It's hard to believe the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) is just two years old: already we have seen the potential of high-risk, high-reward research to both our energy and economic future. The Fiscal Year 2010 Annual Report highlights the creation of ARPA-E, how the agency's investments are supporting transformational technologies in energy, and a synopsis of the projects it has funded to date.

Recruiting some of the best minds in science and technology, as well as tapping the market expertise of business communities, ARPA-E has funded 121 projects in amounts ranging from roughly $400,000 to $9 million, with an average award value of $3 million. These clean energy technologies have the potential to transform our Nation's energy future. For example, ARPA-E-funded efforts are enabling batteries for transportation -- beyond lithium-ion -- that could make electric cars cheaper and go much farther distances than today’s batteries.

LANSING, Mich. — In a state that has long suffered from one of the nation’s highest jobless rates, new GOPGov. Rick Snyder wants to import — literally — fresh competition for some of the best job openings the state has to offer.

Mr. Snyder, a newbie politician but an experienced entrepreneur, is looking overseas to incubate a stronger economic culture by actively seeking highly skilled immigrants to work and create businesses in his state, which has been slammed in recent decades by job losses in its traditional manufacturing base.

Entrepreneurs are usually highly creative and innovative, but many innovative people are not entrepreneurs. Since it takes a team of people to build a great company, the challenge is to find that small percentage of innovative people, and then nurture the tendency, rather than stifle it.

A while back I read a book titled “The Rudolph Factor,” by Cyndi Laurin and Craig Morningstar, which is all about finding the bright lights that can drive innovation in your business. The story most specifically targets big companies, like Boeing, but the concepts are just as applicable to a st

China prepares to open bullet train service from Beijing to Shanghai by July 1, this nation’s steadily expanding high-speed rail network is being pilloried on a scale rare among Chinese citizens and news media.

Complaints include the system’s high costs and pricey fares, the quality of construction and the allegation of self-dealing by a rail minister who was fired earlier this year on corruption grounds.

But often overlooked, amid all the controversy, are the very real economic benefits that the world’s most advanced fast rail system is bringing to China — and the competitive challenges it poses for the United States and Europe.

Every entrepreneur has their own idea of what it takes to become successful. GulfNews has pulled together a short list of traits they believe entrepreneurs need to succeed. What do you think it takes to succeed?

1. Timing is nothing

Dubizzle founders, J.C. Butler and Sim Whatley, wish they had had the wisdom to launch more and test less. “Regardless of whether it’s features or categories or expansion, it’s better to get something out the door and test the response to it, rather than to spend all your time trying to perfect something and change it later anyway. Especially when it came to our recent regional expansion, we would have loved to have been in all these 14 countries years ago.”

It wasn’t as if everyone was avoiding the word “building,” it’s just that the Life Sciences Research Institute (LSRI) is so much more.

Dalhousie President Tom Traves called it a “business and incubation centre,” a “one-stop life sciences shop.” Colin Latham, chair of the LSRI steering committee, dubbed it a “research village.” And Martha Crago, Vice President Research for Dalhousie, referred to it as a “potent anchor” and a “district of discovery.”

Whatever you want to call it, the Life Sciences Research Institute is unique for Halifax—a beautiful, light-filled facility where scientists, students and entrepreneurs will work together. The idea is that through collaboration and discussion, they will be able to move research seamlessly from the lab to the commercial sphere.

It seems that the economy’s engine is starting to churn again.  More importantly, technology and Internet companies seem to be coming alive as well.  Startups founded a few years ago are now taking center stage with a series of high profile IPOs. The last time we experienced a wave of startup growth, minority entrepreneurs were largely left out of the picture.  In a time and country where the number of minorities is growing significantly each year, we cannot watch this happen again.  As a member of DreamIt Ventures, a Philadelphia-based startup accelerator, it is my job to make sure history does not repeat itself.

DreamIt operates accelerators for startups.  We work with great and talented entrepreneurs to help them build great companies. Our accelerator was designed to be the startup program thatthe founders wish existed when they started and sold their first companies. It creates a collaborative environment in which fellow entrepreneurs can share ideas, inspire each other, and push each other to higher levels of success. Accelerator participants receive excellent coaching and mentoring from experienced entrepreneurs.   They receive legal and accounting services when needed without having to burn precious cash.  For the startups’ founders this also means an opportunity to refine their business models and ultimately pitch their companies to an investment community of angels and venture capitalists.

Back in March, Brian Halligan (our CEO at HubSpot) wrote a great post around his observations on why Sequoia wins at the VC game. Brian's assessment was based on HubSpot's experience raising our Series D and was spot-on. Sequoia is agile, yet disciplined. They are aggressive yet reasonable. They've taken the classic venture capital playbook and out-executed just about everyone. Incredibly impressive.

With all of their success though, Sequoia has a right to stay paranoid (#8 on Brian's list). The VC industry is undergoing some massive changes and is in the process of being disrupted by a new breed of investors that are attacking the edges of the market and competing with a new, differentiated approach. Google Ventures, a co-investor alongside Sequoia in HubSpot's Series D, is one such firm. Google (GOOG) has a history of reinventing industries and questioning conventional wisdom – and they're trying to do it again with their approach to venture capital.

TORONTO, June 23, 2011 /CNW/ - An economic strategy to ensure the sustainability and success of Ontario's commercial bioscience sector was announced today. Implementation of the strategy is underway, according to OBIO™, the CEO-led industry organization.

Developed by multi-stakeholder Ontario Bioscience Economic Strategy (OBEST™) teams in seven regional bioscience clusters, the strategy comprises nine priority initiatives. Of these, five are for implementation by the industry; four will be implemented by the industry partnering with government.

Dr. Daniel Billen, Chair of the OBEST Advisory Board and General Manager, Amgen Canada, said: "We have put the onus on our industry to implement this strategy and on government to put supportive policies in place. Together, these will enable Ontario's bioscience companies to complete the virtuous cycle of economic growth, jobs and improved health for all."

With the economy still struggling, it may seem like an impossible time to start a do-good social venture. It can be hard enough to operate any business profitably — let alone one that also tries to improve the world. But some observers believe that the tough times may be increasing interest in social ventures.

“I get the sense that the recession actually has resulted in more people taking interest in investing in companies that are doing the right thing right from the start,” said Wes Selke, investment manager at Good Capital, a social-impact venture capital firm in San Francisco. As one indicator, at least three social-impact funds have raised more than $100 million in the last couple of years: Ignia Fund, Leapfrog Investments and MicroVest.

Marrying mission and money in one business can be tricky. This guide focuses on commercial, profit-making businesses and entrepreneurs who want to build self-sustaining social ventures, a term that encompasses nonprofit and profit-making companies as well as some new types of legal hybrids, like an L3C, which stands for low-profit limited liability company. These ventures are commonly thought of as enterprises that serve a so-called triple bottom line: people, planet and profits.

In a report published by United for Medical Research, a consortium of science and research medical organizations, Dr. Everett Ehrlich found that extramural research supported by the National Institutes of Health in fiscal year 2010 (FY10) led to the creation of 487,900 quality public and private sector jobs and produced over $68 billion in new activity across the country. According to the report, An Economic Engine: NIH Research, Employment and the Future of the Medical Innovation Sector, the $68 billion in new economic activity would represent over a 150 percent single-year return on public investment (approximately $26.6 billion was awarded by NIH in FY10), counting total economic output from the research as revenue. Ehrlich also found that NIH supported research is an "important source of income and employment" for all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

HONG KONG — In his 2011 State of the Union Address, President Barack Obama said the United States needed to "out-innovate, out-educate, and out-build the rest of the world" to remain competitive and "win the future." In his short history, though, Obama has not proved very adept at turning brave words into action.

Is the U.S. finished as an economic superpower? Its optimists assert that the U.S. retains critical cutting-edge advantages. Adam Segal, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, has written a thoughtful book asserting that American innovation can overcome the challenges from rapidly growing Asia. He draws a distinction between what he calls, "the hardware of innovation" — meaning the amount of spending on research and development, the number of engineers and scientists, patents and publications — and the "software," which he terms as "the political, cultural and social institutions and understandings that help move ideas from lab to marketplace."

European Innovation Network partnered up with number of European Venture Capital and Private Equity Houses to provide a much needed cash injection for start-up businesses (seed funding), for IPOs and M&As using Private Equity. Our partners seeks to invest into EU-based early stage companies whose businesses are focused around proprietary, highly scaleable, and disruptive technologies.

There are a number of key attributes that the Fund looks for in each business that it backs. Some of the most important characteristics that we look for are as follows:

• Unique, Disruptive Technologies
• Large, Global Addressable Market
• Strong market drivers
• Scaleable Business Model
• Commercial Proof of Concept and/or Funded EU Project
• Strong Management Team

As boomer employees retire in large numbers, it will do more than change the average employee’s waist size, hair color, and infatuation with social media. Boomers will take with them huge troves of personal contacts, technical know-how, and organizational culture and tradition. That’s why businesses that succeed in the coming decade or so will be those that can keep these irreplaceable employees from prematurely leaving. Lisa Orrell, a San Jose, California, consultant on generational differences and author of the forthcoming Boomers Into Business, (Wyatt McKenzie, September 2011), says here’s how you can do it:

Treat them like kids. When it comes to flexibility, at least. Orrell notes that employers are finding that accommodating personalized work-styles — a common demand for members of the Millennial generation — is also encouraging Boomers to postpone retirement. “The Boomers are saying maybe they don’t want to fully retire, but they want to work from home, work part-time, or work on a flex-time basis,” she says.

As venture capitalists, we believe deeply in the value of decentralized, emergent, start-up innovation. The Internet has been an unusually fertile ground for this type of innovation largely because, for the first time in history, it has been possible to get directly to consumers without negotiating with entrenched intermediaries. The result has been a spectacular explosion of innovation with tremendous benefits to consumers and to the global economy.

McKinsey recently studied thirteen mature national economies and found that over the past five years, 21% of GDP growth can be directly attributed to the Internet. They found that 2.4 jobs were created for every job lost to Internet efficiencies. They also found that over the last fifteen years, an increase in Internet maturity is directly correlated to an average increase in real per capita GDP of $500. By contrast, it took 50 years to see that impact during the industrial revolution of the 19th century.

An article in HarvardBusiness.org today examines inventor, innovator and entrepreneur — terms often used interchangeably, but which the article’s author puts forth are fundamentally different. The article suggests that each term refers to “different links in the total value-chain of progress.”

Inventors: Idea-oriented who solve problems in a non-linear way

Entrepreneurs: Action-oriented who solve problems in a non-linear way

Innovators: Can solve problems in either a non-linear way (“revolutionary” ideas) or linear way (“evolutionary” ideas, aka make incremental improvements)

Examples of non-linear innovations include the automobile and the Internet. Along the same theme lines, examples of linear innovations would be better engines and more efficient programming languages.

It's been more than a year since Apple's iPad started shipping, and around the world, it's still overwhelmingly the only tablet that matters. 

ComScore just released a bunch of stats about traffic consumption on non-PC devices in 13 countries, including tablets, smartphones, and other devices, such as the iPod touch. 

We analyzed comScore's data to focus just on tablet usage, and charted the iPad's traffic share in each country. It was 95% or higher in 12 of the 13 countries, with Android the second-place finisher in most countries (and "other" in Canada, home of RIM).

A recent report from the Intellectual Property Association revealed the top 300 organizations granted U.S. patents in 2010. IBM, Samsung and Microsoft led this year's list. Fourteen universities, including 13 U.S. institutions and one from China, made the top 300, according toThe Chronicle of Higher Education. Leading universities include the University of California Regents, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Stanford University. Read the full list...

In the systems perspective on innovation, co-operation between several different types of actors is seen as key to successful innovation. Due to the existence of several gaps that hinder such effective co-operation, the scientific and policy literature persistently points at the need for intermediary organizations to fulfill bridging and brokerage roles. This paper aims to provide an overview of the insights from the literature on such ‘innovation brokers’, and to contribute to the literature by distilling lines of enquiry and providing insights on one of the lines identified. Taking as an empirical basis experiences with different types of innovation brokers that have emerged in the Dutch agricultural sector, it identifies a number of tensions with regard to the establishment and embedding of such organizations. The paper indicates that, despite being perceived to have a catalyzing effect on innovation, innovation brokers have difficulty in becoming embedded as their clients and/or financiers find it difficult to grasp the nature and value of their activities.

Download the PDF

Download the PDF

Investors are people too. They evaluate you like you should assess a possible co-founder or first employee. What are your credentials? What have you done that would convince me that my money is safe in your hands? Only after they see you as fundable, do they want to assess your plan for fundability, not the other way around.

Even with great credentials, it is all too possible for an entrepreneur to come across as a high risk investment. Here are some “rules of thumb” that indicate a marketable and experienced entrepreneur:

• Highlights team strengths, more than his own. Some entrepreneurs seem to never stop talking about themselves, and all their accomplishments. The best ones talk more about how they have assembled a well-rounded team, and will continue to fill in the gaps.
• Talks about the implementation plan, not the idea. Most entrepreneurs are great at envisioning their business idea, but the implementation is fuzzy. Experienced entrepreneurs talk about their implementation and rollout plan, with real milestones and quantifiable results.