The ideas funnel has been with us a long time. We put our ideas into the funnel and then through a process of elimination out ‘pop’s’ finished products. Henry Chesbrough’s famous depiction of the Open Funnel has continued that concept, that ideas enter the more ‘open’ innovation process and go through a more ‘staged gate’ or equivalent process to emerge as the finished product or even spun-out- all well and good.

In the past few weeks the funnel has been constantly coming back in my life. It has been bugging me. Recently I was at a European Innovation Conference and we got into a roundtable discussion on managing ideas and up pop’s the fuzzy front end and the funnel and putting ideas through this. To be provocative I said “well ideas are actually in the middle of the innovation process” and we got into a significant debate on this and concluded that we all did not share a common language on this or understanding of what I was struggling to articulate.

As a health reporter, I see so many studies of the causes and symptoms of work stress. So it was refreshing to see a study about the converse: what makes workers happy.

Focusing on social workers, a profession known for its high attrition, stress and burnout, John Graham, Ph.D., a professor of social work at the University of Calgary and his then doctoral student Micheal Shier, now at the University of Pennsylvania sent a survey out to 2,500 registered social workers in Alberta, Canada. Seven hundred people responded.

Optimizing your website to gain search engine positioning can be a process that takes a lot of time and focus. It’s no wonder a lot of entrepreneurs hire SEO firms to handle this for them. But that can be very expensive, and it’s hard to know which firms are the best. While many stick to “white hat” practices, others resort to actions that can get your site penalized if found out.

There are a lot of SEO tactics you can employ yourself though, and there are some mistakes a lot of site owners make that are hurting their search engine rankings. Correcting just a few things can actually make a significant difference. Below are three of the most common mistakes made by online entrepreneurs. Correcting these won’t guarantee you a first place Google position, but it will get you on the right track.

Osage Partners recently raised $100 million for a new fund, Osage University Partners. Through this fund, the family of venture capital and private equity funds has partnered with eight universities, including the University of Pennsylvania, to co-invest in start-ups created from technology licensed from these universities. This is only one of many examples in the Philadelphia region of how investors, universities, research institutions, and other stakeholders are taking new approaches and a sharper focus to the 30-plus year tradition of formally transferring technologies out of universities.

Generally when universities license their technology to start-ups, they receive a right to participate in future financing rounds. However, universities hardly ever take advantage of this so-called "preemptive right." Through the partnership with Osage, universities can exercise this right to participate as co-investors in future funding rounds, sharing in the profit of the fund.

Can you feel the froth? Investment in U.S. venture-backed companies rose 35 percent in the first quarter, according to a report by Dow Jones VentureSource. Venture firms invested $6.4 billion into 661 deals in the U.S. during the quarter.

The increased activity is consistent with the buzz in the tech industry about an overall recovery, an increase in optimism, and a faster pace for innovation among startups. There is considerable discussion about whether we’re seeing a bubble in tech investing, with a major story on the topic every week or so. The Wall Street Journal ran its latest bubble piece on Tuesday, with the headline, “In Silicon Valley, investors are jockeying like its 1999.

Obama spent a considerable amount of time preaching to the choir at today’s Facebook Town Hall event, first bringing up Intel founder and Hungarian immigrant Andy Grove as an example of the kind of immigrant the US should be focused on retaining, in a response to a question about Immigration Reform and the Dream Act Education.

“We’ve got ambitious people from all around the world, that come here because they have a new idea … If we’ve got smart people who want to come here and start businesses, who’ve got PhDs in math and science and computer science. Why wouldn’t we want them to stay? … These are job generators,” the President said.

The Lions Mane Jellyfish is the largest jellyfish in the world. They have been swimming in arctic waters since before the dinosaurs (over 650 million years ago) and are among some of the oldest surviving species in the world.

The largest can come in at about 6 meters and has tentacles over 50 meters long. Pretty amazing when you think these things have been swimming around for so long.

Innovation has emerged as a key means by which the US can pull itself out of this lackluster economy. In the State of the Union, President Obama referred to China and India as new threats to America's position as the world's leading innovator. But the threats are not just external. One of the greatest threats to the US's ability to innovate lies within: specifically, with the music and movie business. These Big Content businesses are attempting to protect themselves from change so aggressively that they risk damaging America's position as a world leader in innovation.

Many in the high technology industry have known this for a long time. Despite making their living relying on it, the Big Content players do not understand technology, and never have. Rather than see it as an opportunity to reach new audiences, technology has always been a threat to them. Example after example abounds of this attitude; whether it was the VCR which was "to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone" as famed movie industry lobbyist Jack Valenti put it at a congressional hearing, or MP3 technology, which they tried to sue out of existence. In fact, it's possible to go back as far as the gramophone and see the content industries rail against new technology. The reason why? Every shift in technology is difficult for them. Just as they work out how to make money using one technology, it changes.

In four days, the United States uses more water than the world uses oil in a year.

Imagine if water got anything like the attention that oil gets--would we figure out how to take better care of water resources? (On CNBC, the price of oil in the world markets flips onto the screen every 30 seconds.)

Yes, the United States uses a stunning amount of water. The U.S. Geological Survey compiles a detailed portrait of U.S. water use every five years--and simply gathering, standardizing, and compiling the data takes almost four years. The 2005 USGS water use survey came out in 2009.

Today, we're launching an Open Social Co-creation Contest, sponsored by Ingersoll Rand and hosted by Jovoto, asking everyone, from designers and architects, students and professionals, to submit their designs in an effort to find affordable housing solutions for the poorest of the poor.

The mission? Design a simple dwelling that can be constructed for under $300 which keeps a family safe, allows them to sleep at night, and gives them both a home and a sense of dignity.

The conversation around entrepreneurship in the digital world and social media has escaped the walls of Silicon Valley and the community of entrepreneurs has gotten closer than ever. Entrepreneurs support and share their experience with each other and they get inspiration from success stories across the globe. But when interested in making a change with their businesses, who do they turn to for inspiration and guidance? We decided to take a closer look.

We partnered with PeerIndex, to come up with a list featuring the 25 most influential people tweeting about entrepreneurship. Our top 25 list is not ranked based on their overall PeerIndex score, but based on each one’s topic resonance score, which measures their actions within the entrepreneur community.

The technology we have 'on hand' today has allowed for some incredibly effective prosthetic devices. If you can afford them. Most currently available prosthetic devices cost somewhere in the range of $4,000 to $50,000, which is a lot of money for anyone, let alone a family that is already trying to care for a disabled person.

So let's look at the basics. What do you really need a prosthetic device to do? For instance, a prosthetic arm that could hold something and use it with a measure of dexterity, would be a great development for someone who has no fingers.

Austin is the U.S. market that is most conducive to the creation and development of small businesses, according to the latest On Numbers rankings.

Oklahoma City is second in the current standings, followed by Charleston, S.C., Charlotte and Seattle.

We used a six-part formula to analyze the nation’s 100 largest metropolitan areas, searching for the places that offer the best climates for small businesses. See the bottom of this page for a database with the top-to-bottom standings.

People may advise you to listen to your gut instincts: now research suggests that your gut may have more impact on your thoughts than you ever realized. Scientists from the Karolinska Institute in Sweden and the Genome Institute of Singapore led by Sven Pettersson recently reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that normal gut flora, the bacteria that inhabit our intestines, have a significant impact on brain development and subsequent adult behavior.

We human beings may think of ourselves as a highly evolved species of conscious individuals, but we are all far less human than most of us appreciate. Scientists have long recognized that the bacterial cells inhabiting our skin and gut outnumber human cells by ten-to-one. Indeed, Princeton University scientist Bonnie Bassler compared the approximately 30,000 human genes found in the average human to the more than 3 million bacterial genes inhabiting us, concluding that we are at most one percent human. We are only beginning to understand the sort of impact our bacterial passengers have on our daily lives.

On Wednesday, April 20th, 2011 U.S. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu announced $130 million for the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) to develop five new program areas that could catalyze critical breakthrough technologies to secure America’s energy future. Today’s announcement creates program areas that will fund innovative projects seeking to discover rare earth alternatives and find advancements in biofuels, thermal storage, the electric grid and solar power electronics. The success of these program areas could reduce our country’s dependence of foreign oil, decrease the cost of clean electricity and develop a sustainable infrastructure for future generations of Americans.

Lots of entrepreneurs believe they want a mentor. In fact, they’re actually asking for a teacher or a coach. A mentor relationship is a two-way street. To make it work, you have to bring something to the party.

Recently when I was at a conference taking questions from the audience, I got a question that I had never heard before. Someone asked, “How do I get you, or someone like you to become my mentor?” It made me pause (actually cringe.) As I gathered my thoughts, I realized that I’ve never thought much about the mentors I had, how I got them, and the difference between mentors, coaches and teachers.

Teachers
What I do today is teach. At Stanford and Berkeley, I have students, with classes and office hours. For the brief time in the quarter I have students in my class, at worst I impart knowledge to them. At best, I try to help them to discover and acquire the knowledge themselves.

The Wall Street Journal recently listed the Top 10 Dying Industries, via research firm IBISWorld. Some industries didn’t just see temporary decline during the recession – some won’t recover and will slowly (or quickly) disappear. IBISWorld’s data format is a little different than ours, and its categories are somewhat obscure, but we thought it would be interesting to pull together a similar table with the associated job data.

With one major exception, all of these industries have seen some shakeup. But job loss by itself doesn’t tell the full story. Wired telecommunications carriers lost the most jobs, but are tied with newspaper publishing for the second smallest percentage change on the list. This is probably because these are entrenched industries and will take longer to become totally obsolete. Contrast those industries with photofinishing. Photofinishing has been a smaller industry all along, but its percent loss is at 68%. Consider the last time you looked at snapshots that weren’t digital, and then say a little prayer for the photofinishing industry.

Sri Lanka has been ranked as the number one tourist destination by the New York Times in its list of ‘31 Places to Go in 2010’.

Sri Lanka has received another nod as a top travel destination. National Geographic has listed Sri Lanka second in its “25 Best New Trips for 2010.” Even a study carried out by Newsweek magazine Sri Lanka has been ranked 66th in the world’s best countries. This study was conducted by the internationally acclaimed magazine on 100 of the world’s best countries. The study focused on five main aspects which included health, quality of life and the political environment. Sri Lanka was ranked above its neighbours with India ranked at No 78, Bangladesh at No 88, and Pakistan at No 89. So we can observe Sri Lanka now heading for a new era with economic development.

But still most of our export business etc depends upon to the traditional products like tea, rubber as well as garments. What we have to understand is to move away from the traditional markets such as manufacturing, and see the creative industries as a key component in a new knowledge economy.

6. They focus on fixing their weaknesses. Forget your weaknesses and focus on enhancing and blowing up your strengths so your weaknesses become irrelevant. Put in the hours of “Grind Time” honing your strengths, business expertise and building your brand. Your brand is simply the personality of your product. Allow people on social media and other mediums to get to know your brand and build a relationship with your target market first, before asking them to buy from you. Why not give them something FREE, intriguing and of value first! If your product is really that good, prove it and give away some samples and if really is that good people will talk about it and demand for it will increase.

5. They don’t understand and underestimate the power of marketing. Most entrepreneurs think their product/service is so much better than their competitors. But what they do not understand is that their product does not have to be the best to be successful. As long as their potential customers “perceive,” or think and believe that their product is the best, it will sell. Marketing is not about who has the best product, it’s about who is perceived to be the best or one of the best. There are so many people that I am sure can make a better sandwich than Subway or better burger than Mc Donald’s, but the rest of the world will never know or buy their product because of their failure to market effectively. You may be good, your product may be spectacular, but you will stay broke and your product won’t sell unless you have a ridiculous and relentless marketing plan.

In response to President Obama’s call to action to promote high-growth entrepreneurship across the country, the Startup America Partnership today announced a new wave of commitments secured from more than 15 companies and organizations to deliver strategic and substantive resources that accelerate entrepreneurs starting and scaling companies. These new private-sector partnerships deliver more than $400 million in value to U.S. entrepreneurs, building upon 20+ commitments already secured by the Startup America Partnership from companies like Intel and IBM.

“Young businesses have created 40 million jobs over the past 25 years, and the need to create a strong ecosystem for startups in our country is more paramount than ever,” said Scott Case, CEO of the Startup America Partnership. “These new partnerships will help ensure that startups have every best chance to succeed.”