This interview with Doreen Lorenzo, president of Frog Design, an innovation firm in San Francisco, was conducted and condensed by Adam Bryant.

Q. What were some big influences for you early on?

A. Certainly my parents. Their view was, whatever you want to do, we’re fine with it. I wanted to major in theater. They said: “Fine, that’s terrific. Go for it.” And they were incredibly supportive. And my father told me, “Don’t ever say no to anything.” That is always in the back of my mind, and it’s something that I use in leadership, too. You’re presented with an opportunity. Maybe you’ve never taken on a challenge like that before. But don’t say no. You take that leap and you take that risk.

Federal ethanol mandates, which have led to a steady increase in the production of ethanol made from corn, are a major reason why food prices worldwide have reached record levels in the past several months, according to some economists.

Earlier this month, the United Nation's Food and Agriculture Organization reported that global food prices had risen for eight consecutive months, reaching the highest levels since the agency started tracking prices in 1990. The prices are high in large part because of steadily growing worldwide demand for food, and because of natural disasters that have hurt harvests, but they're also affected by government policies.

I’ve been founding and running technology startups since 2004. During that time I’ve had my ups and downs and made my fair share of mistakes.

Three weeks ago I started my 4th company, Fab.com. Technically Fab.com is a reincarnation of my 3rd company, fabulis which later was renamed fab.com, but we’ve changed our business model and our market focus dramatically and essentially done a re-start. (fabulis was a gay-targeted social network while the new Fab.com is a private-sales site for design enthusiasts). As one of our investors said, “that’s the mother of all pivots!”

I’ve previously written several blog posts (like this one) about the myriad of lessons I’ve learned from building technology startups.

More than 2,000 people have applied to the EU's 'Erasmus for Young Entrepreneurs' scheme, a programme that the European Commission hopes will replicate the success of its celebrated student exchange programme. However, only 600 have managed to find a placement so far, highlighting a mismatch between supply and demand.

While it is much younger and less well-known than the student exchange programme which inspired it, the European Union's 'Erasmus for Young Entrepreneurs' (EYE) scheme already has a growing group of supporters.

More than 2,000 young and aspiring entrepreneurs have applied to take part in EYE since the programme was launched in 2009.

Believe or not, Madison will attract national attention this year, and none of that attention will have anything to do with a Badger sporting event.

Thanks to the efforts of hundreds of academicians and business people alike, the Capital City will welcome two national conferences for the first time in 2011: the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) National Conference and the 19th Congress for the New Urbanism.

SBIR: Creating Bridges of Opportunity
First up, in April, will be the SBIR Conference, first announced by former Gov. Jim Doyle at last year's Chicago's BIO 2010 International Convention. The U.S. Small Business Association's office of Technology administers the SBIR (and the STTR, Small Business Technology Transfer) programs each year, and its spring and fall conventions provide small, high-tech businesses access to representatives from 15 federal agencies which are required each year to dole out 2.5% of their research budgets in small business grants. That amounts to $2 billion in funding each year, driving home the importance of establishing connections between small businesses and federal contacts. This year's SBIR Conference, scheduled for April 11-13, is more than a nod to the region's thriving high-tech industry, it is a win-win for all industries.

President Obama has given us a strong vision of what it’s going to take to win the future – that’s by out-innovating, out-educating and out-building the rest of the world. In order to realize that vision, America must keep up with the pace of technological advances that are greatly impacting the global economy. The truth is that in the 21st Century, world economies are trying to do more with limited resources, and part of that ultimately means we can not have an energy sector that is rooted in the infrastructure of the past.

The U.S. Economic Development Administration (EDA) realizes that investments in clean technology can help to ensure that these new energy tools enable an America that is as economically sustainable as it is environmentally sustainable.

It's a disturbing notion. With all that I've written about the great benefits of positive human synergy, you would think this thought would never cross my mind.

The whole can be less than the sum of its parts.
In a group or on a team, you expect at least some of the people to inspire each other, to think creative thoughts, to translate them into productive solutions, and to form a community of work teams that make innovative things happen. And yet, time after time, committees, executive teams, boards, and government agencies charged with important responsibilities get mired in the details, are stymied by self interest, or just end up rubber-stamping the status quo.

Why?

When someone comes up with an important innovative mission, they need to attract energized team members to help them plan and execute. But at the earliest stage, the vision needs to get moving and there isn't time to give anyone a 'thumbs down.' You get followers and you hope they'll be OK, whether or not you would have been likely to pick those particular ones under different circumstances. Sad to say, some will just be along for the ride. This happens a lot in large organizations, where the politically astute can readily sniff out personal, as opposed to team, opportunities.

Pervasive, elusive and tough, cancer has proved to be a formidable foe against generations of bright and well-funded researchers.

Although there was never an official declaration, military rhetoric became the cliché among journalists covering cancer research as President Nixon signed the U.S. National Cancer Act in December 1971. The "reconnaissance" might be completed in labs and "offensives" inside the body, but like the war on drugs and the war on terror, trying to root out this disease has been more difficult and more expensive than originally hoped.

During its annual “Building the Broadband Economy” Summit on June 1, the Intelligent Community Forum will announce the creation of a Centers of Excellence project. The project is designed to brief nearly 100 intelligent community leaders who are part of what ICF calls its movement’s “Alumni,” on topics of key importance related to access technology implementation, broadband and IT and effective development of local economic and social activities.

Effective June 1, ICF will accept expressions of interest from companies, organizations and consortiums willing to provide in-depth, analytical content and briefings on a regular annual schedule to its group of intelligent community mayors, CIOs and other influencers. These represent cities, regions or towns that have been awarded the status of “intelligent community” through ICF’s trademarked awards program. The intelligent communities of the world are part of a non-profit trade association, which was chartered under ICF’s foundation in May 2010. The goal of the Centers, according to ICF Co-Founder Louis Zacharilla, is to work on developing projects and policies that will guide investment, management and innovations for communities at no cost to the communities. The ICF’s association and its intelligent communities working groups are chaired by the mayor of Waterloo, Ontario (Canada), Brenda Halloran.

GE is playing defense after a NYT article said the company paid zero in US taxes.

On Twitter, GE PR is fighting with Henry Blodget over the some technicalities.

The company has put up a GE Tax fact sheet, which links to this presentation (.pdf) from the Business Roundtable laying out the need for reform of the US tax system.

The gist: Only the US forces companies to pay taxes on overseas earnings, and since non-US earnings are a growing share for everyone, this is putting US companies at a big disadvantage.

Have you ever reached that moment in your startup business when your faith in your idea and in yourself is severely tested? You invest a significant amount of money to get things started, build a prototype, prove the concept. You'd like to bring in angel or venture capital investors to get you to the next level. You've spent more from your personal funds than you intended. You've relied on consultants and freelance developers so far, but in your gut you know you need much higher-level, dedicated technology resources to push your development to the next level so that investors with deeper pockets will jump in.

So, you're at that proverbial fork in the road. You could write yourself another sizeable check from your savings, or from your IRA or 401(k), or from your home equity, but you really don't want to do that because it will make you very uncomfortable. What do you do? Here are a few ideas to get you through this period.

NASVF announced this week that the 2011 Annual Conference will be held in Arlington, Texas, October 17-19, 2011. The event was held in conjunction with the World’s Best Technologies Innovation Marketplace and hosted by the 2011 NASVF Conference host, the Center for Innovation based Arlington, Texas. Arlington’s mayor, the Honorable Dr. Robert Cluck, welcomed NASVF to Arlington.

NASVF also hosted a standing room only panel the opening day of the conference featuring several Board members as panelist in a session focused on “Innovation Capital – It’s More Than just Money.” Rich Bendis, President and CEO of Innovation and Board Vice Chair moderated the panel including Kef Kasdin, Partner Battelle Ventures; Rebecca O. Bagley, President and CEO, NorTech; Richard Fox, Partner, Astralis Group, LLC; and Steve Mercil, Founder and CEO Rainsource Capital, NASVF Board Chair.

It’s no wonder that Cleveland Clinic has placed an increased emphasis on commercializing medical innovations by its doctors.

Cleveland Clinic CEO Toby Cosgrove revealed in a recent interview that the $78 million sale of Clinic neurotechnology spinoff Intelect Medical to Boston Scientific (NYSE: BSX) in January returned an impressive $28 million to the health system.

“We’ve spun off about 35 companies,” Cosgrove told the online journal of the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. “We just had one purchased, which returned about $28 million to the Cleveland Clinic.”

A new report by the University of Utah pegs the economic impact of the school’s start-up companies over the last 40 years at $754 million, responsible for more than 15,000 jobs.

The analysis by the Bureau of Economic and Business Research (BEBR) examines 188 companies and invention licenses created since 1970.

The U.’s process of start-up creation accelerated after it overhauled its technology commercialization procedures in 2005. It is now the No. 1 university in terms of spinning off companies based on technologies developed on campus, setting up about 20 new companies a year.

Is Wall Street blocking the next Google from even getting off the ground? Yes, according to a new report from the Kauffman Foundation, which says high-paying jobs in the financial sector have bled the prospective pool of startup founders and employees until it’s pretty shallow. In a report called Financialization and its Entrepreneurial Consequences, the authors (Paul Kedrosky and Dane Stangler) explain that because jobs in the finance sector pay so well, they take talent away from startups and may even be responsible for the “potentially weaker” startups being funded. From the report:

As the data on MIT graduates and the sectoral share of science and engineering employment suggest, it is conceivable that some degree of talent allocation between entrepreneurship and employment was affected by the rise of finance. Recall Figure 3: If we presuppose that some fraction of those scientists and engineers working in the financial sector would otherwise have started companies, we can imagine perhaps a slight effect of financialization on potential entrepreneurship. This also points to a question of the quality of companies being started, which we discuss below. It is difficult, again, to make firm statements as to causation, but the historical data seem to suggest that a two-way feedback effect exists.

Umberto Eco, encyclopedic Italian author, philosopher, and semiotician is known, among other things, for the size of his private libraries. Just one of them is thought to contain over 30,000 books – and among private collections, is generally the stuff of legend.

When asked if he has read each of these tomes, Professor Eco is said to have explained that the value of such a collection was not in the books that he had read, but in fact in his assortment of unread books, his “anti-library.’ “A private library is not an ego boosting appendage but a research tool.” writes Nassim Taleb author of the induction-defying Black Swan. In other words, knowing what you don’t know can be even more valuable than what you do.

As you may have heard, professional social network LinkedIn passed 100 million members this past week. Amid an upcoming IPO, this was a pretty significant milestone for the social network. And today, LinkedIn co-founder and chairman Reid Hoffman has sent the first million members an email, personally thanking them for joining the network in its early days.

TechCrunch editor Erick Schonfeld received a note (he is member #261,186), which we’ve embedded in the post. The note reads: I want to personally thank you because you were one of LinkedIn’s first million members (member number -- in fact!*). In any technology adoption lifecycle, there are the early adopters, those who help lead the way. That was you.

The Census Bureau just finished releasing all of the state redistricting file information from the 2010 Census, giving us a now complete portrait of population change for the entire country. Population growth continued to be heavily concentrated in suburban metropolitan counties while many rural areas, particularly in the Great Plains, continue to shrink.

In finance, a bubble is too much money chasing assets, greater asset production and a herd mentality. In startup business plans, a bubble is too many entrepreneurs and too many investors chasing the latest “next big thing,” like Google search engine, Facebook social network, or Amazon e-commerce site. In all these cases, a bust is inevitable, and everyone loses.

The big question is how to spot these bubbles and jump to a better alternative, rather than get sucked into the vortex. I read a book recently by Vikram Mansharamani, “Boombustology: Spotting Financial Bubbles Before They Burst,” which gives some insight on the financial side, but I believe it can be equally applied to bubbles for startup ideas as follows:

1. Avoid the herd mentality. In theory, this is called the “emergence of group order” or swarm mentality, where everyone rushes in without regard to whether there is enough food to go around. For startups, investors usually toss business plans with ten or more real competitors, especially if a couple have the penetration of a Facebook or Google.