These days, it's impossible to read the business news without finding articles referring to the world of innovation. Companies proclaim they will grow faster than their competitors because they are going to innovate better products.

Self-proclaimed "innovation experts", who in the past sold marketing, benchmarking and Six Sigma as the "one and only way to heaven", have recently jumped on the innovation train. They are now bombarding audiences with shallow articles and low-value talks full of innovation buzzwords, from "out-of-the-box" and "disruptive" to "cutting-edge" and "breakthrough".

When I'm not writing for VatorNews or working with Bambi on the next mixer, I'm doing research for AlwaysOn. Over there, we just released the VC 100--our pick of the top venture capitalists based on exit performance in the last four years. One thing we learned in the process was how many top dealmakers don't make it into the limelight. Some of the real rockstars are Kevin McQuillan (4 IPOs, 7 acquisitions in 4 years), Todd Chaffee (4 acquisitions, 2 IPOs), Scott Ungerer (cleantech darkhorse--10 big exits in the last 4 years) and Mike Gordon (IPOs: Sourcefire, Vonage, TeleAtlas, BigBand Networks, Isilon). Check out our rundown below and the full list of winners here: http://alwayson.goingon.com/permalink/post/34032

The last 15 months have been highly uncertain for both the venture capital industry and the companies they fund, but history shows that funding entrepreneurs takes patience and endurance. The first annual AlwaysOn Venture Capital 100 highlights the one hundred individuals who have backed the most profitable winners in the last four years. To compile the first VC 100 List, our editorial team sourced data from its research partners Morgan Stanley, VentureDeal and the 451 Group on more than 700 active venture capitalists, 1,400 VC investments and 1,000 technology liquidity events in the last four years, from October 1, 2005 to September 30, 2009. The winning venture capitalists were selected based on total number and dollar amounts of successful M&A and IPO deals from their portfolio companies. For IPOs, AlwaysOn examined opening market capitalization as well as subsequent stock performance, relative to the Nasdaq. For each investment, AlwaysOn counted one lead investor per firm, in order to identify the true dealmakers, understanding that in many cases more than one partner is involved in helping each company. Much of the exact valuation data that would have been ideal for this kind of analysis remains private and inaccessible, of course, so we present the VC 100 ultimately as a "representative list", based upon our best efforts.

Government was taking steps to utilise innovative traditional knowledge, Science and Technology Minister Naledi Pandor said.

"[We] are to make a big deal around scientific exploration in indigenous knowledge," Pandor told a conference on intellectual property rights in Johannesburg.

"Indigenous knowledge is a key part of our innovation technology."

WASHINGTON, Nov. 18 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- United States Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship Chair Mary L. Landrieu, D-La., today joined Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, Small Business Administration (SBA) Administrator Karen Mills, other policymakers, lenders, and small business owners at a forum on small business financing. The forum explored new ideas and strategies for expanding access to financing for small businesses.

"Now that we have stabilized Wall Street, we must jump start Main Street," Sen. Landrieu said. "We can do this by making sure small businesses have access to the capital they need to keep their businesses alive and growing during these tough times.

Shares of Sunnyvale Internet security company Fortinet soared more than 30 percent Wednesday in its first day of trading on the Nasdaq, raising hopes that long-dormant Silicon Valley public offerings may be stirring back to life.

It was the first public offering in 20 months for a tech company with a Silicon Valley address, and the reception may encourage other valley startups to follow suit in coming months.

"This is what investors have been waiting for," said Bob McCooey, Nasdaq vice president of new listings.

BEIJING, Nov 19, 2009 (AsiaPulse via COMTEX) -- ERC | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating -- China and the US agreed to establish a clean energy research center in a joint statement signed on Tuesday after talks between Chinese president Hu Jintao and US president Barack Obama.

A protocol was signed between China's Ministry of Science and Technology, the National Energy Administration and the US' Department of Energy.

The research center will prioritize three topics including energy efficiency in buildings, clean coal, and clean vehicles. It will have one headquarter per country, with public and private funding of at least US$150 million over five years evenly split between the two countries.

Factors That Lead to Success

Despite their impact on the economy, relatively little is known about entrepreneurs' backgrounds and motivations. A study released by the Kauffman Foundation in July, titled "The Anatomy of an Entrepreneur," led by co-authors Vivek Wadhwa, University of Akron's Raj Aggarwal, University of California's Krisztina "Z" Holly, and former BusinessWeek tech editor Alex Salkever aimed to discover who American entrepreneurs are and what makes them tick. To do so, the team surveyed 549 successful business founders from high-growth industries between August 2008 and March 2009. Now, the team is back with a second report, "The Making of a Successful Entrepreneur," in which respondents answer questions about the factors that contributed to their companies' success. Flip through this slide show for Wadhwa's thoughts on the most compelling data.

There are scores of articles in every major newspaper and every major magazine comparing India with China on various economic progress indicators. There are even books written about Tiger of India pitted against Dragon of China. To those who base their opinions on such reports, articles and books, it looks as though India is posing a strong completion to China, when in fact every measurable economic indicator suggests that China is clearly leading India on all fronts. Moreover the gap between these two countries is only widening with each passing year. And yet, many Indian commentators continue to complacently believe that India has some edge somewhere when in fact none exists.

The tone of these reports and analysis comparing India with China suggest that India is actually inching towards China. That is not the case. In reality China is leaving behind India by a bigger margin every year. It is becoming tougher and tougher for India to catch up. In the last few years, Chinese have built the biggest dam on the planet, built the longest bridges, built the fastest cities, built their own planes, submarines, ships, magnetic trains, and even the highest railways while India continued to lay another layer of asphalt on its decrepit roads after each rainfall.

Well, it´s interesting that this nation is capable in so many areas. Historians tell us that jewish farmers produced 3 times more output on the same fields, compared to their parent palestinians that have been living there in earlier days.

A new book shows a new dimension of this capable folk: "Start-up Nation: The Story of Israel's Economic Miracle". Author Dan Senor explains: 'Israeli society has some built-in - and some hard-earned - advantages. It is these advantages that facilitate Israel's generation of more start-up companies than Japan, China, India, Korea, Canada and the UK, as well as Israel's boasting the second highest number of companies listed on the NASDAQ stock exchange, after the United States itself.

Anthony Townsend, Institute for the Future
Alex Soojung-Kim Pang, Institute for the Future
Rick Weddle, Research Triangle Foundation
IFTF Report Number SR-12361

The model of self-contained research parks and incubators that dominated the last fifty years of technology-based economic development is being challenged by deep shifts in the global economy, science and technology, and models of innovation. This paper describes fourteen emerging trends that will set the context for technology-based economic development in the coming decades. These trends are used to develop three scenarios for the future of technology- based economic development over the next two decades. In the first scenario, an incremental evolution of the research parks model takes place in a world of rapid, but steady and predictable change. In the second scenario, entirely new networks of R&D space emerge in a “research cloud” that challenges current models to adapt, sometimes dramatically. The third scenario, the research park models is in rapid decline as R&D becomes highly virtualized and parks’ legacy cost structure makes them obsolete for young firms. We conclude by highlighting the strategic implications of these scenarios for existing and future parks and economic development.

As I [Bob Sutton] blogged about awhile back, this week, Perry Klebhan, Alex Kazaks,Huggy Rao and I are running rather intense executive program called Customer-Focused Innovation. As you can see from the schedule, we are keeping the 21 executives in the program mighty busy. We kicked off with a tire-changing exercise led by Andy Papa, who among other things leads the pit crews at Hendrick's Motor Sports, where one team established the all time CFI speed record, changing in a tire on a NASCAR racing car in under 13 seconds. Yesterday, the group spent the day at the Tesla dealer in Menlo Park talking to owners, potential customers, people in sales and marketing at Tesla, and people who didn't like the idea of owning a Tesla at all. In the picture above, the two executives on the left are interviewing George Kembel, the d.school's executive director (he is the tall guy facing the camera) and the group on the right is interviewing one of the Tesla salespeople (the woman in black with sunglasses in her hair).

Business Times - 18 Nov 2009

Siemens' solutions hub testament to S'pore's ability to be home for innovation

By JOYCE HOOI

SENIOR Minister Goh Chok Tong reiterated yesterday the importance of the three-pronged 'host to home' strategy in adapting to the demands of a post-crisis world.

'While Singapore will continue to be a good host for businesses, we want companies to see us as their 'home' as well, specifically as home for business, home for innovation and home for talent,' Mr Goh said, in reference to the 'host to home' strategy championed by the Economic Development Board to keep the best of talent and businesses here.