“The best way to predict the future is to invent it,” wrote American advertising guru Allen Kay. Teaching, Learning, and Technology Group founder Steve W. Gilbert put it in more action-oriented terms: “Don’t predict the future, build it.”

These sentiments sum up the enduring legacy of the North Dakota Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (ND EPSCoR), a North Dakota University System program launched in 1986 to build an exemplary research infrastructure, develop human resources, and increase technology transfer from universities to the commercial sector.

1. Data‐Driven Healthcare. In 2011 and into this next decade, the rate of data generation from biological measurement will continue to accelerate. Making sense of this deluge of data from sources as disparate as electronic medical records, biometric sensors, population statistics, environmental factors, and genomics will be the interesting part! Nimble start‐ups that can aggregate and analyze these data will create tremendous value and advances in human health without the capital intensity of traditional healthcare companies.

Check out venture capital’s walking dead in the upcoming issue of Forbes Magazine. My colleague Maureen Farrell highlights four venture firms that haven’t been able to raise a new fund since 2005 and are basically running on management fees.

Among the “zombie funds” called out: Prospect Ventures’ $500 million 2005 fund; Sanderling Ventures’ $421 million 2004 fund; Healthcare Ventures’ $378 million 2005 fund; and Alloy Ventures’ $368 million 2005 fund.

Africa: Open for Business,’ is the report outcome of the Global Innovation Outlook (GIO), an initiative of IBM, which held in New York about two years ago when this article was initially published. The report featured some frightening indices of why Africa may not get it right in its struggle to join the information society. But it ends on an optimistic note that Africa’s challenge may well be a viable opportunity to activate growth on the continent particularly in the area of infrastructural development.

But some hard facts would suffice to press home the dismal presence of the continent in the evolving information society. The report, quoting from the Economist of London, notes: "When it comes to computing power, the gap between Africa and the broadband world is still a Grand Canyon. Only 4 per cent of Africans have access to the Internet. They pay the most in the world, around $250-300 a month, for the slowest connection speeds. E-commerce barely exists. Nigeria’s 140m-odd people have but a few hundred decently trafficked Websites in their domain. Blogging is a vibrant but peripheral activity.

It's a scene that's been played out all over America in the past few years: companies handing out severance checks, often to their most highly paid, experienced employees. For some laid-off workers, it becomes the push into entrepreneurship they've needed -- maybe even wanted. Those severance checks can be used as seed money, funding everything from one-person consulting shops to retail franchises. Here, four tips to help you launch your dream business, while minimizing the risk to that sudden stash of cash.

No. 1: Don't leap before you look.

More than anything else, severance provides money to live on while you answer basic questions for your business plan: What will it cost start? What will revenues be? Who is your customer and how will you reach him? When will you pay yourself a salary?

A homeless man with a "golden radio voice" turned into a viral sensation yesterday and has now received a full-time job offer and a house from the Cleveland Cavaliers, according to the New York Post.

Ted Williams, the soon-to-be former panhandler, reveals in the viral video that he went to school to develop his incredible radio voice before drugs and alcohol became a part of his life. He's clean now, however, and his hopes of radio and TV stations calling upon him for voiceover work have seem to come true.

When an older friend or relative slows down people take notice—and often start to worry. Although walking pace is a seemingly basic measure to make, it has been gaining traction in the gerontology world as a reliable marker for overall health and longevity for those 65 and older.

A new analysis of walking speed studies shows that—down to the tenth of a meter per second—an older person's pace, along with their age and gender, can predict their life expectancy just as well as the complex battery of other health indicators.

As 2010 sprints to a conclusion and the Great Recession appears to be receding, it’s time for some real bipartisan leadership out of Washington on Innovation and Economic Growth.  Frustrating as it may be for most of us to watch the gridlock in DC around virtually everything, the one issue everyone appears to agree with is the need for sustainable economic growth.

With that thought in mind, here are a few of my thoughts on what should occur in 2011.

Follow the Mayor’s Suggestions
Last week New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg made the following suggestions to spur Innovation and Economic Growth in the US, in my book they’re good ones, although obviously with political implications:

1. Instill Confidence,
2. Promote Trade,
3. Reform Regulations,
4. Cut Business Taxes,
5. Invest in Job Training, and
6. Fix Immigration

Several Michigan companies recently received investments from the Michigan Pre-Seed Capital Fund, pushing the total investments made through the Fund to over $11.6 million. To date, 52 Michigan companies have received seed funding from the Michigan Pre-Seed Capital Fund, a collaborative effort of Michigan’s SmartZones.

“The Michigan Pre-Seed Capital Fund proves that innovation is thriving throughout the state,” said Skip Simms, administrator of the fund programs and interim CEO of Ann Arbor SPARK. “Companies that received support from the Michigan Pre-Seed Capital Fund are currently employing 285 people throughout the state and have attracted outside investment. Matching support from other funding sources totaled $16.4 million for these Michigan companies.”

Raising Venture Capital is fiercely competitive, and many people have unrealistic expectations about their company, its value, and the process of raising venture capital. Here are five tips to get you in the right frame of mind.

1. Re-Evaluate Your Company - Does your company have the ability to earn $20-$50 Million in the next five to seven years? If not, your company may not be very appealing to venture capitalists. Other sources such as angel funding or small business loans may be more appropriate for you.

My software company ChiliSoft sold for $100 million in 2000. Or $70 million. Or $28 million.

It depends on the date you choose, the built-in triggers, and ego. Notably, from December 1999 to May 2000, my stake dropped from 40% to 15% when the deal closed. Most employee stakes dropped as well -- but not all employees.

My point at the end of this story will be something like this: sweat the details.

At its core, The Brainzooming Group helps organizations become more successful by rapidly expanding the range of strategic options they consider. We then help them prioritize and plan for implementing the strongest alternative. Since many organizations are challenged right now in determining what social networking means for them, we’re doing lots of work on social media strategy.

We’re partnered with Social Business Strategies and its founder Nate Riggs to help clients get a quick handle on smart moves into this area. How quick? One client, after a full-day, multi-organization planning session said, “What we did today would have taken us six months on our own.”

John Paul Titlow over at ReadWriteWeb.com reports that this year proved to be a strong one for online employment, as more and more took to the Web to find work, where an increasing number of jobs are for employers in other geographic areas, according to a report released by Elance.

2010 was a year of contrasts for those seeking to boost the role of science in the development agenda. Many new initiatives were launched; some took root, others ran into difficulties. And progress in meeting big challenges, such as conserving biodiversity and tackling climate change, remained slow.

Several organisations had chosen 2010 as the target date for achieving specific goals. Perhaps the most ambitious was the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), which aimed to "significantly curb" biodiversity loss by this date. But biodiversity campaigners fell spectacularly short of achieving this and discussed their failures this year, fearing that the public is oblivious to their messages. Some concluded that biodiversity must be linked more tightly to people's fates.

CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- A statewide group is conducting a study to determine whether researchers at West Virginia's smaller colleges would be interested in working with companies to commercialize new products.

TechConnectWV, a nonprofit coalition dedicated to promoting the state's innovation economy, will survey researchers at 18 smaller colleges and universities, both public and private.

"Ultimately, such a consortium could connect researchers at our smaller institutions of higher education with private sector partners who could help them commercialize new products, services, and technologies," said Anne Barth, executive director of TechConnectWV.

Ordering a product from Amazon.com is probably better for the environment than driving to the mall. Videoconferencing certainly beats hopping on an airplane. Google calculates that it can process 10,000 searches for the same amount of energy as one five-mile car trip. But while information technology may be greener than the things it replaces, the carbon footprint of the world's data centers and computer networks is growing so fast that it already rivals that of the aviation industry, according to past studies.

 

The cluster of glass buildings that serves as the headquarters of Nokia, the global telecommunications giant that is Finland's largest company, is a short stroll from the main campus of Aalto University, one of the country's newest higher-education institutions.

But the symbolic shadow the company casts across Finland's edu­cational, business, and even political landscape is long and omni­present.