It strikes you when you first touch an iPad. The form just feels good, not too lightweight or heavy, nor too thin or thick. It's sensual. It's tactile. And that moment is a good way to spot a first-timer, too, as I observed with a few test subjects. The dead giveaway for an iPad n00b is a pause, a few breaths before hitting the "on" switch, just letting it rest against the skin.

Flick the switch and the novelty hits. Just as the iPhone, Palm Pré and Android phones scratched an itch we didn't know we had—somewhere between cellphone and notebook—the iPad hits a completely new pleasure spot. The display is large enough to make the experience of apps and games on smaller screens stale. Typography is crisp, images gem-like, and the speed brisk thanks to Apple's A4 chip and solid state storage. As I browse early release iPad apps, web pages, and flip through the iBook store and books, the thought hits that this is a greater leap into a new user experience than the sum of its parts suggests.

Easier is Better

The upcoming design, code-named "Vector," has been in use over the past six months by a group of 500,000 beta testers. Included in the update are changes like simplified navigation, a relocated search box, clutter reduction and even an updated Wikipedia logo. Also, all English Wikipedia users will soon be able to create PDFs and printed books from Wikipedia articles, a service previously available only to logged-in users.

Customers have always been core to companies' existence. An obvious statement for sure. Customers are the source of cash flow, and have historically been thought of in marketing and transactional contexts.

But in recent years, we've seen the rise of a new way to consider customers. As vital influencers of company activities and strategies. Two popular ways this is taking form are the social CRM movement, and the emergence of open innovation.

If you follow discussions in these developing strategies, you see that there are differing views as to the value of customer feedback. Understanding the different use cases of customer feedback helps organizations to set objectives and expectations appropriately, and to create effective frameworks for engaging customers.

The rise of venture leasing and lending has created an opportunity for sophisticated entrepreneurs to gain a competitive advantage. Savvy entrepreneurs are using venture leases and loans to generate millions of dollars for shareholders by leveraging existing venture capital. They have discovered ways to use this flexible financing as a tool to build enterprise value between equity rounds and to leapfrog less sophisticated competitors.

Venture leases and loans are usually asset-based, financing arrangements. These financings are available to qualified pre-profit, early-stage companies funded by venture capital investors. Start-ups need equipment and working capital to help them execute their business plans and to reach profitability. Venture lenders and lessors provide financing to these firms to help them acquire computers, lab and test equipment, production equipment, phone systems and other needed business equipment.

As the former chairman of the Illinois Venture Capital Association, private equity investor Robert Finkel fondly recalls a popular series of panels he helped arrange called “VC Confidential” in which seasoned pros candidly described the lessons they’ve learned.

“They weren’t afraid to criticize themselves or their actions,” said Finkel, the president and founder of Chicago private equity firm Prism Capital.

But while the panels were invaluable to the junior VCs in the audience, Finkel realized that none of the remarks were ever recorded. So he decided to invite several big-name investors to see if they’d be willing to share their wisdom in print for all to see.

The result is “The Masters of Private Equity and Venture Capital,” a book that profiles 10 pioneering investors – five in private equity and five in venture capital – who discuss their favorite accomplishments, biggest mistakes and key lessons. Finkel and co-author David Greising, chief business correspondent of the Chicago Tribune, spent several hours with each investor in videotaped interviews to capture their innermost thoughts.

Deerfield, IL — The Alliance of Technology Transfer Professionals (ATTP) was formally established March 17, 2010, at the Annual Meeting of the Association of University Technology Managers (AUTM). ATTP’s objective is to lead the development of the technology transfer profession and its practitioners by promoting recognition, progress and knowledge sharing among the global technology transfer community. ATTP is a not-for-profit corporation registered in the UK.

Participating organizations include the Association of European Science and Technology Transfer Professionals (ASTP), the Association of Technology Managers in Taiwan (ATMT), AUTM, Knowledge Commercialisation Australasia (KCA), and PraxisUnico.

“The creation of ATTP represents the next major step in the development of the academic technology transfer profession,” said Ashley J. Stevens, D.Phil. (Oxon), CLP, AUTM president.

“Academic technology transfer is now recognized around the world as a vitally important profession that transfers innovations resulting from public sector research to the private sector for commercialization and economic development, and ATTP is the international professional body set up to lead the development of that profession and its practitioners,” said Kevin Edward Cullen, Ph.D., Director of Research & Enterprise, University of Glasgow. Cullen, who has been a member of the Boards of ASTP, AUTM and PraxisUnico, and who was instrumental in the founding of ATTP, added, “ATTP was created by the leading international, practitioner-led associations in order to establish professional recognition processes, standards and mechanisms. We look forward to other, like-minded associations joining the Alliance to advance technology transfer globally.”

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Tapping into Europe's multi-billion euro public procurement market will be a central component of the EU's forthcoming research and innovation plan, but risk aversion in the public sector remains a major barrier to change.

The construction, healthcare and communication technology sectors are among the areas where public authorities can have a major influence on market developments because they are often the largest single purchaser.

Experts and policymakers at a conference in Brussels agreed that public procurement should be used to promote innovation, but there were concerns that the culture in the public sector is not well suited to commissioning innovative projects.

John Connaughton, a UK-based management consultant working on public procurement projects, said the process of winning government contracts can be lengthy and often favours established firms rather than dynamic start-ups.

The small, unassuming zebrafish, which has become a stable in biology labs across the globe, can perform an impressive feat of regeneration--it can withstand losing 20 percent of a ventricle, a chamber of the heart, growing it back within a month. Two new studies published yesterday in Nature show the animals regrow their hearts by triggering cell division of adult heart muscle cells rather than via stem cells. If researchers can elucidate the chemical signaling involved in the process, they may be able to find ways to stimulate heart repair or regeneration in humans. While recent research suggests that human hearts do have a limited capacity to generate new cells, heart muscle tends to form scars after heart attack rather than healthy new tissue.

Innovation can be a delicate balancing act between ideas and implementation. Ed Muzio, CEO of Group Harmonics, explains the three stages of turning a vision into reality.

A source close to Yahoo's strategic planning recently complained to us that Yahoo has "a fundamental innovator's dilemma."

What he meant is that while Yahoo has flat traffic, flat revenues, and increasingly limited growth opportunities, it can't innovate it's way out of the problem with bold new products because it has to fund, protect, and iterate on "a big existing business that is, let's face it, very profitable" -- display advertising on Yahoo.com and the company's other media sites.

So while there is, at Yahoo, "a core group of people who still want [and] believe that Yahoo can change things," these product directors and line engineers increasingly find themselves working not for a tech company, but for a media company content to serve ad impressions against an already huge Web audience.

A few months ago, in a post titled “Innovation Needs Information” I wrote about the basic importance of information in the innovation process. Voice of Customer, competitive intel, market studies, syndicated data, and more. It’s all important. But what happens when you get emotionally attached or intellectually numb to gathered information?

One of the classic pitfalls of data analysis for any individual is the propensity to develop an emotional attachment to the information itself. For reasons not always entirely clear (or rather for reasons that might take some psychological therapy to fully explore), an individual may react or become emotionally attached in some manner to a specific set of gathered information. This is especially true if the person in question performed the actual data gathering – as might be the case with investigative phone or personal interviews. Such reactions could manifest themselves in a variety of ways, including possessiveness or denial. When attachment occurs, a couple things might happen.

Asia’s rising “clean technology tigers”—China, Japan, and South Korea —are poised to out-compete the United States for dominance of clean energy markets due to their substantially larger government investments to support research and innovation, manufacturing capacity, and domestic markets, as well as critical related infrastructure. Government investment in each of these Asian nations will do more to reduce investor risk and stimulate business confidence than currently proposed U.S. climate and energy legislation, which includes too few aggressive policy initiatives and allocates relatively little funding to directly support U.S. clean energy industries. Even if climate and energy legislation passed by the U.S. House of Representatives becomes law, China, Japan and South Korea will out-invest the United States by a margin of three-to-one over the next five years, attracting much if not most of the future private investment in the industry. Global private investment in renewable energy and energy efficient technologies alone is estimated to reach $450 billion annually by 2012 and $600 billion by 2020, and could be much larger if recent market opportunity estimates are realized. For the United States to regain economic leadership in the global clean energy industry, U.S. energy policy must include more direct and coordinated investment in clean technology R&D, manufacturing, deployment, and infrastructure.

innovation@cfed is now accepting idea submissions from innovators who want to take their cutting-edge approaches to expanding economic opportunity to the next level. To date, we've received a number of applications from innovation leaders across the country and we are thrilled with the response we've seen.

We'd like to hear your idea! Are you ready to work with innovation@cfed to help bring your idea to scale? Are you interested in playing key roles at the go-to event of the year, the 2010 Assets Learning Conference? If so, click here today to start filling out an application for one of these exciting programs:

• Innovators-in-Residence are individuals who are prepared to take a proven concept to the next level during a virtual or in-house residency with CFED. This highly competitive program will offer one or more opportunities for a 12– to 24– month residency including a stipend of up to $50,000 and CFED support and resources.

When health care reform was signed into law by President Obama on March 23rd, it signaled the beginning of a new era for nurse-led health care. The Patient Protection and Affordable Health Care Ac (H.R. 3590) will capitalize on the ability of nurse practitioners to provide high-quality primary and preventive care by defining "nurse-managed health clinic" in the Public Health Service Act and authorizing a new $50 million grant program to support the development and operation of nurse-managed health clinics that provide primary care or wellness services to underserved or vulnerable populations.

Nurse-managed health clinics serve as crucial health care access points in areas where primary care physicians are in short supply. These health centers are led by advanced practice nurses (primarily nurse practitioners). Sometimes called nurse-managed health centers or NMHCs, they provide primary care, health promotion, and disease prevention services to patients who are least likely to receive ongoing health care services. This population includes clients of all ages who are uninsured, underinsured, living in poverty, or members of racial and ethnic minority groups.

In addition to providing services directly to clients, nurse-managed health clinics also play an important role in health profession education. The majority are affiliated with schools and colleges of nursing and serve as clinical education and practice sites for health profession students and faculty. More than 85 of the nation's leading nursing schools operate nurse-managed health clinics that provide high-quality, cost-effective primary care to patients and enhance learning and practice opportunities for nursing students and faculty. In addition, many have partnerships with other academic programs and provide learning opportunities for medical, pharmacy, social work, public health, and other students.

What might future explorers of the solar system see? Find out by taking an interactive tour through the eyes of Hugo Award-winning artist Ron Miller. Text and narration by Ed Bell.

Artist Ron Miller takes us on a journey to eight of the most breathtaking views that await explorers of our solar system.  The scale of these natural wonders dwarfs anything Earth has to offer.  What might we see and feel if we could travel to these distant domains?  By interpreting data from probes such as NASA's Cassini, which is now exploring the Saturnian system, and MESSENGER, which goes into orbit around Mercury in March 2011, the artist's eye allows us an early visit to these unforgettable locales.

Michigan is, by right, obsessed with economic development. The convoluted array of incentive and subsidy programs we’ve built to lure new firms or build new industries is substantial, to say the least.

But the theory underlying most of these traditional economic development tools is changing. The shift—one with serious potential for environmental and community-minded folks—is fundamentally moving away from traditional “smokestack chasing” models toward what’s been dubbed “economic gardening.”

The difference is stark.

Rob Fowler, head of the Small Business Association of Michigan, suggests we shouldn’t consider it an evolution, but the emergence of a whole new approach to economic development.

Cisco has just signed up to what sounds like a bizarre and confusing thing: It'll be a partner in developing a whole "smart city" in Korea. Weird. But if you think about it, with networks connecting up everything, it may be a model for where you'll live in the future.

We're talking about Incheon, in South Korea. It's going to transform the Incheon Free Economic Zone (IFEZ) into a "high-tech, globally competitive and environmentally sustainable smart connected city" which sounds terrifically grand. Yet the ultimate goal, to "support continued innovation in Korea" is even loftier--while being perfectly believable, given the amount of high-tech innovation and manufacturing Korea already fosters.

Market Size
The angel investor market in 2009, on the heels of a considerable contraction in investment dollars in 2008, exhibited a modest decrease in investment dollars but little change in the number of investments.  Total investments in 2009 were $17.6 billion, a decrease of 8.3% over 2008, according to the Center for Venture Research at the University of New Hampshire.  However, a total of 57,225 entrepreneurial ventures received angel funding in 2009, a reserved 3.1% increase from 2008, and the number of active investors in 2009 was 259,480 individuals, virtually unchanged from 2008.  The small decline in total dollars, coupled with the increase in investments resulted in a smaller deal size for 2009 (a decline in deal size of 11.1% from 2008).  These data indicate that while angels have not significantly decreased their investment activity, they are committing less dollars resulting from lower valuations and a cautious approach to investing.  Significant changes did occur in the critical seed and start-up stage investment landscape.

Download the Full Year 2009 Angel Market Analysis Report
Director, Jeffrey Sohl     

Canada’s federal budget, presented March 4, 2010, has been passed by the House of Commons. The 451 page document describes cuts to the public service and foreign aid, in addition to limited spending on the military and EI premiums. Stimulus programs continue, however little new money has been announced. The plan is to reduce the $53.8B deficit to $1.8B by 2015.

Despite aggressive cost cutting measures, new money for innovation has been provided. Post- doctoral training was highlighted as a key investment. Granting agencies and Genome Canada received additional funds. Innovation projects such as TRIUMF, NRC clusters, RADARSAT have received substantial investments. Regional development organizations have also received funding to support innovation and job creation across the country.

Excerpts on Innovation from the Canadian Federal Budget 2010
Compiled from budget (Source: Ministry of Finance, Budget 2010)
Budget 2010 makes targeted changes to improve Canada’s productivity growth through innovation by:

• Providing $45 million over five years to establish a post-doctoral fellowship program to help attract the research leaders of tomorrow to Canada.
• Delivering $222 million in funding over five years to strengthen the world-leading research taking place at TRIUMF, Canada’s premier national laboratory for nuclear and particle physics research.
• Increasing the combined annual budgets of Canada’s research granting councils by an additional $32 million per year, plus an additional $8 million per year to the Indirect Costs of Research Program.
• $16 million CIHR
  
• $13 million NSERC ($8M research and $5M strategy for partnership and innovation)
  
• $3 million SSHRC
• Providing Genome Canada with an additional $75 million for genomics research.
• Doubling the budget of the College and Community Innovation Program with an additional $15
  million per year.
• Providing $135 million over two years to the National Research Council Canada’s regional innovation clusters program.
• Providing $48 million over two years for research, development and application of medical isotopes.
• Providing a total of $497 million over five years to develop the RADARSAT Constellation Mission.
• Launching a new Small and Medium-sized Enterprise Innovation Commercialization Program with $40 million over two years.
• Renewing and making ongoing $49 million in annual funding for the regional development agencies to support innovation across Canada.

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Prepared by: Robert Merson

It takes more than ensuring educators and students have access to technology when schools begin the work of developing a 21st century strategic school plan. As innovative educators, students, leaders, and families, are well aware, technology is just a tool. In and of itself technology does not equate to either innovation or greater effectiveness. In fact poorly used technology generally results in substandard instruction. In some cases this further results in dropping technology-(rather than learner) driven programs and support. This is important to remember when developing a strategic school learning plan. What's most important is learning always come first.

I've heard one too many educational leader, teacher or parent proudly state that they are part of an innovative school as evidenced by the fact that they have laptops or Smartboards in every classroom. That is not impressive. What is impressive is when the conversation begins with how student learning is enriched in new ways and learners are engaged with innovative tools and ideas. I was recently asked by a school leader for feedback on how to ensure their school's strategic planning could help ensure educators were preparing 21st century learners for success. Here is what I shared.