Innovators always want their offspring to be faster, better, and/or cheaper. Successful innovators constantly push novelty to create new value. But the innovators who reap the most rewarding results understand the importance of asking:

What does this innovation want you to become?

Facebook wants you to become someone who attracts, wins, and manages a social network of friends and acquaintances while becoming more sharing and open about your own life. Google wants you to become someone always willing to take a few moments to tap a few keys to explore any question you might have around any topic you might be interested in. The iPad wants you to become someone who's willing to touch and stroke your way to digital entertainment and information anywhere and anytime. The Kindle wants you to become a bookworm extraordinaire; a textually-tropic annelid who loves to read, annotate and share books and magazines.

For decades, entrepreneurs have tried to strike it rich by gathering up ugly potato-size rocks that carpet the global seabed. Known as manganese nodules, the rocks are plentiful in nickel, copper and cobalt, as well as manganese and other elements, but lie miles down in inky darkness. Building giant machines to vacuum them up, despite much study and investment, has never proved to be economic.

Now, the frustrated visionaries are talking excitedly about the possibility of belated success, and perhaps even profits.

The nodules turn out to contain so-called rare-earth minerals — elements that have wide commercial and military application but have hit a production roadblock. China, which controls some 95 percent of the world’s supply, had blocked shipments, sounding political alarms around the globe and a rush for alternatives. China ended its embargo late last month, but the hunt for other options continues.

Asteroids first formed at the birth of the solar system 4.6 billion years ago, developing into small proto-planets. The biggest asteroids, like the 330-mile-wide Vesta, might have even grown into full-blown planets if not for the pull of Jupiter’s powerful gravitational field. Since then, collisions have blasted asteroids apart into smaller bodies. Astronomers want to know just how planetlike asteroids like Vesta became. It’s possible, for example, that Vesta developed a heavy core and might even have a magnetic field. Once the Dawn takes a close look at Vesta, it will move on to another giant asteroid, Ceres, which has water-bearing minerals and perhaps even a weak atmosphere. By comparing the two asteroids, astronomers hope to learn about early planet formation.

Researchers who study how drugs like morphine affect infants are bedeviled by the fact that newborns' tiny bodies can't readily spare much blood for testing. As a result, pharmacology in babies often involves guesswork. That could soon change.

A new method of screening miniscule amounts of dried blood for chemicals could allow researchers to get all the information they need from small amounts of blood. The researchers' first goal is to produce a drug-dosing guide for infants. But the list of potential applications is far longer, says Jeffrey Galinkin, an anesthesiologist at the University of Colorado who heads the effort. Infection specialists could use the technique to diagnose HIV or tuberculosis, for instance, while sports officials could use it to monitor athletes for banned substances, he says.

The Belgian Presidency has proposed a new compromise text – seen by EurActiv - to break a long-standing deadlock over EU patents which could lead to an historic deal at an extraordinary Competitiveness Council next Wednesday (10 November).

The new proposal, which has been circulating among EU diplomats since 3 November, contains important steps forward compared to the previous compromise text tabled in October, which proved ineffective.

This triggered the convening of a special Competitiveness Council next Wednesday, which follows an official and an informal Council that have already been held during the Belgian Presidency and precedes another two meetings scheduled for November and December. On average only two Competitiveness Councils are held per semester.

Turns out, unsurprisingly, that sitting with a computer on your lap will crank up the temperature of your nether regions, which could affect sperm quality.

And there is little you can do about it, according to the authors of a study out today in the journal Fertility and Sterility, short of putting your laptop on a desk.

The researchers hooked thermometers to the scrotums of 29 young men who were balancing a laptop on their knees. They found that even with a lap pad under the computer, the men's scrotums overheated quickly.

Business networking is one of the most effective marketing and prospecting tools you can use to grow your business. Of course, done incorrectly it can actually be harmful to your business.

Somewhere down the road salespeople were given the idea that business networking meant pitching and selling. Eek! Nothing could be further from the truth.

What do all of the most dynamic 21st Century entrepreneurial companies have in common? They:

1. Pursue Global Markets
2. Place Corporate Culture Above All Else
3. Embrace the Black Swan Both Within and Without

1. Pursue Global Markets. If you don’t have a business that can scale globally, then either don’t bother or just content yourself with staying small.

Try these statistics on for size, from 1999 to today Asia’s share of the world’s Initial Public Offerings grew from 12% to 66%.

In that same time frame, United States IPO volume declined 75% in real terms and now accounts for less than 11% of the global total. 7 Companies in China have raised more than $1 billion in an IPO this year. In the U.S. so far, no company has raised more than $700 million and it is somewhat of a sad commentary that the biggest U.S. IPO by far this year will be the government ward General Motors.

by Bret Mills

The Iowa department of economic development knows Growth in iowa will be dependent on iowa’s ability to develop an innovation economy. don’t confuse innovation with another economic development buzzword, technoloGy-based economic development. iowa has had Growth in its tech sector, but the end result of tech-based economic development is an end-product that is shipped or sold. it’s important to understand that innovation doesn’t always lead to an end product. rather, innovation is a service, process, or system that may be applied to any industry
or business.

the benefit of an innovation economy is not limited to larger metro areas and technology centers. one example of this is from two iowa agricultural companies, pioneer and monsanto. as they have increased yield in corn per acre, it has substantially increased return on investment for those companies and for farmers. it has also increased the wealth in communities and the overall wealth and economic stability of the state. another example is from the wind industry. smaller communities are taking advantage of innovation in the growth of this new industry. the growth in turbines installed, wind industry manufacturing, and even workforce training has largely taken its lead outside of iowa’s largest metro areas.

OK, I was totally wrong about the MassChallenge.

When John Harthorne (at right, in the yellow tie), Akhil Nigam and their team were running around town trying to drum up support for a competition that would bring start-up companies to Boston from around the world, my response was: do we really need another entrepreneurship contest? Doesn't every local school with a business class or two, from MIT to Babson to BU to Harvard, already run a contest of their own?

It also seemed unlikely that they'd be able to raise $1 million in prize money in the midst of a recession.

And when they announced the 111 teams that made it into the competition — and would receive free office space on the Boston waterfront and mentoring from local entrepreneurs and investors — they included a handful of start-ups that seemed to me like they were on life support, having failed to raise money or come up with a workable business plan.

We (the employees of the Cambridge, MA Greentech Media office) finally got our hands on the Tesla Roadster. Previously tested by Michael Kanellos, we were lucky enough to score a drive in the new Roadster 2.5. While I won’t rehash Michael’s road test, or report what all the other automotive journalists have already written, I will tell you why driving a Tesla is a completely unique and special experience and why they are not the logistical nightmare some have made them out to be.

The Tesla Roadster is not just sports-car fast; it’s supercar fast. With a 3.7-second 0-60 mph time that rivals Ferraris and Lamborghinis costing hundreds of thousands of dollars more, full-bore acceleration in this car is downright violent. Mash the accelerator (no gas pedal here) and you are instantly pinned to the seatback. Unlike standard internal combustion engines, there is no wait for the revs to climb into the power band. Throttle response is instant and linear, and without the hassle of gears to change, 50-60-70mph comes up on the speedometer before you even have time to think, ‘What’s the speed limit again?’

Have you ever heard someone say they want to be a polymath? Have you ever heard anyone ask, how do I become a polymath? I haven’t. The word comes from the Greek polymathes or having learned much. A polymath is a person whose expertise spans a significant number of different subject areas. When we think of polymaths we tend to think of dead scientists from another era like Aristotle and Leonardo da Vinci. Rarely do we apply the moniker in modern times. We need more polymaths. We need a generation of youth who want to be polymaths when they grow up.

It’s easy to wrap our minds around the idea of a polymath in the context of ancient eras long gone. The entire body of knowledge on earth was accessible to an elite few. Those with an exceptional mind, privileged access, and the freedom to focus on interdisciplinary study, could become polymaths. In 384 - 322 BC Aristotle studied under Plato in ancient Greece. His writings spanned many subjects including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theatre, music, logic, rhetoric, politics, government, ethics, biology and zoology. In the late 15th and early 16th century Leonardo da Vinci was a prototype of the universal genius or Renaissance man. He was a painter, sculptor, engineer, astronomer, anatomist, biologist, geologist, physicist, architect, philosopher and humanist. Where have all the polymaths gone?

Two weeks ago, I attended the PDMA 2010 Global Conference, where innovators gathered and traded tips on the latest in innovation business practices. Several themes consistently emerged from the various presentations – shift to open source ideation, the importance of engaging the customer, and a shift toward business model innovation, to name a few. Reflecting on the conference, I got to thinking about the business trends that seem to be unfolding. Innovation is happening not just in product development, but in how businesses are run. What does the company of the future look like? Here are 10 predictions for 2020. Some of these developments are already happening on a large scale, others are more esoteric. Although stemming from things I have read or heard, these predictions are admittedly (un)educated guesses. If any of these predictions came to fruition, they would undoubtedly bring with them new set of challenges, but I believe that in each case, the opportunity far outweighs the complications.

Before X-rays and MRIs could peer inside the human body, physicians turned to bodily wastes, particularly urine, in order to make diagnoses. The practice of uroscopy arose from the observation that the color, consistency, smell, and even taste of urine change with different ailments. With a sample of the ailing person’s urine, physicians and laymen alike turned to widely popular illustrations known as urine wheels to make their diagnoses. While some associations were clearly flawed—such as the idea that turbidity could indicate that a woman was not a virgin—in many ways uroscopy paved the way for modern laboratory medicine.

Since it was launched in 2008 by the Kauffman Foundation and Enterprise UK, more than 18,000 partner organizations joined the global movement to shape the next generation of entrepreneurs. In its still short life, GEW has established a solid and ongoing presence in more than 100 countries -- and counting. During the same time period, over 10 million people around the world have participated in GEW activities and 2010 promises to boost that total to tap even more human capital and breathe life into new startups.

While the majority of nations this year will start Global Entrepreneurship Week on November 15th, some countries are conducting their celebrations a week or more in advance due to an important Muslim holiday, Eid al-Adha, falling on November 16th. For example:

* The Young Arab Leaders’ (YAL) Regional Entrepreneurship Summit under the patronage of HH Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, is a Summit of 400 leaders from private industry, government, academia and non-governmental organizations that generates new ideas, partnerships and business opportunities around the theme of “Bridging the Divide: Entrepreneurship for the Arab Future.” Aspiring young entrepreneurs from throughout the Arab world get access to role models, mentors, partners and venture capitalists.

November 2 midterm elections marked a shift of power in Washington, D.C. The Republican Party wrested control of the U.S. House of Representatives from the Democrats, who had held power across both houses of Congress and the White House since President Barack Obama's election in 2008.

Just days after the midterm elections, a report from the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and a related story in The New York Times examined what would happen to federal science agencies if the GOP carried through on their planned budget cuts. The 2010 Republican agenda, "A Pledge to America," proposed rolling back discretionary spending to 2008 levels, with exceptions for seniors and the military. (Discretionary spending makes up roughly one third of the federal budget; the rest goes to mandatory programs such as Social Security and Medicare.)

Boston, Mass. -- Boston’s angels are increasingly interested in cleantech. But to what end?

At the state of Massachusetts’ sixth annual Conference on Clean Energy, leading early-stage investors discussed the differences between venture firms and angel investors. Whereas institutional funds focus on market-disrupting technological innovations, angels are more willing to consider smaller businesses, niche markets and service companies.

“It is very important to differentiate between what is a good business for you as the entrepreneur versus what is a good business for me as a VC investor,” said David Wells of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. “I am trying to move the needle on a billion-dollar fund and create a durable enterprise that will still be standing 10 or 20 years from now. That is very different from you achieving success with your venture. Just because I declined to invest does not mean it is not good for you. It means that I cannot achieve my objectives with my fund. Angel investors and high-net-worth individuals have their bar set in a different place.”

In recent blogs, I have tried to address many of the questions raised by entrepreneurs looking for financing. You can download a guide that we prepared for entrepreneurs pitching to the Dragons in CBC Dragons’ Den.

In this blog, I will answer the two specific questions raised in the previous blog.  How do you raise large amounts of money without giving up too much equity and how do you develop an exit strategy to maximize the likelihood of receiving investment?

How do you raise large amounts of money without giving up too much equity?

In a previous blog, I identified that you can decide how much money you need to raise from third-party equity investors, by first working out the negative cash flow for the first three years of the business, and then identifying sources of non-equity finance (debt, government grants, customer advances etc.). From this you can calculate how much cash in exchange for equity you need to raise.  However, if you ask for all of this at the beginning, then your equity will be significantly diluted. If you obtain the same amount in stages, then you can give up a smaller amount of equity if you have increased the value of your company at each stage. This puts you in a better equity position and increases the likelihood of being able to attract further investment subsequently.

It’s said there are no bad jobs during a recession. But there are depressing ones—like trying to recruit new business. That was Jeffrey Edwards’s task as head of Utah’s Economic Development Corporation (EDC), a publicly funded carnival barker for new and emerging companies. Every state has a comparable office. But while nearly every local economy succumbed to the frozen credit markets, failing to grow much during the last two years, Utah has flourished. With Edwards’s help, it set its own records for new companies (more than 40) and capital investment (nearly $2 billion). That has helped sustain an average of 3.5 percent annual growth during the last five years, more than any state other than energy-rich North Dakota. “It’s a weird countercyclical phenomenon,” says Edwards, “but we’ve been busier than we’ve ever been.”

Why Utah? Founded by Mormon pioneers, the state, which has been called “a quasi theocracy” by the editor of its largest newspaper, is overwhelmingly white (93 percent) and Mormon (60 percent). Those demographics make for a socially conservative mind meld—no gay marriage, mixed acceptance of women in the workplace—that might seem hostile to the idea-swapping associated with a go-go economy. Mix in a thin coffee-and-booze culture, and you might expect Utah’s economy to be listless as well.