning out scores of other startups?