Believe it or not, the making of a video for the song  This Too Shall Pass by the band  OK Go has lessons for would-be innovators. The creator of the video, Adam Sadowsky, said the process of creating the complex machine for the video was a lot like what entrepreneurs go through when developing a new product or service.

He gave the talk today at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco. The video for the song was created by Synn Labs and it involved the creation of a Rube Goldberg machine, a very complicated mechanical device whose purpose is to do ridiculously simple tasks. The video was released on YouTube in January and it has been viewed more than 19 million times.

Most of the time, we find out about companies that have collected venture investments one at a time, via announcements or regulatory filings from the companies themselves. Today Santa Clara, CA-based Intel Capital shook things up a bit, unveiling a big bundle of investments all at once.

The venture wing of the giant chipmaker said in an announcement at the Intel CEO Summit in Huntington Beach, CA, that it has invested $77 million across 18 companies spanning 11 countries, including Brazil, China, Germany, India, Israel, Malaysia, the Netherlands, Russia, Taiwan, the Ukraine, and the United States. All of the companies on the list are working on technologies that relate to Intel’s core PC and server processor business, or to what it called “adjacent” areas of computing such as Internet-based video delivery and consumer electronics.

The American Human Development Project charts sociological health across the nation. Prognosis: Not good.

If you call Connecticut home, your standard of living and economic opportunities are almost two times better than that of someone in West Virginia. That basic inequality shouldn't be news to any American who's spent a day outside. But rarely has it been put in such a stark visual form.

Much has been made of President Obama’s reaction to the spanking American voters delivered in the November 2nd elections. Pundits argue alternatively that Obama doesn’t “get it,” that he is “in denial,” or that he is “too detached” to understand the message that the voters have clearly sent.

Not for the first time, I have found myself thinking, if only this guy had some business experience. Not only because he doesn’t seem to have a clue how businesses create jobs – although that experience would certainly help in an economy with 10% unemployment – but because he doesn’t have a clue how a business becomes a business in the first place.

Anyone who has worked with entrepreneurs knows that they often come up with clever ideas, nifty inventions, or cutting-edge technologies – ideas, inventions and technologies that fall completely flat in the marketplace because no one wants them, or understands what they do, or feels that they are enough of an improvement over the products the public has become accustomed to purchasing.

1. "If you can dream it, you can do it." - Walt Disney

2. "Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, and magic and power in it. Begin it now." - Goethe

3. "The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it." - Michelangelo

4. "It's not enough to be busy, so are the ants. The question is, what are we busy about?" - Henry David Thoreau

We all have low inspiration, low energy days. One option is to simply grit your teeth and power through your fatigue. If that works for you, power to you. But for the rest of us weaker willed individuals, all hope is not lost according to a recent post by blogger Ali Luke on Dumb Little Man. Instead of relying on the brute force of willpower to get through lazy periods, Luke suggests you take the less painful route, acknowledge your inner toddler and simply trick yourself into working harder using these six techniques:

• Use Your Competitive Spirit. Give me someone to compete against, and I’ll find reserves of energy and motivation that I never knew I had. You might well be wired the same. Perhaps you love the idea of competitions like National Novel Writing Month or maybe you’d be great at losing weight if you were competing with your partner. Look for a way to turn your work into a competition: this could be something informal with your friends, a competition that you find online, or even something you start up yourself.

Have you ever failed miserably?  Been fired in a spectacular and public manner?  Your ability to make money and have a good reputation is surely over.  You are now relegated to a life of asking “would you like fries with that?” and hunting for bedbugs.  Well, only if you let it.

Let’s take Mary Meeker for an example.  When Fortune magazine wrote an article titled “Where Mary Meeker Went Wrong,” I’m sure many people thought no one would ever pay attention to her advice about tech companies again.  I mean, geesh, talk about a spectacular and public failure.  When you make a big mistake, it’s likely only your mother-in-law who brings it up at the holiday dinners your spouse forces you to attend.  But she had Fortune magazine talking about her failure.  Ouch.

The 9^th Annual Best Practices in Science Based Incubation Conference, opened with a visit to the Liverpool Science Park, a 36, 000 sq ft centre of versatile office space opened in 2006, home to over 70 knowledge based companies. The park provides accommodation, business support services and access to technical expertise to innovation-based businesses breaking out onto an international stage. The centre is a hub of knowledge exchange, which for growing companies, helps to refine value propositions, optimize costs and forge prosperous industry connections. It is no surprise companies of various size, specialities and regional origins are attracted to such a unique option for business development.  Chloe Young, Business Development Director for the Technology Science Park spoke of the expansion plans to include another 40, 000 sq ft. The Soft Landing Centre is comprised of free office facilities dedicated to attracting companies to test the swelling digital media and life sciences markets in the North West region.  The Soft Landing Centre hosts a variety of events, provides ad hoc advisory services and links local university personnel to the board. However, a common challenge remains: that of managing the relationship between entrepreneurs and university experts, ensuring optimal engagement and the leveraging of local resources. The risky, extensive real estate development and private investments are testament to the public faith in such centres to making a lasting economic impact.

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Ever since I was old enough to realize there would never be a want ad in a newspaper that described a job I wanted, I've loved working in cafes. I never really thought much about it until a few days ago when a baffled friend of mine asked why I was so into it. His assumption? That working in a cafe would be a distraction. A distraction? Dude, quite the opposite. And so, at the risk of trotting out a few half-baked conclusions that my non-cafe-going critics will have a field day trashing, here goes:

20 REASONS WHY YOU LIKE TO WORK IN A CAFE

1. It doesn't feel like work.

2. It's a nice break from the office.

3. You don't have an office.

4. Easy access to caffeine.

Even in the insular echo chamber of Silicon Valley, the name YouWeb doesn’t come up a whole lot. Yet the young incubator, largely a one-man show run by founder Peter Relan, has in just three years taken its initial seed capital of $700,000 and already launched a couple of hot internet startups. YouWeb tells Forbes that by its estimates, the companies it has invested in, including social games company CrowdStar and mobile social games platform provider OpenFeint, are collectively worth about $1 billion.

Because this is the incubator’s own estimate, it should be taken with a grain of salt. But there is evidence and support to believe this number isn’t that far off base either. By YouWeb’s calculations, the value of its companies basically breaks down like this: CrowdStar is worth around $400 to $500 million, OpenFeint around $400 million and its two newer startups Sibblingz and iSwifter each are worth around $100 million. YouWeb has come up with these figures largely by comparing its companies to similar companies with actual exits.

Fewer new businesses are getting off the ground in the U.S., available data suggest, a development that could cloud the prospects for job growth and innovation.

In the early months of the economic recovery, start-ups of job-creating companies have failed to keep pace with closings, and even those concerns that do get launched are hiring less than in the past. The number of companies with at least one employee fell by 100,000, or 2%, in the year that ended March 31, the Labor Department reported Thursday.

That was the second worst performance in 18 years, the worst being the 3.4% drop in the previous year.

Newly opened companies created a seasonally adjusted total of 2.6 million jobs in the three quarters ended in March, 15% less than in the first three quarters of the last recovery, when investors and entrepreneurs were still digging their way out of the Internet bust.

There’s a competitive nature amongst large cities around the world, and the superlative “best” is often used to describe what each metropolis has to offer. Can your city brag about having a cultural strategy that champions ideas, innovation, and creativity? Ask London, and the answer is a resounding yes – thanks to the city’s mayor, Boris Johnson. This past Monday, Johnson published Cultural Metropolis, a visionary recommendation to strengthen the cultural life of Londoners across the capital. The case set forth acknowledges the contributions of the cultural and creative sectors in London and recognizes how continued support and investment leading up to the 2012 Olympics will provide a brilliant opportunity for London to shift its cultural activity and participation.

In my last post, I wrote about Dr. Jack Geller of the University of Minnesota and his research into Internet and broadband adoption in rural areas of his state.  Minnesota has made remarkable progress this decade at extending broadband access.  In 2001, only 6% of rural homes had a broadband connection.  By 2010, 68% had one.  But older citizens have not joined the party.  Overall, almost 70% of Internet non-adopters are 65 years of age or older.  

A great deal of attention is paid to digital inclusion of the elderly – for perfectly good reasons – but I believe that the digital exclusion of another group is far more important.  That group consists of the chronically poor: those with low income, poor education and little prospect of any improvement in their lives or those of their children.  Entrenched, multi-generational poverty is a stain on the life of communities everywhere, but most of all in the industrialized nations with their immense wealth and power to affect the lives of citizens.  The causes are multiple and complex.   Being a member of an ethnic or racial minority with a history of exclusion increases the odds but is hardly conclusive.  More powerful are culture, personal expectations and day-to-day habits.  Such poverty persists because the conditions for it are created anew when each child is born.  The cycle of poverty is refreshed each morning in the mind, through habits of thought and feeling that are stronger than chains.  The British have a wonderful phrase to describe their problem population: "not in work."  They might just as well say "not in the world," at least as the rest of us define our existence.

Julius Genachowski, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, wants the U.S. to catch up with other countries in making sure a high percentage of the population has access to broadband communications. He believes the way to do that is to set aside more of the radio spectrum for mobile broadband services than is currently allotted. Speaking at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco on Wednesday, Genachowski talked about how to maximize investment in broadband and how to get more people on the web.

"If you've never failed... you've never lived" is a popular video on YouTube describing the failures of people like Thomas Edison, once called "too stupid to learn" by his teacher and Walt Disney, who was fired from a newspaper for "lacking imagination." Not every idea succeeds, and indeed, some of America's most triumphant inventors, artists and entrepreneurs have most likely failed at some point in their lives. But without risk and the possibility of failure, there can be no Innovation and no success. That is precisely one of "Robert's Rules of Innovation" imperatives: No Risk, No Innovation.

The success rate when it comes to innovation is very slim. In fact, just 1 in 100 new product entries succeed in the grocery business, according to a study by allbusiness.com. For every innovative product that comes out of the NPD process, there are plenty of ideas that don't work out -- deemed as failures. What's important is that companies have a tolerance for failure and encourage risk taking. Fear of failure can kill innovation. Never punish for failed ideas. Instead, learn from them how to improve in the future. Establish a level of trust so your team won't be afraid to think outside the box. To build a successful culture of Innovation, encourage everyone on your New Product Development team to take risks!

MOST people think entrepreneurship means large enterprises and corporations. But that is hardly necessarily the case at all. All businesses start small before they get to grow. In the dictionary, entrepreneurship is linked with being adventurous, ambitious, dynamic, enthusiastic, innovative, and a go-getter spirit.

But beyond that, I believe that entrepreneurship is in many ways similar to growing plants. Young companies, like young seedlings, need the right opportunities and conditions to grow.

As a small business owner, using online video helps you to stand out. It allows you to attract new customers, gain additional rankings in the search engines, and to offer content in a more digestible format. You know this. But what are some ways you can get even move from video as a small business owner? Here are some online video techniques that are getting me excited right now.

1. Optimize Everything: The easiest way to get MORE from your online videos is to make sure you’re doing everything you can to make them findable by optimizing them for users and the search engines. When it comes to optimizing your video, you want to pay special attention to your Title, Description, Tags, and Captions/Annotations. The more keyword-rich and engaging you can make them, the better.

There’s a slide in my standard social media strategy presentation showing a young couple looking lovingly at one another. Okay, actually only the girl is looking lovingly. The boy’s face looks as if he’s brimming with ulterior motives!

The image is there to remind organizations considering social media that their strategies can’t resemble the teenage boy’s apparent dating strategy if they expect to build strong, lasting relationships.

The striking similarities between dating’s early stages and the first phases of implementing a successful social media strategy are a convenient way to gauge whether your organization’s social media strategy is likely be appropriate and successful.

Act® is a COTEC initiative that supports the creation of high and medium growth technology based ventures and the licensing of technologies.

Act® provides a set of specific services that enable the creation of social and economic value from knowledge developed by researchers and facilitates the access to funding throughout the different stages of the projects’ development.