A quick flip through the recent covers of Fast Company magazine is a simple indicator of how innovation is top of mind for cutting-edge businesses. In fact, one of the feature articles, The United States of Innovation by Jeff Chu and Margaret Downing, highlights creative and effective businesses from every city, with Houston as the City of the Year—I take pleasure in it being in the South—but back to business.

According to the New Oxford American Dictionary, to innovate is “to make changes in something established, especially by introducing new methods, ideas or products.” Stated at its core, the Latin root for innovate means “to renew.”

A “vast abyss” exists in what we know about management education programs around the world, and “cross-border collaborative projects may yet prove to be the most underutilized mechanism with the greatest potential,” according to a recent report on the globalization of management education.

But the Global Business School Network, which since 2003 has linked colleges in the developed West to those in developing nations, with the goal of strengthening business education worldwide, is trying to realize that potential.

all it climbing to the top of the bracket. Call it the Final Four. Call it May Madness. But whatever you call it, call it impressive.

Johns Hopkins students in the engineering school’s Center for Bioengineering Innovation and Design (CBID) have amassed an impressive win record during this nationwide season of design and business plan competitions.

Most recently, a CBID team won first place, and $10,000, in the “Be the Change: Save a Life” maternal health challenge, sponsored by ABC News and the Duke Global Health Institute.

Their product: A simple, yet elegant, diagnostic test in the form of a magic-marker pen that screens pregnant women and children for life threatening conditions such as gestational diabetes. The cost: a half cent. The payoff: A possible life saved.

Being a leader means energizing and motivating your team of direct reports to perform at a higher level. Again, there is no shortage of literature and advice on this issue, yet more managers get it wrong than right. There is no doubt that a motivated and energized workforce translates directly into a better bottom line. Furthermore, most managers want to keep their people motivated. The problem is that in the clamor of all the advice on how best to motivate their people, managers don't even know where to begin. Sometimes I think we are so poor at motivating people because there is so much information on how to do it. Most of it is too complex. Another factor is that today's managers generally tend to be player-coaches, meaning that they have individual production responsibilities in addition to their managerial roles. Who has the time for all the "people issues"? If only there were a simple way of thinking about it. If only there were some tangible things managers could do without investing a ton of time. There are. Here's a one-minute course on energizing and motivating others:

1. However hard you try, you cannot motivate another human being. Humans are premotivated by their individual purpose and values.

2. Don't ask yourself what you can do to motivate them; try to find out how they are already motivated.

There were so many great reactions to a previous post on 10 ways to be creative like a kid. I’ve had emails, tweets, in-person conversations, and even a business newspaper interview about the ideas for adults to be more creative by doing what kids do. When you get that kind of response, what else do you do, but come up with 10 more ways to be creative like a kid!

* Don’t do things in the suggested order. Do them in whatever order you want to do them.
* Don’t eat your food; play with your food! Sculpt your food into a monster.
* Run down the hall to a meeting when you’re late.
* Talk to the person next to you throughout a meeting. Or pass notes. Or both.

Do you remember seeing the first buds on the trees in the spring? Interns can be buds of promise for your business if you follow a few basic concepts:

L - Link the intern’s projects to business goals

E - Ethically plan for and manage your intern

A - Authentically mentor and coach your intern

F - Use feedback as a teaching and development tool

Not all internships are successful, but by using L.E.A.F. principles, your business can benefit from the reciprocal learning experience offered by internships.

Georges Haour: The knowledge and technology available in universities and public laboratories must be much better “leveraged” by firms, in order to create new activities and jobs. It is a gold mine, but the so-called “technology transfer” process does not “mine” it well. Universities are a privileged actor in the distributed innovation system, which I described in Resolving the Innovation Paradox and which calls for firms to effectively federate many external inputs, with an entrepreneurial perspective.

IM: Why is the issue of firm-university partnerships particularly acute now?

GH: The world is facing a host of crises: water, food, commodities in general, but also healthcare: we need myriads of effective innovations to provide good quality healthcare at acceptable cost to a population, which is fast ageing and living longer in OECD countries.

DOES inventiveness run in families? Is there a gene that awakens the entrepreneurial urge? A look at the Smith family offers at least anecdotal evidence that the answer is yes.

Nick and Billy Smith, California-born brothers, grew up admiring the derring-do of their father’s father, a mechanical engineer and sometime race-car driver named H. W. Smith Jr. — or Bill to his friends.

“He was all about having a good time — still is,” says Nick, 22. That’s why, in 2006 on a visit to their grandfather’s ski cabin in Vail, Colo., the brothers were drawn to its dusty attic. They were certain they would find something fun to do there. “We were looking for schnapps or fireworks, one of the two,” Nick says.

Connecticut regulators struck down plans to install the state’s first wind power farm that would produce 3.2 megawatts of power after a group of residents complained that the turbines would bring down property values.

This is a familiar argument for wind power companies — many residents complain that the large wind turbines can be an eyesore and will bring down property taxes. The Connecticut residents complained the noise from the turbines and the flickering sunlight as a result of the turbines blocking out light would end up damaging property values. Connecticut is the latest addition to a group of states that have summarily killed proposed wind power projects due to “not-in-my-backyard” complaints.

No, you don't have to tell me, because I know what you're about to say: your new product is brilliant. It's a game-changer. Problem is, you need a killer logo. Well, today, designers, inventors, and investors are facing a dilemma similar to the one that writers and artists have struggled with for decades: there's nothing left. Or here's another problem: if you do manage to create a jaw-droppingly clever or memorable image, rather than engendering widespread consumer recall of your brand, your Easter-blue palette risks looking uneasily similar to the Tiffany box, and your little black bull is a transparent rip-off of the one that dangles from the neck of Sangre de Toro red wine.

As far as the logo is concerned, to paraphrase Bill Maher, it's time for New Rules. Today, what counts far more than a puma, a monkey, or a snarling aardvark is the cross-sensory experience your brand offers. I'm talking not only the emotion, beliefs, and desires your brand evokes, but its feel, touch, sound, smell and personality, of which the logo is just one small part. Whether it's a soda can, a car, a doll, a fragrance, a smartphone, or laptop, your brand needs to be smashable, e.g., instantly identifiable via its shape, design, copy, contours, and even navigation. Aside from adolescents, who are always on the lookout for the coolest logos to set them apart from, or help them gain traction with, their peers, today for most consumers the logo comes in near-to-last place to other considerations.

Last week I wrote about Computer Village, where many of the gadget-hounds in Lagos go to get their gadgety fix. But what about new technology being developed in the country? The city’s tech entrepreneur scene is small, but several people are working on changing that.

Oo Nwoye– or @oothenigerian as he’s known on Twitter– is one of the more enthusiastic champions of this nascent scene. (That’s him on the left.) I met him two years ago in London, where he cornered me at an event and made a case for me going to Nigeria, so he was one of the first people I contacted when I finally did.

The economic development border war between Kansas City and the state of Kansas is promoting the kind of competition that could be mutually destructive. Yet everyone feels forced to play the game, even if it’s not rational.

Mayor Sly James this week entered the fray, pledging that Kansas City would fight back against efforts to poach its businesses. That was a shot at Kansas, which rewards some companies for moving a few miles over the state line.

Kansas City officials hope that Missouri soon will offer its own incentive program to reward companies that are threatening to move a few miles to Kansas.

• Group: International Commercialization Alliance
• Subject: Announcement from International Commercialization Alliance

On May 19th at the Discovery '11 show in Toronto, members of the ICA will present the highlights of last March Forum to a large audience from Industry, Academia, Governments and Investors.
Nava Swersky, Ari Huczkowski, Rich Bendis will be on this panel moderated by Mario Thomas. Discovery is the largest innovation show in Canada with over 2,500 delegates registered. It won top award in 2010 as best trade show in Canada.

http://www.linkedin.com/e/-cx4bvl-gnordebe-2g/vaq/54116303/3853544/-1/eml-anet_ancmt-b-0/

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C., May 13, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- U.S. job growth is driven by startup companies, according to a 2010 Kauffman Foundation study.

But, job seekers who dream of joining a new company hoping it will become the next Starbucks or Google should carefully consider the risks and rewards, says Polly Black, director of the Center for Innovation, Creativity and Entrepreneurship at Wake Forest University.

"It is very exciting to join a startup. Since it is often an 'all hands on deck' situation, you will have the opportunity to be involved in all aspects of the business right away," Black says. However, there is some risk involved and those tempted to accept job offers from startup businesses without a long-term track record need to know the right questions to ask before making the leap. Black explains the five most important things to consider:

1. Passion -- Do you have a real passion for what the small startup company is doing? You will likely be working long hours for little pay, so you need to have a passion for what you are doing.

Don’t get me wrong, being self-employed is fantastic, but it also means that when you’re a one man business like me that no one else is there to pick up the slack.

Business a little slow? Time to dig in. More business than expected? So long, weekend.

So when one day, I was chatting with another cartoonist about how I needed to ask myself for a day off, we began riffing on the concept and we each came out of it with a few ideas, including the above cartoon.

If you are thinking about starting a business, you have probably done extensive research on your idea, target market, prospective customers, and competition. But, have you considered how the location of your new business could affect its growth and profitability?

The internet and social media have broken communication barriers and made it easier to communicate with customers, suppliers, and partners halfway across the world, but nothing can replace the benefits of growing a startup in a place with:

1) Easy access to profitable markets

2) Strong supply chains

3) An abundant talent pool

4) A robust entrepreneurial support community

5) A business-friendly tax environment

6) Good quality of life

Tell Your Story
Don’t hide how you created your product, where the idea came from or your trials and tribulations during the creation process. This is the process that interests the press and bloggers. Put this up on your blog once you’ve figured out your way through it. Tell the story. The press loves it when you talk about how something was done. Look at the great press that these stories generated, these entrepreneurs learned how to tell a story.

The University of Utah boasts it has spun off more than 100 companies in the past six years, based on ideas developed on campus. While the school touts its status as No. 1 among research institutions for starting companies, some appear to be companies in name only.

The U. has launched 35 companies as wholly owned entities of the university since 2007, 20 of which it lists as startups. Many have no office, payroll, permanent leadership or assets. In state filings, most list as their address the suite at 615 Arapeen Dr., where the U.’s Technology Commercialization Office (TCO) operates in Research Park.

TCO chief Brian Cummings is a registered agent or officer of at least 32 companies, according to incorporation records kept by the Utah Department of Commerce. By setting up corporate shells owned by the U., officials say they can pursue federal grants and venture capital during the early phase of an invention’s development and speed it to market. Critics say this novel approach, taken by few other schools, raises the potential for conflicts of interest and antagonizes independent entrepreneurs.

Ben Pieratt is the founder and CEO of Svpply, a social shopping startup in New York City, and he wrote the best blog post we think we've ever read from a startup CEO.

The title gives the tone of the post: "I have no idea what I'm doing."

Pieratt writes about the fact that he's a graphic designer by training, and that all of the business-y aspects of running a startup, recruiting, etc. are hard and scary. That things don't happen how or as fast as they should. That even when it's not his fault that things go wrong, it's still his fault because the buck stops with him.

People ask me if they really need ANY business plan, unless they are looking for an outside investor. In fact, a business plan is needed more by you than investors, as the blueprint for your company, team communication, and progress metrics. Things that make it investment-grade for outside investors will also benefit you, since you are the ultimate investor.

First of all, any good business plan should demonstrate that you have done the homework to be an expert in your industry, and in what it takes to build a successful business from your idea. I’ll skip the basics here, and highlight only key elements that investors focus on:

1. Define the problem. Every plan must start with the problem you are solving, not a description of your company and product. Explain in terms your mother could understand, and quantify the “cost-of-pain” in dollars or time. Terms like “every customer needs this” and “next generation platform” are far too soft, and should be avoided.