Opportunist, enabler, advocate and producer are the four models of corporate entrepreneurship that Robert C. Wolcott and Michael J. Lippitz discuss in ‘Grow from Within’ (www.tatamcgrawhill.com).

Mapping the models on two dimensions, viz. organisational ownership (ranging from diffused to focussed) and resource authority (ad hoc to dedicated), the authors find that all companies begin as opportunists.

“Without any designated organisational ownership or resources, corporate entrepreneurship proceeds (if at all) based on the efforts and serendipity of intrepid ‘project champions’ – people who toil against the odds, often creating new businesses in spite of the corporation.”

Silicon Valley, a driving engine of California's economy, started the last decade with the dot-com bust. It starts a new one looking remarkably resilient.

This might sound like casual boosterism from someone who has covered the valley for 10 years.

It's not. Egos are big enough around here without an extra dose of self promotion from me. And it's clear that Silicon Valley has more than its share of social and economic challenges.

Marketing to consumers’ cellphones has long been viewed as something of a holy grail by businesses – prized but always beyond reach. Recently however, new mobile technologies have gone mainstream, making the elusive goal of an always-on connection with customers firmly within reach of even the smallest business.

Consider that:

• There are four times the number of cellphones in the world versus PCs (4Bn vs. 1Bn) and 20% of all U.S. households are now “mobile-only”
• Over 130 Billion texts are sent each month, up from practically nothing in 2000
• Gen Yers (18-29) say their phone is the most important device they own
• According to multiple analysts, Mobile Marketing and Advertising will explode from just a couple hundred million dollars in revenues in 2008 to $3 – 5 Billion by 2012.

The end of the year is a great time. Not only do you have the holidays, the cheer, and good friends and family close by, you also have the perfect start date for everything. Let me provide some examples and you tell me when it sounds familiar.

When are you going to rewrite your site content? After the first of the year!

When are you going to try out social media? After the first of the year!

In response to the terrorist bombing attempt on Christmas Day, Dutch officials have announced that they will begin using more full body scanners for United States-bound flights.

Security experts think that this technology could have detected the explosives Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was concealing when he successfully boarded Flight 253 to Detroit from Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam.

But concerns have been raised that these full body scanners can reveal more than just explosives. Is improved security worth sacrificing your personal privacy?

Do you think you live in a state that encourages and supports entrepreneurism? You simply need to ask the Small Business & Entrepreneurship (SBE) Council. Recently, the SBE Council released data announcing the top states that have the best climate for entrepreneurs to excel – and the results may surprise you!

The SBE’s Take on the Small Business Environment

Who is the SBE Council? The SBE Council is a non-partisan, non-profit small business advocacy group whose mission is to protect small businesses and promote entrepreneurship. Part of their mission is to educate lawmakers and elected officials, as well as the public, to advance policies and laws that make entrepreneurship easier.

Documenting the Decade

Readers submitted photos and their recollections of important moments from the last 10 years, documenting events including the Sept. 11 attacks, the space shuttle Columbia disaster, the war in Iraq, the Asian tsunami, Hurrican Katrina, the 2004 and 2008 elections and the recession.

[Editor's Note: This article is a pictorial piece documenting the last 10 years.]

The creation by entrepreneurs of a destination for tech companies in Rajasthan's Thar Desert shows it's time to rethink regional development planning

For government officials and planning consultants looking to create regional economic growth and drive innovation, industry clusters are the Holy Grail. Popularized by Harvard professor Michael Porter in the early 1990s, cluster theory holds that a government or economic development body can create a viable hub of economic activity in a specific industrial sector by bringing in businesses, suppliers, researchers, and additional related people or entities. In other words, a focused governmental effort can create something from nothing, turning, for example, a fallow field into a tech park bursting with highly competitive, innovative companies. Governments all over the world have invested millions—sometimes billions—of dollars to attract industries they consider strategic.

NanoScale is a private U.S. Corporation dedicated to the marketing, manufacturing and commercialization of nanotechnology products. In the past they’ve worked with clients in the government, the US army, the civilian population and scientific researchers. Not only do they develop nano-materials, but they also write and publish numerous nanoscience papers. Based out of Kansas State University, this corporation is world-renowned for their decontamination and environmental remediation solutions, in particular.

Over the past 14 years, NanoScale Corporation has been recognized as the leading nanotechnology company in America. Since 1995, their company has won more than 10 SBIR Bridge Awards and two KTEC Applied Research Matching Funds awards given out by the Kansas Technology Enterprise Corporation. KTEC explained, “NanoScale synthesizes reactive nano-particles, which are composed of tiny clusters of atoms that have unusual chemical and physical properties. These nano-particles aggressively interact with and break up other molecules. The potential for commercial applications includes detoxification of hazardous chemicals, odor control, air and water filtration, drug delivery, improving sun protection and skin care products, protection systems for microchips, and more. The total market size for nanotechnology products and services, as projected by various U. S. industry associations, will be $1 trillion annually in 10 to 15 years.”

A proposal that will make it easier for foreign entrepreneurs in the US to start the next Google or Yahoo will be debated in the new year.

Congressman Jared Polis has proposed a start-up visa to entice "foreigners with good ideas" to stay in the US.

The issue has been gathering steam in Silicon Valley where half of all tech company founders are immigrants, according to Duke University research.

Even before the current global meltdown, a New Age business model for entrepreneurs had emerged in the United States as a result of the convergence of four major factors: globalization, the Internet, knowledge and technology, and advancements in the understanding of entrepreneurship, management and leadership.

The development of the New Age entrepreneurial business model is a composite of research from a number of sources, including the Kauffman Foundation's 2008 State New Economy Index and my personal research and experiences in evaluating dynamic, high-growth ventures.

This business model includes two major components - a description of the New Age entrepreneur and the emergence of high-growth business ventures that achieve extraordinary results.

When you create your corporation and make it a legal entity in the principal State of Business, Nevada, or Delaware, one of the requirements is to Capitalize your company to give it value.

What this means is to create a number of shares (stock) in the company and give it a “par value” (which may be no par value). You are taxed based on this value until you start making revenue, etc.

Citing a family member’s health problems, Ioanna T. Morfessis, the state’s new economic development chief, has abruptly resigned, less than a month before she was set to take over.

“This is the most difficult decision I have ever been confronted with from a professional standpoint,” Morfessis said by telephone late Wednesday. “When my family and I connected over the holidays, we learned new information that was unknown to us and a decision had to be made. This is one of those moments in life when your train gets totally stopped in its tracks.”

I [Jeffrey Phillips] read with great interest the post by Grant McCracken that addresses the "brief" moment in the sun for creative types. Grant's concern is that crowdsourcing will allow corporations to source design skills, ideas and other creative concepts from the internet, rather than turning to creative design organizations. In this, he is probably right. There's a growing awareness that there are good ideas "out there" if we can only tap them. You need look no further than Dell's IdeaStorm or BestBuy's Idea Exchange for proof. Currently you can create a campaign or contest to design a new logo. Chuck Frey's new logo at Innovation Tools was designed in a contest, and he allowed many of his readers to vote on the designs they liked best. What I'm having a hard time with is that the concerns McCracken raises are misplaced in my opinion.

Yes, there are thousands of creative types working in their homes and hundreds of thousands of people who have good ideas for Dell, and for BestBuy. And who could provide ideas to firms that really need them, like General Motors, or the Federal Government. But I digress. All we've done with crowdsourcing is leverage the internet to capture the ideas these individuals have always had. The internet has simply provided a marketplace for us to exchange our skills with willing buyers, whether those skills are design skills, or ideation skills, or photography skills in the case of Flickr and other photography sites. While this is happening, this doesn't portend the end of creative design firms or innovation teams in businesses. Here's why.

Geographic Compatibility:

In the early 1990’s, traffic in Los Angeles was so horrendous, it could take hours to travel a dozen miles. Commuting was a nightmare and the last thing anyone wanted to do was sit in more traffic. At that time, single people would always have that elemental question in the back of their minds whenever they met a prospective date – are we Geographically Compatible (GC)?

The sweet spot:

I recall many a magical conversation ending with that mutual inevitable shrug of the shoulders; a secret code for “have a nice life”. In Los Angeles, GC peaked in the sweet spot of 1-6 miles. After that, GC diminished roughly proportional to the square of distance with 20 miles as an absolute maximum. Any more was no closer or farther than, say, Nashville.

Here are our biggest stories of the year, as determined by you, the VentureBeat readers, and where you clicked. The list covers some of 2009’s most important products, announcements, and ideas, but also includes posts that fell squarely into the “just for fun” column.

We’re counting down to the most popular stories of the year:

Emily Medina isn't running a pyramid scheme, despite what people often think. As the petite 26-year-old works her way through some of New York City's poorer neighborhoods, she approaches women selling food and trinkets on the street and offers to lend them money to grow their businesses. The organization Medina works for, Grameen, is one of the world's largest microfinance outfits and has a Nobel Prize to its name for this work. But in New York neighborhoods where loans to street vendors tend to come with interest rates north of 40%, it can take a while to build trust. "I didn't believe it until I had the $1,500 check in my hand," says jewelry seller Rosa Lopez.

Thirty years ago Muhammad Yunus, the founder of the Grameen franchise, started lending small sums to poor entrepreneurs in Bangladesh to help them grow from a subsistence living to a livelihood. His great discovery was that even with few assets, these entrepreneurs repaid on time. Grameen and microfinance have since become financial staples of the developing world, but by coming to the U.S. Grameen is taking on a different sort of challenge: one of the planet's richest countries. Yes, money may be tight in the waning recession, but this is still a nation of 100,000 bank branches.

Innovation America wishes you a Happy, Healthy, Prosperous and most importantly an INNOVATIVE New Year!

As we look forward to a New Year , it is also important to reflect on some of the highlights of 2009 that we can build on. Today's innovation DAILY is a special issue that features the most popular articles from  (iD) in 2009. We thank you for your loyal following and hope that you will continue to enjoy our focus on Global trends on Innovation in the new year. We welcome any comments or suggestions you might have to improve our content and hope you share our newsletter with your friends and networks.

Keep Innovating in 2010.

Rich Bendis

[Editor's Note: to view the top articles from 2009, follow THIS link]

Choosing the short route left them snow bound, cell phone GPS saved them

GRANTS PASS, Ore. - A Nevada couple letting their SUV's navigation system guide them through the high desert of Eastern Oregon got stuck in snow for three days when the GPS unit sent them down a remote forest road.

On Sunday, atmospheric conditions apparently changed enough for their GPS-enabled cell phone to get a weak signal and relay coordinates to a dispatcher, Klamath County Sheriff Tim Evinger said.

"GPS almost did 'em in and GPS saved 'em," Evinger said. "It will give you options to pick the shortest route. You certainly get the shortest route. But it may not be a safe route."

There are lots of ways to tell the world about scientific discoveries. The Ontario Innovation Trust has done it with a beautiful legacy report: Using our Heads: Building Ontario’s economy through research showcases some of the best recent research and discoveries that have happened right here in Ontario.

Not only does the book include feature articles about leading Ontario scientists and Q and A’s with some of this province’s most innovative leaders—it’s also spectacularly illustrated by 23 talented artists, painters and graphic designers and (perhaps best of all) it can be yours for the low, low price of zero dollars.