In its  ‘Innovating for the Next Three Billion’ report, Ernst & Young examines the emergence of the global middle class and explores the innovation capabilities that companies must build in order to seize a new market (of unprecedented size).

Between 2011 and 2030, the number of people in the global middle class will grow from 1.8 billion to nearly 5 billion. Most of this growth will come from Asian and other rapid-growth markets.  Between 2009 and 2030, demand from the global middle class could grow from US$21 trillion to US$56 trillion. With stagnant growth in established markets, global companies are taking a hard look at this explosion of new purchasing power.

I have just spent one very rewarding week in Israel. Between the 23rd and the 30th of November I have been part of a group of 9 entrepreneurs. The trip was organized and paid by ourselves. It was not a funded or sponsored travel.

I talkedMost important thing new connections and friends

But we came here to learn from the phenomenal energy of entrepreneurship and innovation in Israel. And we learnt a couple of things and above all, were inspired by Israeli entrepreneurship spirit.

At the Game Developers Conference Online in Austin during the second week in October, a dozen hopeful young entrepreneurs approached our booth selling versions of the same ambitious vision. “We’re building a Massively Multiplayer Online Game. It’s going to be the next World of Warcraft, the next Call of Duty. It’s gonna be huge,” they said. These hopeful game mavens were seeking insight on exactly how you build an MMO infrastructure. Not surprisingly, many of them were woefully unprepared. They didn’t know what a load balancer was. They had no idea about data transport costs between data centers. They hadn’t really thought about the impact of hardware at cloud providers on the user experience of their game customers (hint: old servers usually mean unhappy or lost customers).

A new nanostructured coating could be used to make paints for stealth aircraft that can't be seen at night and that are undetectable by radar at any time of day. The coating, made of carbon nanotubes, can be used to cloak an object in utter darkness, making it indistinguishable from the night sky.

Carbon nanotubes have many superlative properties, including excellent strength and electrical conductivity. They are also the blackest known material. The long straws of pure carbon, each just a few nanometers in diameter, absorb a broad spectrum of light—from radio waves through visible light through the ultraviolet—almost perfectly. Researchers are taking advantage of this perfect absorbance in highly sensitive imaging sensors and other prototype devices.

Once you come to Canada you realize just how much of an issue the ‘innovation gap’ is – You can’t escape it, it’s reported in the media in some form on an almost daily basis.

Quite rightly, Canada has a serious ‘baby boomer crisis’ that is the real lead weight attached to this problem, quantifying why it’s a very tangible problem to be concerned about, rather than just some esoteric notion cooked up by university professors and IT salesmen.

The most telling statistic I saw on this recently was a report highlighting that Canada will now get the majority of its population growth from immigration. Ie. there’s not enough young people residents in the country to start new families.

Ever wondered why companies fail (we are not talking about failure of ideas, which I believe is just a step towards finding something that works). Leaving reasons like market opportunities/competitive nature etc., one of the fundamental challenge is of companies not defining a soul to its activity. And I am not talking about mission & vision statements, but a working version of ‘things we will do and things we will NOT do’. This is specifically important when the company scales up and you add team members who need to know ‘what not to do’ as part of organization culture.

In fact, think of these as ‘Non-negotiable clause’ put down by founding team. And nobody, not even the founders can negotiate these clauses.

There is something important going on right now that we believe you should consider acting on. Although many of you write to us asking what you should do, we refrain from making suggestions because our job is to help you be well informed about the SBIR landscape so you can make your own decisions as to what you feel is appropriate.

We are going to make an exception in this issue, and tell you what we would do if in your shoes, then explain why. This has to happen before close of business Tuesday, December 6, 2011.

Some of the most successful innovators throughout history occasionally shared their genius perspective with the rest of the world. Nuno Filipe Miranda created a project to capture these little gems, taking a photo of the innovator, fading them into the background and letting the quote speak for itself. Overall, a great set to keep you inspired!

What company wouldn’t appreciate some fresh inspiration in the break room to kick off the New Year? You can’t go wrong with these designs by Nuno Filipe Miranda, featuring the thoughts of inspiring innovators through the centuries, from Benjamin Franklin to Steve Jobs and a number of great minds in between.

Marketing is the business of promoting your product or service and connecting with your clients.  It’s also the tools and the process that you use to get the buyers’ attention.  Marketing is a conversation, and the better the communication, the better the relationship.

What is your marketing message?

Pay attention, because it’s wrapped up into everything that has anything to do with your business.  Your logo, sound bites, Web content, press releases, website design and business cards all communicate a message about your business to your clients. And since these elements are saying so much about your company, you need to shape that conversation into something that matters.

Since the days of Henry Ford, mass production has been the Holy Grail of business, rather than build-to-order. Too many businesses haven’t noticed that we have come full-circle, where mass customization is required now to win. Customers have come to expect immediate and tailor-made responses to their needs, and the businesses that fail to deliver quickly fall behind.

Changing the culture and mindset in an existing businesses is difficult and slow, so this becomes another “opportunity” for smart entrepreneurs and startups to excel. John M. Bernard does a great job outlining seven key steps to success today in his new book, “Business at the Speed of Now.” They apply to any business, but every startup better lead with these:

Prepare your team to always say “Yes”. This starts with always assigning people on the front line with the responsibility to solve problems, not just report them. Obviously, they must have the communication and system tools needed, and all the behind-the-scenes workers who never see a customer understand their role in delivering now.

This time of year can be very hectic for some entrepreneurs, but its an important time if you want to save any money during tax time too. USA Today has some “must do” items you should consider before the new year.

Reduce your taxes.

The basic rule is accelerate expenses, delay income. In other words, you want to do whatever you legally can to lower your total profits for the 2011 taxable year.

Hamilton's business growth centre has been praised by an international expert.

Dinah Adkins, president emeritus of the United States National Business Incubation Association, led an international delegation to SODA Inc as part of the 10th international Incubation Conference in Auckland.

She said SODA's people were "inspiring, smart people".

"There's vibrancy, commitment, passion," she said.

Adkins is author and coauthor of: A Brief History of Business Incubation in the United States; Incubating in Rural Areas: Challenges and Keys to Success; Incubating Technology Businesses: A National Benchmarking Study; and Best Practices in Action.

From: Senator Mary L. Landrieu, Chair, Senate Committee on Small Business & Entrepreneurship

Subject: Spread the Word: SBIR/STTR One Step Closer to Finish Line

Date: December 1, 2011

Dear SBIR/STTR Advocates,

This week, by a unanimous voice vote, the Senate amended the National Defense Authorization bill to include a reauthorization of the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs for another eight years giving small businesses confidence that the program is going to go on.

The Government will today say new drugs could be approved more swiftly to offer novel treatments to people with serious cancers and other conditions.

Mr Willetts, the universities and science minister, told BBC Radio that lots of good ideas for new drugs fail to get off the ground.

He said there is an "appalling rate of attrition" for research at an early stage, as many scientists never manage to get their proposed medicines taken up by the NHS.

There’s all kinds of advice across the web about when to use which app for each small thing that needs doing. But the advocates for using paper to complete certain tasks are not so loud (you can’t hear them typing, among other things). Yet a Forrester Research survey of business professionals found that 87 percent of them supplement gadgets with paper productivity, and 47 percent thought their personal and company efficiency would improve with better note-taking. The survey might have been biased, since it was sponsored by the makers of the Livescribe smart pen, but you can’t help but think it touches on a need to refamiliarize ourselves with ink and thinly sliced wood pulp.

Paper, but more specifically handwriting, will likely always be with us, and that’s a good thing. It’s a smoother path from your brain to the printed word, it saves you from task-switching overload, and it possibly makes the best to-do list.

Spending a lot of late nights with your startup colleagues developing a product with cutting-edge features can prove frustrating when those features end up in a competitor’s offering. At some point, once your startup begins to gain momentum, protecting your IP becomes yet one more thing to worry about. But it doesn’t have to be a nightmare — here’s a high-level overview of how to identify and protect new, potentially patentable inventions.

1. Check employment and independent contractor agreements

Look at your employment agreements — and agreements with independent contractors — to make sure that they have an obligation to assign their rights in any inventions that they develop in the course of their work to your company.  If their agreements with you don’t explicitly obligate them to hand over those inventions, it may be difficult for you to obtain a patent on them, particularly if that employee or independent contractor no longer works for you.

Go East, young entrepreneur! The chance to become rich and famous with a startup is no longer just an American dream. It’s happening in Asia too, as talent, energy and resources flow from the U.S. to the east.

Venture capital investment in Asia has nearly tripled in the past five years to $15.6 billion. China has leaped ahead to become the world’s second-largest venture market at $7.6 billion investments, while India has climbed to third place at $5.8 billion.

Together, these dragon and tiger markets account for 13 percent of the $37.8 billion put into startups globally. That’s up from 5 percent in 2005.