In a grand test of whether the Silicon Valley startup accelerator model can help university scientists get promising new technologies to market faster, 21 teams hand-picked for the National Science Foundation’s new Innovation Corps (I-Corps) program converged on the Stanford University campus last week. The goal: to review the progress they’d made during an eight-week crash course in entrepreneurship, and share the details of their newly battle-tested business models with a panel of NSF leaders and venture capital partners.

I sat in for the first half of the review session, which took place Wednesday at Stanford’s School of Engineering, and listened to presentations on everything from hydrophobic materials for preventing ice buildup on airplane wings to a method for growing transparent sheets of graphene that could be used in next-generation computer displays. It’s too early to say how many of these innovations will turn up in the marketplace—but it was remarkable to see how thoroughly the traditional walls between academia and business had melted away in the minds of the program participants.

Higher education institutes are in a strong position to use their technical expertise to create new revenue streams, says Aberystwyth University's Rhian Hayward

Apps from university technology – the opportunity

Smart phone apps represent a rapid route to a global market for university innovation and associated intellectual property. In 2011, Apple leads the apps industry. By 2015, approximately 183 billion apps will be downloaded each year, a 1,600% increase from the 10.7 billion apps downloaded in 2010.

In February 2009, a bottlenose dolphin named Nari swam up to the Tangalooma Wild Dolphin Resort on Moreton Island off Australia’s Queensland. Dozens of wild dolphins, including Nari, routinely entered an adjacent bay every night for dinner—hand fed fish by tourists and resort staff. But on this night, the workers immediately noticed something was wrong: Nari was missing a huge chunk of blubber from his dorsal surface, just behind his blowhole. As Trevor Hassard, director of the Tangalooma Marine Education and Conservation Centre, came rushing down to the wharf, he knew immediately that Nari’s injuries were the work of a shark—and this was one of the worst bites he had seen in his 19 years at the facility. But in just over a month, Nari underwent a remarkable recovery, leaving researchers wondering just how dolphins heal so quickly with no swelling, infection, and seemingly little pain.

News and activity feeds are more alive today than ever before, even as engagement with their simplest format, Really Simple Syndication (RSS), appears to be waning. What were the Top 10 Most Awesome RSS & Feed Products of 2011? We offer our list below. Though some of these weren't born in the past year, all of them have made a big impact and are thoroughly awesome.

Anyone with an interest in competitive knowledge work should be aware of and give some thought to these applications. We'd love to hear your thoughts on others in comments below, too, readers. I've put the following 10 in a particular order: from the most geeky to the most mainstream.

One of the greatest skills that a business person can have is the ability to be creative.

It's common to think that creativity is only something that "artsy" people need, but the need to be creative extends far beyond an art studio. Creativity is about solving problems, whether they be artistic, mathematical or anything in between. And that is precisely why creativity is such a useful tool in business.

But what if you're not creative? Do you have to be born with the creative gene? Not exactly. In fact, these fives suggestions should help anyone improve their creativity today.

Drawing on interviews with more than 175,000 adults and multiple sources of data, the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor 2010 Women’s Report, released earlier this week, is the most comprehensive study to date of women’s business activity, says Donna J. Kelley, associate professor of entrepreneurship at Babson College and lead author of the report. Evaluating 59 economies, it found that more than 104 million women ages 18 to 64 were actively engaged in starting and running new business ventures, and 83 million women were running businesses that were more than three years old.

Despite the impressive numbers, the report reveals a persistent gender gap. Kelley spoke this week to Smart Answers columnist Karen E. Klein about the findings and the policy implications of the report. Edited excerpts of their conversation follow.

In today's sluggish economy, the pressure to invent new products and file as many patent applications as possible is greater than ever—both for individual companies and for entire countries, which reap benefits from their citizens' business success. What does it mean for a country to be innovative, and which nations rank at the top of the list?

Mindmap made by Hans Buskes & Jeroen van de Beek

Considering the period from 1960 up to now, who are the seven (we restricted ourselves to just seven) musicians or bands that had “no respect for the status quo”. This is our list (mind map). You may think different. Let us know.

I often get asked the age-old question (by men) of “Who are the best entrepreneurs, men or women?” Women already believe they know the answer, so they never ask. I always try the diplomatic answer of “It depends”, but that doesn’t satisfy anybody.

First, here are a few facts to set the stage. According to the Center for Women’s Business Research, only one in five firms with revenue of $1 million or more is woman-owned, but the number of female-owned firms is growing twice as fast as all businesses. Overall, female-run businesses still grow slower, so create fewer jobs.

You can find lots of research facts on this subject, with much hedging on meaning. A Small Business Association research study a while back is typical in concluding that gender is not a factor in new venture performance.

This time of year, you want to send holiday greetings to all your clients and business contacts, but it’s time-consuming to handwrite notes, stuff them in envelopes, address them and mail them. Not to mention the fact that it’s a waste of natural resources.

But are electronic cards (“ecards”) yet to the point of replacing the snail mail version of the holiday card? Are they as good? Let’s see what folks are saying on Twitter.

Does an Ecard Really Show You Care?

When I asked my Twitter followers, “Ecards are eco friendly. But do they have the same message as a physical card?” @KyEkinci said no. Many feel that sending ecards is disingenuous and lazy. Putting in the extra effort to mail a card via the postal service shows you’re really thinking about the recipient. And to Ky’s point, an ecard is just one more thing clogging up your inbox.

University technology transfer stakeholders lack a simple, yet meaningful way to measure how effectively and quickly a university is able to license patents into commercially successful products and to spin off startups that in turn, create jobs. Current leading count-based measures fail to account for the fact that many significant technology transfer outcomes follow a skewed distribution that when summed, provide inadequate insight into a university’s ability to quickly place its patent portfolio into productive external use. This article introduces a set of three core index-based measures that overcome the limitations of conventional metrics and econometric models: a commercialization health index, job creation health index, and a licensing-speed health index. The concept underlying the technology transfer health indexes is borrowed from the h index utilized by university tenure committees to measure scholarly impact and productivity over time. The index-based measures described in this article are simple for technology transfer practitioners to apply, can be calculated using existing data, and are immune to skewing by atypical outcomes such a single, high-earning patent, and be difficult to intentionally manipulate. With little cost and no additional infrastructure, index-based measures of university technology transfer activity yield meaningful metrics that could be input into larger, economic impact studies. The index-based measures described here reward universities that have sustained and impactful technology transfer activity over time; widespread application of index-based measures would incent universities to become better stewards of federally funded scientific research.

Download the PDF

NFL took care of some important business this week at its owners meeting. This amalgamation of rich men huddled in a Dallas hotel ballroom approved the sale of the Jacksonville Jaguars to Shahid Khan and inked a lucrative nine-year, $28 billion extension of the league's broadcast television rights. The league also moved forward with the creation of a venture capital fund worth $32 million that will invest in technologies that enhance the league's central product, professional football.

"The aim of it is to invest in various technologies and companies that we think are doing great things that will make our world better but also the experience in the NFL better," explained commissioner Roger Goodell. "They may or may not be NFL partners. They may be people who provide technology in our stadiums, on our fields, as part of media. We will look at those different technologies. We'll have a committee that will be making those decisions. And we're very excited about it."

Investments should yield rewards; that’s a cornerstone of capitalism.

And it’s critical to understanding just how bad a deal for Georgians would ensue if the General Assembly takes the final step toward creating a “CAPCO” program. This idea should go nowhere fast.

CAPCOs, short for certified capital companies, plunge governments into the midst of the venture capital, or VC, business. That’s work best left to the private sector, we believe.

Venture capitalism provides money that nurtures small businesses along the growth curve. It’s a critical function, given that small- and medium-size companies provide a majority of new jobs.

What are the jobs of the future? The demographics of an aging population suggests health care will be big, say some. Data science is scheduled to explode, suggest others, or maybe anything computer-related is a solid bet. But let’s be honest, predicting exact job titles set to soar or the fates of specific sectors is nearly impossible.

With technology and economic developments moving so quickly, it’s hard to keep up with what’s going on today, more or less foresee what career paths will make you a winner in a decade or two. But even if betting on specific jobs is a fool’s game, the Institute for the Future believes it is still possible to say something useful about how to prepare yourself for the careers of tomorrow.

For those planning to live beyond 2011, a real list of top medical cities. Every list of the best healthcare cities in the country reads like my grandfather’s history teacher wrote them. These reports measure the life sciences and healthcare industries the way that they were. What really matters is which medical city will be elite beyond today. So for those who live and thrive by what happens in pharma, hospitals, medical device, health IT and all other things medical, here’s a good list of the top 10 medical cities that matter today (and in the future).

Minnesota device maker Synovis to be acquired by Baxter International. Minnesota’s Synovis Life Technologies Inc. is being acquired by Baxter International Inc. in a $325 million deal, the companies announced today. Synovis’ board unanimously approved the buy at $28 per share. Pending shareholder approval, the deal is expected to close in the first quarter of 2012.

The SBIR & STTR Programs have finally been reauthorized! This 6 year reauthorization, included in the National Defense Authorization Act, will allow venture capital backed companies to compete for up to 25% of SBIR grants from NIH, DOE and NSF and 15% at other agencies.

While some M&A deals turn out to be great successes, it’s no surprise that a lot of mergers and acquisitions fail.  The obvious factors explaining the failures include culture clashes or founders leaving—taking the DNA with them in the process.

But M&A is more art than science, and the reasons why so many deals fail to deliver on their 1+1=3 promise are complex.  Here are some:

The right hand isn’t talking to the left hand, part 1: buy vs build

Many buyers initially seek to “build instead of buy”, so a company may buy an asset that directly competes with an existing business unit, be it established or emerging.  This not only leads to culture clashes and turf battles, but it creates a lot of operational confusion.  In other words, even if everyone has the best of intentions, you either need to put an objective, arbitrary person to chaperone this initial rough process or put the heads of the respective units in a room until they determine a course of action.

As Dave Chase wrote earlier this year, the healthtech space is heating up, and a lot of serial entrepreneurs with consumer web experience are turning their focus to fixing some of the big problems inherent in the legacy health systems we have today in the U.S. and abroad. Yet, in spite of the $1 billion pool VCs have poured into startups last year, for example, healthtech startups, specifically, aren’t seeing a lot of that capital. There are a lot of challenges inherent to launching a healthtech startup that companies in the consumer web just don’t have to deal with, HIPAA-compliance, among others.

While it’s difficult for all startups, establishing B2B relationships and intricate partnerships is no simple task. That’s where health-focused accelerators like Rock Health come into the picture. (And we need more.) Rock Health has a great list of mentors (more here), and list of financial and health-related partners is growing fast as well.

For some of us, jetpacks represent a dreamy way to fly over traffic en route to work. For those just looking for fun, look no further than the Flyboard, a contraption that lets you zip in and out of water — and soar above it — akin to Flipper after way too much caffeine.

The device was created by French water sports racer Franky Zapata. It's essentially a board hooked up to a personal watercraft such as a Jetski via a water-sucking hose. Water shoots out through jets below the feet and hand grips to provide propulsion.

The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT this week announced the winners of its latest innovation challenge, "Ensuring Safe Transitions from Hospital to Home," part of the office's Investing in Innovation (i2) program.

National Coordinator for Health IT Dr. Farzad Mostashari announced the winning teams Wednesday at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services' QualityNet Conference, in Baltimore. The challenge, issued in September, focused on the continuum of care from hospitals to next-stage setting--homes, nursing homes and hospices--and innovative ways of reducing the 20 percent rate of hospital readmissions.