Source: Popular Science — Jun 6, 2011

Sprinklers that read your lawn’s mind, 3-D phones, speakers that adjust the sound for your location and more…

Air Control

Daymak’s electric bike does away with external cables. Controls at the handlebars communicate with the bike’s electric throttle and regenerative brakes via radio signals.

PHILADELPHIA--(BUSINESS WIRE)--An investment group, a French medical equipment company and three life science startups have taken up residence in the University City Science Center’s Port Business Incubator.

Investment group Karlin Asset Management, Claremont, Epitek, Inc., and Parsortix, Inc. have established offices in the Port business incubator at 3711 Market Street. Longevity Biotech is located in the Port’s Hubert J. P. Schoemaker Lab at 3624 Market Street.

Karlin Asset Management is a private investment firm managing over $1 billion of unleveraged equity capital. Armen Karamanian, a Kauffman Fellow at Karlin who runs Karlin’s Philadelphia office, focuses on early-stage investments.

A subsidiary of the Ballina Capital group, Claremont is a French company specializing in the distribution of medical and dental equipment. Since it was founded in 2003, Ballina Capital has applied an active creation and acquisitions policy and the group now consists of seven companies. Distributed through Claremont’s extensive network, the unique Nd:YAP dental laser is now available in 27 countries located in Europe, the Middle East and in the United States.

Even if we are experiencing another bubble, is that so bad for startups trying to get funding? This infographic, which Column Five Media did for Udemy, examines some of the evidence. Though VCs are doing fewer deals than they were before the recession really took hold in late 2008, the amount of money invested is up to pre-recession levels. That’s good news for startups trying to raise money — at least in the short-term. But the valuations of some companies compared to their revenue might spell trouble for the future.

You're in a nasty bike accident during rush hour. Nobody stops to help, but your helmet detects that you have sustained a nasty blow to the head and automatically calls 911. The "smart" bike helmet idea, one of five winners in Toyota's Ideas For Good competition, is currently being worked on by engineers from Deeplocal and Carnegie Mellon University.

The Toyota competition, which ended this week, challenged entrants to repurpose Prius technology for use outside of the automotive arena. The bike helmet idea is inspired by T.H.U.M.S. (Total HUman Model for Safety) technology--a piece of simulation software that Toyota uses to measure injury to body parts that can't be detected using conventional crash test dummies.

"We abstracted from that and said let's start with a circuit that's one inch by half an inch, two accelerometers, and three gyroscopes," says Nathan Martin, CEO of Deeplocal. It's a setup that could allow users to track ultra-high impacts (up to 250 g's) as well as movement and tilt. "We can record what's going on with the head as its moving, and see how is it moving up to 400 times per second," explains Martin.

America’s manufacturing sector has been in decline for more than a decade. But the recession made things worse.

Ninety-nine of the nation’s 100 biggest labor markets lost manufacturing jobs during the past three years, according to an On Numbers study of new U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data.

Thirty-one of these metropolitan areas lost more than 10,000 manufacturing positions each. (See the sortable database at the end of this story.)

That marks an acceleration of the downward spiral that began in the late 1990s. National manufacturing employment slipped every April between 1998 and 2008, posting an average annual decline of 400,000 jobs. The erosion sped up to 600,000 jobs per year after the recession hit in 2008.

The Supreme Court ruled Monday that universities cannot automatically own the rights to the inventions that result from federally financed research. The next day, a New York Times editorial decried the decision, saying it “romanticizes the role of the solo inventor,” and “fails to acknowledge the Bayh-Dole Act’s importance in fostering collaborative enterprises.” This couldn’t be more wrong. The university commercialization system is broken, and the solution is to empower, not inhibit, the researchers.

The Bayh-Dole Act, enacted in 1980, laid the ground rules for federally funded research, allowing universities to own the resulting intellectual property. Universities established technology transfer offices where they patented and licensed that intellectual property to industry. The number of patents filed and licensing revenue earned became the measure of success for these new offices — offices that were invariably staffed by lawyers and contract negotiators. Their focus was on extracting the maximum value from university inventions rather than ensuring that research breakthroughs were turned into inventions. The Kauffman Foundation, an authority on entrepreneurship and invention, called them "monopoly gatekeepers.” A few universities like Stanford and MIT reap substantial profits from technology licensing, but most don’t cover their costs.

Everyone seems to like the aspect of being an entrepreneur that goes with “being your own boss” and “able to do things my way.” But sometimes they forget that this kind of freedom comes with a price of personal accountability. Accountability means “the buck stops here,” and “all the failures are mine.”

Too many people seem to do whatever it takes to avoid accountability, both before and after the fact. I suspect that this is largely caused by a fear of the unknown, and a lack of confidence in their own abilities. People with confidence problems and fear problems should avoid the entrepreneur role, since success without accountability is rare.

Smaller regional and metro areas are emerging from amongst the field of usual big-city suspects as desirable locations for companies of all sizes. Our list brings these locations to light by showing how they stack up to the rest of the field when considering 14 highly regarded surveys. Area Development Magazine Special Presentation (Spring 2011)

We based our findings on 13 highly regarded location surveys from sources including Forbes, Newgeography, Brookings Metro Monitor, Fast Company, and CNNMoney. We used the findings of the Milken Institute's Best Performing Cities 2010 as the primary criterion. Each of the 100 Leading Locations on our list must appear within the top 100 rankings for large and small cities on Milken's report.

We also considered the results of our own Select Regionals Survey as a criterion to select the 100 locations that made the final cut. This survey, sent to nearly 300 U.S. regions and metros, considered the areas' top three greatest project investments of 2010, unemployment rates, and total capital investment pledged over the past year.

A wide-ranging jobs bill that attempts to improve Connecticut's business climate and encourage educated young people to remain in the state and buy homes has unanimously passed the House of Representatives.

The legislation stems from recommendations made by the Majority Leader's Job Growth Roundtable, which has been looking at ways to promote innovation and entrepreneurship, put people to work in green jobs and retain young workers. It builds on a law passed last year that created loans for small business and an investment tax credit program that allows "angel investors" to help fund new, emerging companies.

Rep. Jeffrey Berger, D-Waterbury, co-chairman of the Commerce Committee, said the legislation will help to attract more high-tech jobs and make Connecticut competitive again.

At age 7, I was selling lemonade on the corner.

A few years later, looking for even higher margin product, I started checking the prices on different beverages around the house and noticed wine sold for more than juice.

I remembered an episode of I Love Lucy where Lucille Ball stood in a massive vat of grapes crushing them into wine, so I crushed a bag of grapes into a mini clay urn, sealed-off the top with electrical tape and hid it in my tree-house to ferment in an attempt to make my own wine to sell.

Chateaux Fields never quite made it to market, but to this day, I can remember the smell when I opened that urn a month later.

Venture financings are heating up to levels not seen since the recession several years ago.

That’s the conclusion of a new survey from Silicon Valley law firm Fenwick & West. According to Fenwick’s first-quarter survey of venture financings of 122 companies in Silicon Valley, 67% of the start-ups raised money at a higher valuation than their last financing. Meanwhile, only 16% of the companies raised money at a lower valuation than their previous funding round.

That spread — 67% of “up” rounds versus 16% of “down” rounds — was the biggest it’s been since the financial meltdown in 2008, said Michael Patrick, a Fenwick attorney who helped spearhead the study. It was also better than the fourth quarter of 2010, when “up” rounds exceeded “down” rounds 67% to 21%.

KUALA LUMPUR, June 9 (Bernama) -- A survey by Ernst and Young Advisory Services on entrepreneurs worldwide, revealed that, 45 per cent of the respondents started their businesses after 30.

Sixty per cent described themselves as "transitioned" entrepreneurs, those who had previously worked in a corporate environment before setting out on their own.

The survey was included in the Ernst and Young report, Nature or nurture: Decoding the entrepreneur, which provides an insight into the shared characteristic, frustration and career goals of some of the world's leading entrepreneurs.

Ernst and Young in a statement said one third of the respondents chose experience as an employee as the most important source of learning for their career while only 30 per cent highlighted higher education and 26 per cent mentors.

We all know what to do when life gives us lemons, but how about a windfall in the form of a potential $11 billion from the nationwide tobacco litigation settlement?

Well, one thing that Pennsylvania did in 2001 with its share was take $100 million and create three "life-sciences greenhouses" to help commercialize the medical technology germinating in labs around the state. In the Philadelphia area, that meant the launch of BioAdvance with $33.8 million in tobacco money.

Organized as an independent nonprofit organization in 2002, BioAdvance started the $20.3 million Greenhouse Fund to invest in start-up firms tackling cancer, Alzheimer's disease, and other serious conditions. The goal was to provide amounts from a few thousand dollars to $1 million to firms at an earlier stage of development than venture capital firms were willing to stomach.

After 22 years in retailing, the last six spent with Kohl’s, Jeff Rusinow was ready for something a bit more exciting.

He found it in angel investing and went on to start Milwaukee-based Silicon Pastures, modeled after a similar and highly successful angel group in Northern California.

Angel capital typically fills the gap in start-up financing between "friends and family" who provideinitial seed funding, and venture capital.

Rusinow will share his insights into early stage investing at the Wisconsin Entrepreneurs Conference, which will be held Tuesday and Wednesday at the Pfister Hotel in Milwaukee and is expected to draw 400 participants.

Google Directors Alan Moss and Aliza Knox will present a one hour free webinar on the web tools that are available to help American small businesses expand internationally.

During this webinar, you will hear just how big the global online opportunity is and discover how Google clients have significantly expanded their businesses by selling to the world. Learn how to use innovative tools such as:

1) Google Global Market Finder: utilize data from Internet searches conducted around the world to show the number of times people search for your keywords in Arabic, Chinese, English, or one of 56 languages;

2) Google Translate Web Element: translate webpages(or parts thereof) to help foreign customers navigate your site;

Today’s entrepreneurial companies face greater pressure to do more with less in terms of stretching every dollar of equity financing further. Venture-backed companies are looking at debt financing with increased interest, not just as a short-term capitalization tool, but as part of their long-term growth and exit strategies. Watch our video for an explanation of venture debt and how it can help your growing company.

If you're having my kind of luck this week, maybe your home air conditioning isn't working either.

So as I sit here (outside of my house) I thought I'd offer some tips for staying cool, should you end up in a similar sweaty predicament. Or if you are one of the millions of Americans who don't have air conditioning, or are trying to conserve energy in these financially conservative times.

Though a few of these suggestions border on unusual, I urge you to consider giving them a go:

1. I know it sounds insane, but if you put your bed sheets in a large freezer storage bag and toss them in the ice chest for a few hours before bed, you'll thank me. By the time you settle in for the night, they'll be nice and cool against your skin.

Recently the International Herald Tribune highlighted Slovenia as the highest ranking country in the European Innovation Union Scoreboard under the headline “Ranking E.U. members on innovation” in their Special Report on Business in Central Europe.

The paper said: “Slovenia was ranked highest in the European Union on support for innovation, thanks to efforts like public-private partnerships and higher government spending on research projects”.

In the Innovation Union Scoreboard, published by the European Commission in February 2011, Slovenia was ranked highest among countries in the region and second highest among all new EU member states, directly after Cyprus. While it could not compete with the innovation leaders Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Germany, Slovenia was placed in the next best category of so called innovation followers.

Russia's innovation economy is on a bumpy ride due to corruption, bureaucracy and a lingering Soviet mindset, a new study has found. Current innovation policy places too much emphasis on high technology to the neglect of large parts of the Russian economy, according to a study prepared by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) at the behest of Russia's Ministry of Education and Science.

Since assuming office in 2008, President Dmitry Medvedev has spearheaded efforts to end Russia’s natural resource dependence and transform the country into a knowledge-based economy. At the top of the president's modernization agenda is the creation of the Skolkovo Innovation hub – Russia’s answer to Silicon Valley – which is currently under construction near Moscow. But Russia is having a hard time getting innovation fired up in Skolkovo, the OECD report said. The Kremlin’s efforts are being undermined by such factors as high levels of corruption, a lack of competition, low levels of research and development (R&D) and innovation activities in firms. Russia’s perennial problems – weak infrastructures and horse-and-buggy regulations are not helping matters either.

Distance is measured in meters, time counted in seconds, and intelligence assessed by IQ, yet innovation lacks a standard unit of measurement. Stand-in metrics for innovation, seven of which are listed below, help to fill this gap in measuring how new products and new processes have led to longer and better lives.

Those seven metrics are: (1) patents, (2) GDP, (3) energy captured, (4) R&D spending, (5) inventions, (6) urbanization, and (7) a social development index. Let's go through them one by one.