Sparked by an idea and a $15-million check from Dow Chemical, the U.S. Small Business Administration will announce today that Michigan is the first test bed for a new $1-billion national Impact Investment Fund to help finance growing companies in high-unemployment areas.

In Michigan, $130 million will be made available to second-stage growth companies through a partnership of Midland-based Dow, the SBA and state investment funds. The new InvestMichigan! Mezzanine Fund will be co-managed by Credit Suisse and Beringea, a Farmington Hills investment firm.

Dow CEO Andrew Liveris, Gov. Rick Snyder and state Treasurer Andy Dillon, along with SBA Administrator Karen Mills, will discuss the program in a telephone news conference today.

The unemployed need not apply.

That is the message being broadcast by many of the nation’s employers, making it even more difficult for 14 million jobless Americans to get back to work.

A recent review of job vacancy postings on popular sites like Monster.com, CareerBuilder and Craigslist revealed hundreds that said employers would consider (or at least “strongly prefer”) only people currently employed or just recently laid off.

Unemployed workers have long suspected that the gaping holes on their résumés left them less attractive to employers. But with the country in the worst jobs crisis since the Great Depression, many had hoped employers would be more forgiving.

CHICAGO, July 25, 2011/PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- TechAmerica today applauded Illinois Governor Pat Quinn for signing Senate Bill 107, the Technology Development Act (TDA II), legislation critical to the expansion of the state's technology sector. The new law expands a program to increase the amount of venture capital funds available through the Treasurer's Technology Development Account which is focused on supporting early stage technology and entrepreneurial businesses in Illinois.

"TDA II further illustrates the commitment of the Illinois legislature and Governor Quinn to strengthen our economy through innovation and support of our technology-based businesses," said T. Kendall Hunt, Chairman, CEO, VASCO Data Security International, Inc., member of the Illinois Innovation Council, and Chair of TechAmerica Midwest. "TechAmerica and our members are proud to have supported this legislation as part of our continued efforts to improve and strengthen the business environment in Illinois."

Originally established in 2003, the Treasurer's Technology Development Account has invested $32 million of state money into venture capital firms investing in Illinois companies. Those firms, in turn, invested more than $115 million in Illinois companies, which attracted another $465 million from additional investors. Companies receiving TDA investments created more than 3,300 direct and in-direct jobs in the state.

It’s an awfully big undertaking to go in to alone. In fact, most entrepreneurs open the doors of their business with product or service knowledge but what they lack is the knowledge to run a business. They might be master plumbers but don’t know how to market the business. They may be computer geniuses but lack the knowledge of how to price their service competitively but still make a profit.

To go back even further, the world has an even bigger problem. Education systems encourge learning certain subjects and ideas but it falls short of teaching students how to think like an entrepreneur. An entrepreneur doesn’t think any problem is too difficult to solve and an entrepreneur doesn’t do things the same way as the people around them but that isn’t a way of thinking that is being encouraged.

Your marketing launch is the most important element of startup success these days, to get customer attention in this world of information overload. Yet it is the one element that too many entrepreneurs focus on only as an afterthought. Everyone assumes their product or service is so great that “word-of-mouth” will carry the day for them.

Even great products need great marketing “content” to fuel the ascent of their online message. I just finished a modern-day primer on the key elements of great online content in “Launch: How to Quickly Propel Your Business Beyond the Competition,” a new book by Michael Stelzner, founder of SocialMediaExaminer.com.

It's Monday, time for MBA Mondays and the next post in the Startup Financing Options series. Today we will talk about Venture Debt.

If there were two words less likely to be found together, it would be venture and debt. Startups are not credit worthy enterprises. They have little to no assets and no cash flow. Equity is the appropriate way to finance startups.

However, there is a large, growing, and vibrant market for something called Venture Debt. It is indeed debt, largely provided by a number of banks and finance companies who specialize in this market. The terms are usually three years, interest only, balloon payment, with warrants for the equity kicker. Now that I've just thrown out a bunch of buzzwords, I'll explain each of them.

In the pharmaceutical industry, universities appear to have found a partner willing and able to buy big chunks of their research. Beyond making drugs, however, such big-dollar corporate alliances remain rare.

It's not for a lack of trying. The University of Michigan, a powerhouse with a total research budget of $1.3-billion a year and growing quickly, has "worked extraordinarily hard over the last decade to increase our industry funding," said Stephen R. Forrest, vice president for...

P. Jeffrey Conn left a full professorship for a job in Big Pharma 11 years ago because he saw no path in academe to turn his novel idea for treating Parkinson's disease into an actual drug. Now he and a corps of scientists are closing in on a molecule that could bring relief to the millions suffering with the condition's debilitating tremors and paralysis.

But the screening, testing, formulating, and reformulating that brought Mr. Conn's team to this point didn't...

Any business should not necessarily be restricted to its own domestic market.

There are many more customers for your goods and services, franchise business and even your intellectual property than you might think, even if it might feel daunting and a little frightening to operate away from a familiar environment.

Assess your potential for export

The decision to enter foreign markets implies a long-haul commitment with financial and operational consequences and it is likely to have an impact on the course of your business, for the better we all hope.

At the best of times (or worst), innovation is a key ingredient in the cocktail of a city’s success, and determines how well it is likely to continuously reinvent itself.

So, last year, when Brisbane Marketing joined hands with accounting firm Deloitte and others to measure business innovation in the city, it was a smart move, or shall we say an innovative one.

Sure to enhance Brisbane’s chances of carrying off the new moniker of “new world city,” the campaign begun nearly two years ago by the city’s leaders to distinguish it from Melbourne and Sydney, it also builds on encouraging news.

Researchers at Stanford University have made fully transparent batteries, the last missing component needed to make transparent displays and other electronic devices.

Stanford materials science professor Yi Cui, who led the work, says a tremendous amount of research goes into making batteries store more energy for longer, but little attention has been paid to making them "more beautiful, and fancier."

Researchers have previously made transparent variations on other major classes of electronics, including transistors and the components used to control displays, but not yet batteries. "And if you can't make the battery transparent, you can't make the gadget transparent," says Cui.

It has been a big week for entrepreneurship in Indonesia. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrived in Bali on July 21 to take part in an ASEAN Regional Entrepreneurship Summit (RES) held by the Ministry of Trade of the Republic of Indonesia and the Global Entrepreneurship Program Indonesia (GEPI). The theme of the 3-day RES was: “Emerging Entrepreneurs: The Next Big Chapter.”

The Summit was part of GEPI’s efforts to catalyze Indonesia’s entrepreneurship strategies. Formally started in January 2011 by a group of 13 prominent business leaders in Indonesia, GEPI is also part of wider global initiative called the Nadiem Makarim, the young founder of Go-Jek, a motorcycle taxi company in Jakarta, is part of the first generation of the GEPI program participants. This recent Harvard Business School graduate conceived the idea for his company, which seeks to meet the demand for efficient transportation and the need for more jobs among Indonesia’s low-skilled workers. Go-Jek recently secured investment by US entrepreneur Arthur Benjamin. Indonesian Trade Minister Mari Pangestu hopes entrepreneurs and their investors will allow Indonesia to “leapfrog” development.

Vinod Khosla, Founder and Partner of the venture capital firm Khosla Ventures on “The Innovation Ecosystem and Its Role in Shaping Our Renewable Future. This presentation at the Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley, is part of the Dean’s Speaker Series on the occasion of Khosla receiving the 2009 Lifetime Achievement Award in Entrepreneurship and Innovation from the Lester Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation. (Sept. 9, 2009) The University of California Berkeley Haas School of Business is one of the world’s leading producers of new ideas and knowledge in all areas of business – which includes the distinction of having two of its faculty members receive the Nobel Prize in Economics over the past 15 years. The school offers six degree-granting programs. Its mission is to develop innovative business leaders – individuals who redefine how we do business by putting new ideas into action, and who do so responsibly. The school’s distinctive culture is defined by four key principles – question the status quo; confidence without attitude; students always; and, beyond yourself. Visit our website at haas.berkeley.edu

Where your business is based can impact on how green you are. That’s the takeaway of a recent top 10 ranking of states by Site Selection magazine that ranked U.S. states on how well they engage in environmentally sustainable practices.

The rankings look at attributes such green industry projects, the number of projects certified by Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED), financial incentives offered to support green projects, per capita renewable energy generation, funding for brownfields redevelopment and use of alternative-fuel vehicles.

With each new success story generated from collaboration and co-creation, a diverse range of organizations are following suit. Gaurav Bhalla shares a co-creation accomplishment recently recognized by President Obama, involving Local Motors and a government defence agency.

For close to a year now, beginning with my book “Collaboration and Co-Creation: New Platforms for Marketing and Innovation,” and more recently in my blog posts and conference presentations, I have maintained that the government and the nonprofit sector is a very fertile ground for co-creation.  This assertion was amply supported at the recently concluded PDMA conference on Co-Creation, held in Phoenix on July 27-28.  What made the conference even more interesting was that the first day of the conference was hosted by Local Motors, the only company in USA that co-creates cars with its customers (I will be writing more about Local Motors in my upcoming blogs).

Do you find that good ideas get trashed because of mistakes made in the organization’s handeling of the creative process? Gijs van Wulfen outlines 10 common innovation blunders. Do you have more?

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.

Many things can go wrong during the process of creating new products, services or business models. I give you ten examples.  Perhaps it is a ‘feast of recognition’, which in this case is unfortunate but rest assured, you are not alone.

When it comes to attracting companies to lovely but not exactly low-cost Santa Cruz, the city just south of Silicon Valley has a problem: no airport. Without an ultra-convenient air link the city struggled to attract large employers and the jobs they’d bring to the area. So what did the city’s creative mayor, Ryan Coonerty, decide to do? Start a coworking space.

“We realized after chasing a lot of companies that instead of attracting one 200-person business, we should attract 200 one-person businesses. The economic impact is bigger, and some of those businesses will grow,” he told Fast Company.

NextSpace, the start-up co-founded by Coonerty, just closed a $700,000 fundraising round and now has four locations in California. In Santa Cruz the space has attracted 200 members and has also proved a boon to nearby businesses, which are serving the programmers, therapists, comedians and lawyers who utilize NextSpace.

COLUMBIA, S.C. — South Carolina small businesses are getting a new source of funds under a new federal program.

The state Jobs Economic Development Authority, bankers and business advocates are scheduled to announce the program Tuesday at a news conference in Columbia.

The State Small Business Credit Initiative is making up to $18 million in reserve funds available to banks to encourage lending to credit-worthy small businesses.

Harry Huntley is executive director of the South Carolina Jobs Economic Development Authority, and he says the program will offer loans of up to $5 million. The state already has a similar program but it can offer loans of no more than $100,000 each.

When Gov. Jay Nixon outlined his priorities for the upcoming special session of the Missouri legislature Thursday, they included a long list of economic development proposals but not an issue that St. Louis officials had been looking for: local control of the city's police department.

Asked after his speech whether that contentious topic would be part of his call when lawmakers return to Jefferson City in September, Nixon made it sound like he didn't want it on the table unless he was sure there was enough consensus among legislators that it would pass.

And when asked about a specific proposal that was of particular interest to his audience at the Danforth Plant Science Center in Creve Coeur -- the Missouri Science and Innovation Reinvestment Act, or MOSIRA, to spark growth in science and technology -- his response showed how difficult it may be to get anything through the House and Senate.