Embracing the open innovation trend, Cleveland Clinic has issued to the public a $30,000 challenge to design a surgically implantable microsensor to monitor the healing of soft tissue.

The microsensor challenge is the first of what’s slated to be many featured on the Clinic’s new “innovation pavilion,” which is hosted on the website of InnoCentive, a Massachusetts company that specializes in open innovation and crowd sourcing. The pavilion was set up to spur innovative medical research.

Each of the challenges will present a medical problem or situation where a better, yet unknown, solution could be available for patients, according to a statement from InnoCentive.

In February, we wrote about Lool Ventures a new Israeli seed fund looking to fill the country’s surprising void for true seed-stage funding and mentorship. Today, another one is launching. It’s called Initial Capital, but it has a strange twist: The firm will also be investing in seed deals in Brazil.

There aren’t many obvious synergies between those two markets. Israel has a deep entrepreneurial culture; while Brazil is only recently associating entrepreneurs with something other than the villains in telenovelas. Meanwhile, Brazil has a massive market full of domestic opportunities, while Israel typically has to build companies for other markets.

Blackboard Inc., maker of the popular college course-management software, announced on Friday that it had agreed to a $1.64-billion buyout by a private-equity firm, Providence Equity Partners.

The announcement came after the company said in April that it had received offers, setting off fevered speculation about the identity of its suitors. Blackboard plans to close the deal in the last quarter of this year.

The buyout is a big change in direction for one of higher education’s most prominent vendors, which had faced mounting pressure to both produce quarterly profits and shore up a declining market share for course-management software against an increasingly well-financed field of competitors.

The lines between states and even countries are pretty arbitrary: The ties you have with people 50 miles away aren't going to be too-much affected by some imaginary line drawn up 200 years ago. What if you could remap the United States -- not by geography, but rather social ties?

MIT's Senseable City Lab has done just that, by analyzing mobile-phone calling patterns across the country. By looking at calls between cellphones, they've revealed states and cities that are closely connected -- and similarly, regions which aren't nearly as closely connected as you'd think. Here's their main result, color-coded by regional affiliation:

Every startup wants to be a predictable success, yet so few ever achieve this enviable position. In reality, getting there is not a random walk, and requires an understanding of the stages that every business must navigate and the organizational characteristics necessary at each stage.

Les McKeown, in his recent book “Predictable Success” outlines these stages and characteristics for any business. He points out, for example, that every business should anticipate the early struggle stage, a possible fun stage, and probably a turbulent whitewater phase, before they can hope for the predictable success stage.

This stage is defined as a point where you can set and consistently achieve your goals and objectives with a consistent, predictable degree of success. Unlike previous stages, where you may not know how or why you have survived, you now know why you are successful, and can use that information to sustain growth in the long term.

It's a great time to be a tech startup founder right now, but as valuations are getting off the charts and with hordes of investors wanting to get bigger stakes in the startup market, raising money is becoming a tricky affair.

"Don't overoptimize," says Mark Suster, venture capitalist at GRP Partners. "And raise at the top end of normal."

Suster explains what he means in the video below, and shares invaluable advice for startup founders about how to raise capital and what common mistakes entrepreneurs make.

That desk job of yours is probably more dangerous than you think it is.

Plenty of things you do every day in the workplace are slowly chipping away at you. From the printer to your keyboard, the dangers presented in an office can have real effects on your physical well-being, just as mental strains can hurt you in the long-term.

For inventors, Silicon Valley has a whole lot going for it: Lots of like-minded people, an economic ecosystem that’s supportive of entrepreneurs, sunshine, and, of course, non-compete agreements.

In California, as well as in states such as Alaska, Connecticut, Minnesota, Montana, Nevada, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Washington and West Virginia, non-competes are essentially unenforceable. Lee Fleming, of Harvard Business School, Matt Marx, now at MIT Sloan School of Management, and Deborah Strumsky, of the University of North Carolina-Charlotte, wanted to find out if non-compete agreements were influential in inventors’ decisions about where to live. Their conclusion: States that insist on enforcing strict non-compete agreements are shooting themselves in the foot. They’re encouraging a brain drain that is already leading their most productive, most collaborative innovators to work elsewhere.

As a small business owner, it can sometimes feel like you’re expected to be an expert in tax and state law. One common area of confusion and misconception is conducting business in multiple states. By law, if your company plans to conduct business in any other states than your state of incorporation (or LLC formation), then you may need to register your business in those states. This process is called foreign qualification.

For example…

You have a restaurant in Florida and decide to expand into Georgia and South Carolina. Once you have locations open in those states, you’re doing business there and will need to file a foreign qualification in both Georgia and South Carolina.

When you use creative professionals, you can achieve huge monetary as well as emotionally gratifying results. Successfully managed, profits from creative teams grow exponentially, like Apple's value growing by 1000% over the past 10 years. However, it takes a proactive effort. If you give up control and hope for the best, you are on the sure road to losing money faster than in a Depression. Studies show that for experienced companies, new products fail at a rate of 35-40% and for average new firms the fail rate is 90%.

The recipe for prospering in all creative businesses is careful planning and briefing. When you clearly define your goals up front and inspire your creative staff, you will create winning products, services and experiences. This sounds like common sense, however most managers continue to let teams work without a clear sense of direction, hoping they will automatically deliver them what they failed to tell them that they wanted.

The migration of manufacturing from the United States to Asia could be having a significant impact on which advanced technologies are commercialized. Specifically, there is evidence that the shift in manufacturing is curtailing the development of emerging technologies in areas such as optoelectronics and advanced materials for the automotive industry.

In studies with colleagues at MIT, Erica Fuchs, an assistant professor of engineering and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, shows that the relocation of component manufacturing from the United States to East Asia in optoelectronics and to China in composite body parts for automobiles changed the economics of producing the technologies. The result in both cases is that emerging technologies developed in the United States were not economically viable to produce in the Asian countries because of differences in manufacturing practices. And Fuchs suspects similar effects are happening more generally as production shifts to the developing world. Location matters for "which products will be economically viable, which products countries will be most competitive in producing, and which products countries and companies globally are most likely to develop," she says.

Randel L. Zeller, Terry C. Pierce, and Thomas A. Cellucci of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security: Science and Technology Directorate, Washington, D.C.

The United States Air Force Academy (USAFA) Center of Innovation (CoI), which is managed by the Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Directorate (DHS S&T), is designed to create novel capabilities from emerging industry research technologies that eventually enable Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) products. Located at the United States Air Force Academy (USAFA) and near U.S. Northern Command, the CoI leverages the Academy’s state-of-the-art supercomputer and millennial generation cadets to create a truly interagency center. The CoI, the result of a collaborative agreement between USAFA and DHS S&T, has enabled the federal government to conduct cooperative research with private industry technology companies like Intel Corporation.

The CoI has had several major successes:

In July 2009, the CoI conducted the USAFA Mission Fabric Collaboration Experiment, co-sponsored by the Human Factors and Infrastructure Protection and Disaster Management Divisions for DHS S&T, as well as Department of Defense (Rapid Technology Fielding) to evaluate the impact of cutting-edge technology on distributed collaboration. The experiment participants included members from DHS’s Customs and Border Patrol Air/Marine Operations Center, multiple U.S. warfighting commands as well as academic institutions including USAFA cadets.

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Aspiring entrepreneurs face new challenges in the new economy: credit card limits are down, banks are stingy with loans, grants are harder to find and odds are that once-rich uncle is now underwater on his mortgage. Put simply, once reliable shortcuts for startup funding aren't so reliable anymore.

But in some ways, startup funding is actually more accessible now thanks to social networking and crowdfunding platforms that match amazing new ideas with people who want to be part of the next big thing.

At IndieGoGo, we connect aspiring innovators and creators -- inventors, entrepreneurs, restaurateurs, designers -- with the millions of people worldwide who want to be a part of exciting new ventures. Anyone can create a campaign to fund any dream, any passion, any idea that just needs some capital to get started.

Technology and Energy, Cleantech and Natural Resources categories flourish; Nominee employment growth far outpaces US average

JULY 21, 2011 – Despite continuing global economic challenges and persistently worrisome US employment statistics, the 2011 Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Of The Year award nominees’ companies managed to grow and even thrive, with 28 percent overall revenue growth and 27 percent overall employment growth, according to figures compiled by the public accounting firm.

In the two-year period between 2008 and 2010, the 2011 Entrepreneur Of The Year nominees experienced double-digit employment growth (27 percent) at a time when overall U.S. employment actually fell by 5.1 percent.

“The spirit of innovation demonstrated by America’s high-growth entrepreneurs is very strong, and clearly has not been stifled by the recent economic downturn,” said Bryan Pearce, Americas Director of the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Of The Year Program. “Our 2011 nominees demonstrate the importance of entrepreneurship in creating jobs, generating economic activity in our communities, keeping America competitive and driving American innovation.”

The 1,600 2011 Nominees are broken into 10 categories in 26 regions across the United States. As of December 2010, these companies employed some 500,000 individuals and generated total revenue of just under $125 billion.

Employment Growth

Sectors leading the group in employment gains were 1) Technology and 2) Energy, Cleantech and Natural Resources category, which, between 2008 and 2010, posted 89 percent and 58 percent employment growth, respectively.

Regionally, employment growth was led by the Southwest Area North, including Dallas, Texas and the surrounding area, which turned in 69 percent employment growth. Rounding out the top three were the Alabama/Georgia/Tennessee and Central Midwest regions with 67 percent and 60 percent employment growth, respectively.

As computational power rises exponentially, not linearly, so does the rate of change -- and that means the next 10 years should pack in far more technological change than the last 10.

Disruptive technology is, by its very nature, unpredictable, but it is still possible to look at the work being done by R&D labs around the world and see clues as to what the future holds. That's the full-time job of Dave Evans, Cisco's chief futurist and chief technologist for the Cisco Internet Business Solutions Group (IBSG).

Silicon Valley is the world’s success story in an unprecedented age of technological advancement – not to mention the rapid wealth that has come with it. But is Silicon Valley a success that can be replicated, even partially?

Memeburn has checked out the state of similar concepts around emerging markets. This is what we found across four of them.

India

Bangalore enjoys the nickname “Silicon Valley of India”. Besides some who miss the point and criticise the city for not being truly a valley, the defining aspects of the area when it comes to technology are present.

July 21, 2011 I'm often asked if there are any government incentive programs available to young entrepreneurs that most new business owners don't know about.

The following answers are provided by the Young Entrepreneur Council. Founded by Scott Gerber, the Y.E.C. is a nonprofit organization that provides young entrepreneurs with access to tools, mentorship, community and educational resources that support each stage of their business’s development and growth. The organization promotes entrepreneurship as a solution to youth unemployment and underemployment.

A number of major international biomedical companies are negotiating to open research and development centers in Jerusalem. Among the big names in contact with the Jerusalem Development Authority are Pfizer, Merck and Bristol-Myers Squibb.

The CEO of the JDA, Moty Hazan, and Chen Levin, the executive director of the Bio-Jerusalem project confirmed the contacts.

For a decade, Israel has attempted to bring large pharmaceutical companies to open R&D centers here, but not with much success. Large R&D centers would give a big push to the biotech industry. Today, the Israeli biotechnology sector is characterized by well-developed academic research, but local industry has not been able to fulfill the potential of the academic research. The state expects the new R&D centers will create a new environment and push the local biotech and biomed industries to reach international levels.

It's happened to every biker. A flat tire in an inconvenient place on your commute, and the nearest bike shop is a long walk away. Most casual bikers don't carry extra tubes or tools with them; and so any repair work on the road can mean an end to a bike ride, and potentially leaving your bike locked up somewhere slowly rusting as you forget about it in your frustration. That's why the idea of the Bike Fixtation is so brilliant: a place for you to buy new parts and then install them yourself.

The Fixtation is really just a vending machine, but with bike parts instead of snacks (though there are some snacks in case you're getting hungry on your ride). What makes it most convenient is the bike mount and tools--attached with aircraft cables to prevent theft--alongside the vending machine. You can replace that flat or adjust your brakes yourself without dealing with the characters who usually are employed at bike shops. Of course, you may not know how to replace a popped tube yourself; now is certainly the time to learn, so you can take full advantage of the Fixtation when it moves into your city.

The National Venture Capital Association's (NVCA) president Mark Heesen posted a blog recently making a case that there is not, in fact, an internet bubble based on his review of second quarter venture capital statistics. He uses the terms "frothy" "but healthy nonetheless" to summarize his view of the data provided by the NVCA and PricewaterhouseCoopers in its Q2 MoneyTree VC Investment Numbers.

Heeson notes that 25 percent of the investment dollars for the period were driven by five deals that were all expansion or later-stage investments - suggesting that venture capital firms are now spending more time than during the dot-com bust to help grow companies before they go public.

He also observed that 60 percent of the total deals for Q2 were second or third rounds of financing, an indicator that those companies were reaching milestones to justify secondary investments.