When it comes to government investing in cleantech, the feds aren't the only game in town. 

In November of 2008, Connecticut established a $9 million Clean Tech Fund.  Geared to spark innovation in the Nutmeg State, the fund has invested just more than $2 million to date.

"We are looking for entrepreneurs at any stage and venture capitalists looking to partner with companies headquartered in Connecticut," said Patrick O'Neill, Investment Associate at Connecticut Innovations, at GoingGreen East recently. "We look for early-stage companies in cleantech -- broadly defined as any technology that conserves resources, reduces waste, or protects the environment."

In a post for PoynterOnline, Steve Myers reports on what one of the Google teams had to say about management and innovation in their presentation at SXSW.

Some of the lessons:

• Set a specific goal, even if you don't know how you're going to accomplish it

• Create a culture that promotes getting things done above all else.

• Shield your employees from unnecessary distractions (i.e. bad suggestions from both inside and outside the organization) so they can focus on their current goals.

The Lincoln Economic Development Association (LEDA) is looking to plant a garden, but not the kind filled with fruits and vegetables that grow in your backyard.

The Lincolnton-based organization is actually hoping to “grow” existing businesses, if they want, with “economic gardening,” a not-so-new concept that seems to be just now be sweeping across the nation.

Economic gardening was originally started in the City of Littleton, Colo. 23 years ago. The idea was to grow local jobs through entrepreneurial activity rather than recruiting.

Economic gardening breaks businesses down into three groups: stage one, 1-9 employees; stage two, 10-99 employees; stage three 100-500 employees; and stage four, more than 500 employees and the employer is considered a “large business.”

But the true focus on economic gardening is the stage-two companies, which have $1 million worth of sales, wanting to expand.

Every once in a while it's a good idea to make sure you're not—inadvertently—making it harder for either yourself or your team to be innovative. Here are three sins even the best managers commit occasionally. (We have been guilty of them ourselves.) We also offer suggestions how to guard against, and recover from, these pitfalls.

Sin No. 1: Saying "enough already."

We like to call the most innovative employees—the ones who can come up with countless ideas at the drop of the proverbial hat—"idea monkeys." We could say countless wonderful things about idea monkeys, and here are two of our favorites: They have boundless energy, and they are flexible. You want more ideas? Great! You want to brainstorm about something else? Even better! Your job in managing these kinds of employees—the ones who say, "We could do this" or "What about that?" and "Wouldn't it be so cool if"—is to focus their energy, not cut it off. So instead of yielding to the temptation to yell, "Please stop coming up with something new every 20 seconds," you should direct them where you want them to go. Suggest specific areas where you need innovation help. Discuss the outcome you want and explain the hurdles standing in your way. Be specific about the things that have you "stuck." Then strap in and enjoy the ride.

Máire Geoghegan-Quinn, the EU's commissioner for research, innovation and science, believes that the bloc's target of spending 3% of GDP on research and development (R&D) must remain in place if Europe is to put itself firmly on the road to economic recovery.

The new commissioner acknowledged current debates surrounding the 3% R&D objective but insisted that now is the wrong time to make cutbacks in a sector that is underperforming in many EU member states.

Geoghegan-Quinn was delivering the keynote address on Friday (5 March) at the Lisbon Council's 2010 Innovation Summit, her first major speech as innovation commissioner since the European Parliament hearing in January.

Speaking about the 3% target, she said, ''I know that this is controversial. But I believe that it should stay. Research ministers have told me in clear terms that its existence has strengthened their hand in their dealings with their finance ministers […] Now is exactly the wrong moment to remove this discipline.''

The DC Council recently passed a resolution recognizing the significant contributions of TBED21, Inc., an organization dedicated to keeping the District economically competitive in the 21st century, with a strong focus on underdeveloped and disadvantaged communities.

The text of the Ceremonial Resolution, introduced by At-Large Councilmember Kwame Brown, is as follows:

TBED21 Readiness Recognition Resolution of 2010

To recognize the need to ensure that the District of Columbia is economically competitive in the twenty-first century and to acknowledge the significant contributions of TBED21, Inc., in efforts to integrate policy and federal funding opportunities for the nation’s capital.

WHEREAS, the Council of the District of Columbia recognizes the need to develop a more integrated policy and programmatic agenda towards technology-based economic development that ensures the District of Columbia’s economic competitiveness in the 21st century;

WHEREAS, Technology Based Economic Development for the 21st Century -TBED21, Inc., recognizes the District of Columbia as an economically vibrant 21st century knowledge city with a diverse citizenry representing countries from around the world;

WHEREAS, TBED21, Inc. has proposed ideas to the Government of the District of Columbia, including Office of the Mayor and District agencies: Office of the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development; Office of the Deputy Mayor for Education; Office of the State Superintendent for Education; University of the District of Columbia and its Community College;

WHEREAS, TBED21, Inc. has engaged various federal agencies including the U.S. Department of Education, U.S. Department of Commerce and the U.S. Department of Labor to assist the development of a 21st century tech-based economic development agenda for the District of Columbia;

WHEREAS, TBED21, Inc. has made tremendous strides in coordinating Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) education, STEM workforce development, entrepreneurship, innovation, tech-based commercialization and entrepreneurship in the District of Columbia;

RESOLVED, BY THE COUNCIL OF THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, that this resolution may be cited as the “TBED21 Readiness Recognition Resolution of 2010”.

The United States and its higher education systems are on the verge of a "new paradigm" in defining the roles of colleges and universities in promoting state and regional economic development, says a report being issued today.

"The old paradigm rests largely on the traditional mix of business attraction and retention incentives," such as tax breaks or infrastructure, says the report, by the Rockefeller Institute of Government of the State University of New York. "Research, technology transfer, management assistance, and/or worker training are often thrown in among the incentives -- but sometimes as a kind of afterthought.... Perhaps there is now an opportunity to flip the old model around -- adopting a new, 'knowledge first' paradigm in which higher education systems explicitly take a leading role."

The study was commissioned by Nancy L. Zimpher, SUNY's new chancellor, as part of her efforts to promote economic development in New York State. But the analysis intentionally avoids a New York State focus. The idea is to survey national trends by compiling activities linking higher education and economic development in every state, with the goal of creating a framework to view these efforts. The report acknowledges that the concept of higher education-inspired economic development is hardly new, with many politicians boasting about how this or that research accomplishment spurred the creation of new businesses, or talking about how they would create the next Silicon Valley.

“We’re in a crisis, and there is an opportunity to reinvent our energy infrastructure; it would be a folly to waste it.”

I [Eric Wesoff] wrote a mildly antagonistic profile of star investor Vinod Khosla last week as part of our "Green Kingpins" series.  Mr. Khosla responded with a well-thought-out and reasonable rebuttal, which we print here in its entirety.

To review the issues you raised:

Mr.
Khosla is somewhat of a contrarian and can always be counted on to say
something that doesn't agree with the conventional wisdom. Actually
sometimes he says things that don't agree with things he's said.

Absolutely -- especially the latter line. I've always maintained that all  forecasts are wrong -- including mine, as I stated at the ARPA-E conference last week. The ability to learn from mistakes is an importantone. That being said, I think the examples you cite do not meet the threshold of disagreeing with myself.

Here is a late draft of a Federal Communications Commission summary of its "National Broadband Plan," due for delivery to Congress by Wednesday:

Broadband is the great infrastructure challenge of the early 21st century.

Like electricity a century ago, broadband is a foundation for economic growth, job creation, global competitiveness and a better way of life. It is enabling entire new industries and unlocking vast new possibilities for existing ones. It is changing how we educate children, deliver health care, manage energy, ensure public safety, engage government, and access, organize and disseminate knowledge.

Fueled primarily by private sector investment and innovation, the American broadband ecosystem has evolved rapidly. The number of Americans who subscribe to broadband has grown from eight million in 2000 to nearly 200 million last year. Increasingly capable fixed and mobile networks allow Americans to access a growing number of valuable applications through innovative devices.

But broadband in America is not all it needs to be. Approximately 100 million Americans do not have broadband at home. Broadband-enabled health information technology (IT) can improve care and lower costs by hundreds of billions of dollars in the coming decades, yet the United States is behind many advanced countries in the adoption of such technology. Broadband can provide teachers with tools that allow students to learn the same course material in half the time, but there is a dearth of easily accessible digital educational content required for such opportunities. A broadband-enabled Smart Grid could increase energy independence and efficiency, but much of the data required to capture these benefits are inaccessible to consumers, businesses and entrepreneurs. And nearly a decade after 9/11, our first responders still lack a nationwide public safety mobile broadband communications network, even though such a network could improve emergency response and homeland security.

On March 15, 1985, a Massachusetts computer systems firm registered the first .com Internet domain name.

Although Symbolics.com didn't spark an instant gold rush, the event planted the first seed of a transformation that has changed the world into a Web-fueled digital river of news, commerce and social interaction.

Today, exactly 25 years later, life B.C - Before .Com - is already a distant memory, especially in the tech-centric Bay Area.

"Can you remember what it was like before the Internet, before .com?" said Mark McLaughlin, president and chief executive officer of VeriSign Inc. of Mountain View. "What about the next 25 years? Who can imagine that?"

VeriSign, the Internet security vendor that administers the .com registry, is hosting an event in Washington on Tuesday celebrating the milestone, with former President Bill Clinton scheduled to deliver a keynote address. And on May 26 in San Francisco City Hall, VeriSign will honor Internet innovators at a "25 Years of .com Gala" hosted by comedian Dana Carvey.

Below is the list of Quotes from some of the well known Tech Gurus who has revolutionized the world of Internet by their innovation. I have collected Quotes from all over the internet but posted only those which are worth reading so go ahead and read what these brilliant minds have to say. Quotes listed include Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg and many others.

1. There are people who don’t like capitalism, and people who don’t like PCs. But there’s no-one who likes the PC who doesn’t like Microsoft.

2. Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.

3. Be nice to nerds. Chances are you’ll end up working for one.

4. If you can’t make it good, at least make it look good.

5. We are not even close to finishing the basic dream of what the PC can be.

Last week, I [Stefan Lindegaard] attended an open innovation session led by General Mills. Among the distributed materials, I found nine tips for open innovation by Peter Erickson, their Sr. VP of Innovation, Technology and Quality.

The tips are based on General Mills’ successful collaborations with external innovators. I like them and since I believe they are universal, I want to share them with the open innovation community. Here they are:

• Create a differentiated opportunity. Be prepared to articulate how your product, idea or technology is unique and better than anything on the market.

• Test your innovation. You’ll be able to speak to market interest and consumer or retailer reaction if you’ve previously placed your innovation before these audiences.

• Be selective. Avoid courting multiple corporate partners. Companies want to know you are as dedicated to them as they are to you.

• Find a contact to be your champion. Within a large company it’s essential to have a “tour guide” which is why all of General Mills’  external partners are matched with specific employees.

Recent Kauffman Proposal for More Inventor Choice Stirs Controversy at Universities; IP Advocate Poll Finds Two-Thirds of Respondents Support Inventor Choice

AUTM annual conference

NEW ORLEANS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Who should control how an invention is brought to market? Experts on both sides of this controversial topic – including IP Advocate (www.IPAdvocate.org) founder and inventor-advocate Dr. Renee Kaswan – will square off on Thursday at the Annual Meeting of the Association of University Technology Managers (AUTM), to debate the role of academic researchers in commercializing their inventions.

On Thursday, March 18, 1:30 – 3 p.m., Dr. Kaswan will participate in the AUTM Debate Forum: Role of Inventors in Negotiating License Transactions. This highly anticipated session will offer perspectives on the following issues:

• Should university tech transfer offices let inventors influence the outcome of commercialization, or just keep them informed?
• What if inventors are consulting with a prospective licensee or have competing plans to form a startup?
• Should institutions be taken out of the equation and let faculty own their inventions?

Brian Darmody considers himself an entrepreneurial bureaucrat - and he doesn't think that's an oxymoron.

Before he became associate vice president for research and economic development at the University of Maryland, College Park, he worked in state government and hatched the idea of an economic development authority aimed solely at technology more than a decade ago.

That entity, the Maryland Technology Development Corp., known as TEDCO, has become instrumental in funding promising tech start-ups in Maryland.

The 54-year-old Darmody recently spoke with The Baltimore Sun about research, economic development and the work his department does to convert the university's work into new companies and commercial products.

In the advertising world, it’s commonly agreed that the headline is responsible for about 90% of an ad’s effectiveness. Same thing in the book world. The title does nearly all the heavy lifting. And, it’s no different in newspapers and social media, especially places like twitter where all you’ve to sell the click is the headline. Or digg.com, where a brief glance at the headline makes or breaks your shot at hitting the front page.

Your headlines can either launch you…or bury you.

Which makes you wonder. Why do so many bloggers spend so much time on the body of a post, then punt when it comes time to create the headline?

So, how do you write headlines that rock?

Here are 7 things that’ll help make your headlines sing, pull, lure and lull. One big picture and 6 a bit more under the radar…

First, SEO Optimize Your Headlines.

Let’s talk about SEO first, because that’s the, how do I say this, suckier part of writing headlines at least for me. In fact, it’s the part I bailed on for most of my blogging career, until I realized how critical it was in driving search engine traffic to my blog.

In India, it is easier to raise two million dollars than it is to raise $200,000.

As the country’s growth story attracts more interest globally, the number of funds and the amount of growth capital available to private companies here is unprecedented.

But there are only a handful of professionally managed, genuine early stage venture capital funds - those targeting pre-revenue, unproven businesses - in India with an aggregate of about $150 million or so under management.

Organized angel investing (an affluent individual who provides investment for a startup) is a very recent phenomenon too, with a handful of companies earning only about $8 million in the last few years.

Bill Carleton and Joe Wallin: Senator Christopher Dodd's massive financial regulatory reform bill is back and it's even uglier than before for startup companies trying to raise seed capital. Ugly for startups?

A bill that means to address "too big to fail" and systemic risk to the financial system? Yes. And we're not talking about some indirect, attenuated, downstream effect from new regulation of big banks or Wall Street investment firms. The bill directly targets the way startups raise capital.

This "reform" occupies only a few pages in Sen. Dodd's massive bill, at Section 926, entitled "Authority of State Regulators Over Regulation D Offerings" (pages 816-819).

Under the old rules, startup companies could raise money from "accredited investors" simply and easily.

Now they are going to have to make a filing with the SEC and the SEC will have 120 days to review the filing.

Researchers at Stanford University have just made a major breakthrough that may impact the technology industry for years to come: they've built a better battery. The project, an attempt to use lithium-sulfur in place of the lithium-ion technology that is used in batteries today, has been in development since 2007. Recently, the scientists' efforts were rewarded when they created a battery that lasts four times as long as its lithium-ion counterparts while also having the benefit of being "significantly safer" than today's batteries which occasionally explode after short-circuiting.

Although still a ways off from commercial viability (and availability), the lithium-sulfur batteries promise advances like 80% more capacity, 10 times the power density and, theoretically, the ability to last four times as long as modern batteries.

It used to be, if you were serious about starting a tech company, you went to Silicon Valley. But emerging entrepreneurial hubs around the country are giving startup aspirants options. In this series, we talk to leading figures in those communities about what makes them tick. Here, part nine in our series.

When you look around the country, you see that second-generation entrepreneurs play a big role in thriving communities. They serve as mentors, cheerleaders and early capital sources. Philadelphia is an exception to the rule. Because despite a Web 1.0 legacy of hits like CDNow (acquired by Bertelsmann in 2000 for $117 million), Half.com (acquired by eBay in 2000), e-commerce company GSI ($1.55 billion market cap) and VerticalNet (valued at $12 billion in 1999), the city is mainly driven by first-generation entrepreneurs and few of them have hit a serious scale or impact yet.

But what Philadelphia's current startup scene lacks in experience it makes up for in enthusiasm. Blake Jennelle, a self-appointed leader of the community, founder of Philly Startup Leaders and a serial entrepreneur (Anthillz, TicketLeap), calls it a "self-help ethos." That sounds about right for a place known as the City of Brotherly Love.

Last week’s Global Entrepreneurship Congress (GEC) in Dubai was a historic gathering not only because -- under the patronage of Sheik Nahayan Mabarak Al Nahayan of the UAE -- it brought together entrepreneurship leaders from nearly 100 nations, but because it heralded a new era of global commitment to this field.

As the chair and emcee of the gathering, I was astounded by the level of bottom up commitment to entrepreneurialism from all corners of the globe. It is aptly named a Congress for it is comprised of representatives of the leaders from those nations now committed to advancing entrepreneurship as the means to build economies and expand human welfare. As a grassroots movement, the "Unleashing Ideas" network that has been created around this is becoming a powerful force not just for inspiring people to become entrepreneurs, but in guiding policymakers and opinion leaders who want to help them.