President Obama announced $2.3 billion in tax credits under the Recovery Act on Friday, in an effort to further dozens of clean energy initiatives.

The goal: To become a leader in green tech innovation while creating manufacturing jobs on American soil.

In remarks on the economy Friday, the President said he's concerned the U.S. is being outpaced by foreign competition in clean energy innovation.

If you live in Luling, Texas, (population 5080) you don’t need another list of the top trends for big city dwellers. You want to know what’s happening in the small towns. It’s different. You’re more worried about the Citizens State Bank, than Citibank. With those differences in mind, here are the top ten trends for rural small businesses and small town entrepreneurs in 2010.

1. Census 2010 – Population counts are critical for government programs, grants, and more for a decade. Smart small towns and counties will be actively finding ways to get everyone counted. Watch for town meetings to answer questions, and a whole bunch of canvassing. Your small town business will be indirectly affected by the results for ten long years.

Reporting from Las Vegas - The giants of the electronics industry made the big splashes at the Consumer Electronics Show, as usual, with towering displays, celebrity spokespeople (Taylor Swift sang for Sony, live and in 3-D) and invitation-only soirees.

On the far opposite end of the scale were boutique or just plain small companies, a few of which were even of the mom-and-pop variety.

Sometimes, that's where the fun stuff resided at CES, with products that varied from highly inventive to downright wacky.

It seems that 50 out of 50 states claim “bio” as their next industry. In Northeast Ohio, we already know we’re a healthcare hub, but this decade, we’ll become a biomedical business hub. We will build on current clinical and business hubs of excellence in Imaging, Orthopedics and Cardiovascular, capitalizing on the work started by groups such as BioEnterprise, the Austen BioInnovation Institute and Cleveland Clinic’s Global Cardiovascular Innovation Center. Many Northeast Ohio manufacturing companies are already diversifying their customer/industry mix to manufacture medical devices. This will exponentially increase by 2020. By fully launching a Cleveland Plus biomedical business attraction program in 2010 that blends VC attraction, clinical/research global expertise and Third Frontier, the Northeast Ohio region will make this biomedical business growth a reality.

Requests for Applications:

SBIR Phase II Bridge Awards to Accelerate the Development of Cancer Therapeutics, Imaging Technologies, Interventional Devices, Diagnostics, and Prognostics toward Commercialization (R44)
(RFA-CA-10-009)
National Cancer Institute
Application Receipt Date(s): March 01, 2010
http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/rfa-files/RFA-CA-10-009.html

Limited Competition for the Continuation of the Pediatric Acute Liver Failure Study Group (U01)
(RFA-DK-09-505)
National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases
Application Receipt Date(s): March 15, 2010
http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/rfa-files/RFA-DK-09-505.html

[editors note: There are lots and lots of them on the original article.]

We'd like to change the title of this article to "Great Places to Think about Innovation."

1. Sri Lanka
For a quarter century, Sri Lanka seems to have been plagued by misfortune, including a brutal civil war between the Sinhalese majority and Tamil minority. But the conflict finally ended last May, ushering in a more peaceful era for this teardrop-shaped island off India’s coast, rich in natural beauty and cultural splendors.

The island, with a population of just 20 million, feels like one big tropical zoo: elephants roam freely, water buffaloes idle in paddy fields and monkeys swing from trees. And then there’s the pristine coastline. The miles of sugary white sand flanked by bamboo groves that were off-limits to most visitors until recently are a happy, if unintended byproduct of the war.

New media technology promises new opportunity for local economic development in Columbia.

In partnership with the Regional Economic Development Inc., Reynolds Journalism Institute has launched an "economic gardening" initiative aimed at locally cultivating a culture of innovative entrepreneurship centered on growing new media opportunities. By pursing a multi-faceted collaboration between business and academia, local leaders hope to nurture the growth of new media innovation and entrepreneurship in Mid-Missouri.

While visiting the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2010, held in Las Vegas, the United States first chief technology officer was told that governments often acted as a block in the path of innovation. While also receiving praise for the role that America played in the field of science and technology, Aneesh Chopra was also made aware of the fact that there were numerous areas of science that were much better off without government rules being imposed on them for political reasons.

“When it comes to innovation there's a lot the government can do, and there's a lot they should not do. The government doesn't spur innovation or entrepreneurship. The government often gets in the way,” the President of the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA), Gary Shapiro, told the American official. The consumer industry head runs the group that organizes CES, the largest such event in the world annually.
Over the years, numerous technologies we currently use have been introduced at this show, including, among others, the BluRay Disc, the Digital Versatile Disc (DVD), the HDTV, the Camcorder, and many, many others.

The lure of the West Coast.

When I [Scott Kirsner] met Bill Clerico and Rich Aberman in 2008, the two recent Boston College graduates were just starting to talk to local investors about WePay, their online payment start-up. They had an idea - help groups of people make payment easier for collective projects like renting a ski house or throwing a bachelorette party - and they were working to build a prototype. I wrote about them as part of a column about how hard it is to change the way we pay for things, using new technologies like mobile phones.

PROVO, Utah -- In an effort to attract dollars, prestige, and top-notch staff, universities have long pushed to commercialize faculty research. That has helped institutions from Massachusetts Institute of Technology to Stanford become hotbeds of entrepreneurialism. The most surprising success, though, may be Brigham Young University.

The Mormon university now ranks first in the country in the number of startups, licenses, and patent applications per research dollar spent, according to the Association of University Technology Managers. BYU-licensed technology led to the creation of nine new companies last year on a research budget of roughly $30 million. Stanford, with a budget of $1.1 billion, spawned the same number of startups.

SILICON VALLEY: For IIT Kharagpur graduate Debarag Banerjee, the last two years were like nothing he had ever seen over the last decade in the Silicon Valley—a lack of IPOs, limited fund raising and even lesser deal flow. The rampant cost-cutting led him to think of an innovation which would cut costs first and then improve the quality of an experience rather than the other way around.

As he says, “The recession brought upon an increased focus on the bottomline from consumers. This also included a focus on how much they pay for home entertainment. At the same time, monthly fees for cable TV and other paid TV services continued climbing, while free videos in higher quality and quantity continued to be available over the Internet. We saw an opportunity in this crisis in providing consumers a way to enjoy free videos from the Internet on their big-screen TV bypassing the traditional cable and satellite TV subscriptions.”

Visitors touring Zappos.com's suburban Las Vegas headquarters can see Chief Executive Anthony C. "Tony" Hsieh waving from his cubicle or get their photos taken in goofy, mullet-shaped wigs. On the tour, which the online shoe retailer offers 16 times a week, staffers blow horns and ring cowbells to greet the guests, who move among the aisles in groups of 20, trying to get a handle on the company's unique culture. "The original idea was to add a little fun," Hsieh explains. Then it all escalated "as the next aisle said, 'We can do it better.' "

Zappos already knows how to sell shoes. Now it's hoping to profit from people's fascination with its friendly, antics-filled business model. Last summer, the company began holding two-day, $4,000 seminars on how to recreate the essence of its corporate culture. At the third such session, last October, the 25 attendees included an executive from the Girl Scouts, some competing e-tailers, and an entrepreneur from Scotland—a market Zappos doesn't even serve. In coming weeks the company will also relaunch Zappos Insights, a Web site offering management videos and tips from staffers at a cost of $39.95 a month.

SUNNYVALE, Calif. — For years, the process remained relatively static: PC makers like Hewlett-Packard and Apple, with well-staffed research labs and design departments, would dream up their next product and then hire a Chinese or Taiwanese fabricator to manufacture the largest number of units at the lowest possible cost.

But lately, this traditional division of labor has been upended. Many of those Asian companies have moved well beyond manufacturing to seize greater control over the look and feel of tomorrow’s personal computers, smartphones and even Web sites.

Have you ever worked in a company where the boss or your manager hoards information? Unfortunately, this is not all that uncommon. The old saying goes that “Knowledge is Power”, and those who are insecure in their abilities or feel threatened by those around them try to remain in control by hording information.

In fact, I know of one company where the Managing Director actually leaves notes lying around with incorrect or inaccurate information. The aim of this of course is to retain power by keeping the troops in the “dark” or, better still, confused. Can you believe that?

The question is: what’s your modus operandi?

Yup, we hear Comcast is in "very preliminary talks" with ESPN to carry their 3D channel set to debut in June.

We also heard that their customers are getting more interested in 3D offerings: About 65 percent of all on demand orders for horror flick My Bloody Valentine were for the 3D version.

In most of the roles I’ve held over the past 15 years a key outcome was to create a growth business. It didn’t matter whether the effort was a start-up, creating a new product, an acquisition, or a partnership. One of the hardest things to do in those roles was to take an idea and translate that idea into a fully formed business that made peoples’ lives better.

The work we’re doing at Posit Science has brought this to the forefront again. The scientific breakthrough of harnessing the power of the brain to improve performance is clear. This is the invention. Invention- the word invent comes from the Latin word inventus, in plus ventus, meaning to come upon or to encounter. I think of an invention as a discovery or an idea that we dream up.

Guy Kawasaki has seen innovation from inside Apple, where he held his first job, as well as from his work since then as a venture capitalist. At a technology conference at the University of Pennsylvania, reported in Knowledge@Wharton, he outlined his 10 Commandments for Entrepreneurs

A meteor is something in the far distance streaming through the galaxies. From Wikipedia: A meteoroid is a sand- to bouldersized particle of debris in the Solar System. The visible path of a meteoroid that enters Earth’s atmosphere is called a meteor. The root word meteor comes from the Greek mete?ros, meaning “high in the air.” It is also commonly although erroneously called a shooting star.

Social media is like a meteor. For a lot of people it is something far away but they have heard about it from someone or somewhere or seen it in the distance of their attention spans.

Government needs to do more to encourage innovation, America's first chief technology officer has been told.

The message was given to Aneesh Chopra as he visited the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas.

While being applauded for recognising the importance of technology to help the economy, Mr Chopra was also chided.

"When it comes to innovation there's a lot the government can do, and there's a lot they should not do," said consumer industry head Gary Shapiro.

A few angel investors have slipped or fallen from their lofty perch, so entrepreneurs must take great care to validate the character and reputation of every prospective investor. The entrepreneur’s tendency to be in a huge hurry to obtain the funding can end up being disastrous, and play into the hands of these less scrupulous investors.

Many entrepreneurs believe all money is created equal. As long as somebody recognizes their million dollar idea and writes them a check, the source really doesn't matter. In fact, most angels are pure, but there are some exceptions that may cost you more than an investment: