Even if you’re terrible at accounting (but great with customers), you still know the basics of money: We want to be in the black instead of the red. I mean, red is my favorite color everywhere except on a financial statement.

A color can show you the bottom line about your company’s financial state at that point in time.  But what if you are in the red for one quarter and the profits from another quarter have to cover that expense? Or what if your financial statement is black, but not black enough?—Meaning you could stand to have more profit, more buffer, more resources (after all, that’s what money is—a resource).

WASHINGTON, July 11, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Obama administration today launched from New Orleans, La., Strong Cities, Strong Communities, to be known as SC2, a customized pilot initiative to strengthen capacity and spark economic growth in local communities, while ensuring taxpayer dollars are used wisely and efficiently. To accomplish these objectives, federal agencies will provide experienced staff to work directly with six cities: Chester, Pa.; Cleveland, Ohio; Detroit, Mich.; Fresno, Calif.; Memphis, Tenn.; and New Orleans.  Teams will work with local governments, the private sector and other institutions to leverage federal dollars and support the work being done at the local level to encourage economic growth community development.

Additionally, communities nationwide will be eligible to compete for comprehensive economic planning assistance through a grant competition designed to spark local innovation. By integrating government investments and partnering with local communities, SC2 will channel the resources of the federal government to help empower cities as they develop and implement their visions for economic growth.

Under the scheme, designed by the European Young Innovators Forum (EYIF), young people between the ages of 16 and 36 would simply type an idea into a box on a web site and send it off for consideration for funding.

The proposal has received cross-party support within the European Parliament, where MEPs Damien Abad (France; European People's Party) and Judith Merkies (Netherlands; Socialists & Democrats) amongst other parliamentary supporters are seeking to obtain an explicit endorsement for the project within the Parliament's motion on the EU budget, set to be voted upon later this year.

That would clear the path to a Parliament-funded pilot and subsequently allow the scheme to garner wider institutional support.

Spurred by advances in technology and changes in social trends, organizations are responding to fluctuating market dynamics and economic conditions by implementing strategies that put the customer at the center of the product development process. Used as a powerful innovation strategy, co-creation helps organizations get closer to their markets and reduces the “fuzziness” of the front end innovation (FEI) process.

Venkat Ramaswamy, a prominent thought leader in the co-creation space, defines co-creation as “the close involvement of consumers, as active participants collaborating with designers and product managers, in the development and delivery of new products”. Conceptually, the term has received some criticism, being referred to as a modern marketing ‘buzzword’, lacking concrete examples for practical application in product development. However, with the right processes and tools, co-creation can be effectively used to manage the difficult front end of innovation.

Google recently extracted itself from the home energy management space when it killed PowerMeter, but that doesn’t mean the internet giant isn’t dabbling in smart grid.

Earlier this year, Google chose a community to receive its ultra-fast, one-gigabit-per-second broadband internet access. Despite the fact that Topeka, KS renamed itself “Google” for a day, the winner was Kansas City, KS, and a few months later its larger, better-known neighbor, Kansas City, MO, was also elected to receive the super fast service.

The announcement by Google touted the fact that the company will be working with the Kauffman Foundation and the University of Kansas Medical Center to develop gigabit applications, but there is also another winner: the utilities. The Kansas City Board of Public Utilities and Kansas City Power & Light will be able to leverage the superfast network for metering and potentially even distribution automation. After that, only the sky is the limit.

You have successfully conceived a new business, obtained funding and are now planning to capitalize on the large market opportunities existing outside of the USA. In this article I would like to share with you recommendations for staffing, based on my personal long-term hands-on experience in this arena.

The head of international must be experienced in building international businesses and must operate from corporate headquarters. It is both costly and in many instances complicated to enter foreign markets. Mistakes can delay market entry, result in fines or certainly delay establishment of a local presence. Thus, it is essential to appoint a ‘head of international’ with significant hands-on experience to chart your course in the global world.

FORTUNE -- Michael Dreyfus, 49, is a leading real estate broker in the heart of Silicon Valley. During the winter he sensed the housing market was coming back, though he hadn't a clue what he'd be in for. In February prospective sellers came to him with a listing for a perfectly respectable property in Palo Alto: four bedrooms, three bathrooms, 7,500-square-foot lot, needs work. He recommended that the sellers ask $1.9 million. When the house went on the market in April, they had bumped the price to $2.3 million. Seven offers came in above that price; $2.7 million won the frantic bidding. Several buyers attempted to make offers even as the broker was supervising repairs to a kitchen flooded by a burst pipe. What's a little leak when the price tomorrow may hit $3 million? "We live in an alternative universe here," Dreyfus acknowledges.

Welcome to the Bizarro World of Silicon Valley Summer 2011, where financial fervor is fueling yet another real estate boom. Billions of dollars in fresh venture capital is being invested, and tech IPOs are hitting the stock market weekly. The rest of the country may be in the economic doldrums, but here the winds are fair and the sails of the newly rich captains are full. Entrepreneurs are pulling out fresh business plans; more angel investors are getting into the pre-IPO action; exuberance fills the Northern California air. Is the surge the beginning of a new, lasting wave of good times to wash over El Dorado, or is it the harbinger of the latest speculative cycle?

SUSTAINABLE development in a green economy is a very tall target for developing economies, particularly resourceful African countries mischievously nicknamed Third World, which are playing catch-up with industrialised Europe.

Africa, has been a reluctant recipient of contested climate change deals agreed to at most international conferences.

Even when developing countries have acknowledged climate change and global warming as serious threats to human life today, and have started employing adaptation and mitigation measures, they are in an unambiguous paradox.

If ambitious plans outlined here last month come to fruition, several of the world's leading universities could soon be collaborating on engineering-design projects and research activities, exchanging students and professors, and pooling their expertise to work more closely with industry.

At a two-day conference at Columbia University, deans and other leading faculty members from Ivy League engineering schools and their counterparts from elite institutions in Brazil, China, and India gathered to discuss the formation of a new alliance called CIBI.

Feniosky Peña-Mora, the dean of Columbia's Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science, is one of the driving forces behind the fledgling group. "There are already a lot of networks of universities," he acknowledges, adding that many of those groups unite diverse institutions with very different institutional profiles. The new alliance would instead be based on "universities that have similar missions and share key characteristics," he says.

Vast deposits of rare earth minerals, crucial in making high-tech electronics products, have been found on the floor of the Pacific Ocean and can be readily extracted, Japanese scientists said yesterday (4 July).

"The deposits have a heavy concentration of rare earths. Just one square kilometre of deposits will be able to provide one-fifth of the current global annual consumption," said Yasuhiro Kato, an associate professor of earth science at the University of Tokyo.

The discovery was made by a team led by Kato and including researchers from the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology.

They found the minerals in sea mud extracted from depths of 3,500 to 6,000 metres below the ocean surface at 78 locations. One-third of the sites yielded rich contents of rare earths and the metal yttrium, Kato said in a telephone interview.

The Creative Vitality™ Index (CVI™) is a sophisticated creative-economy measurement tool that arms stakeholders with highly reliable data about an area's creative sectors. The most dynamic creative economy report available today, the CVI™ provides an annual measure of the health and creative vitality of the arts in a specific area. The CVI™ augments the efforts of arts agency leadership and advocates in building strategy and creating policy to strengthen creative sectors or in response to a deficiency. This tool goes far beyond traditional economic impact studies to include annual comparative data about commercial and non-profit creative enterprises and occupations, as well as consumer spending in key creative sectors. As part of WESTAF's commitment to the ongoing enhancement to the CVI™, all CVI™ data will soon be offered in an online format via CVI™ Data on Demand™, a new web tool that allows users to log in and access a variety of reports and combinations of data packaged to your preference--on the fly.

When you purchase a CVI™ report, you gain immediate access to aggregated data sets for your area that are established, longitudinal, and annually maintained--powerful data that has been analyzed to produce a single index number reflecting the relative economic health of your creative economy. Years of research, data gathering, and analysis by WESTAF means that your CVI™ report is ready and available now. In addition to an expansive report that includes all data and analysis for your area, commissioning a CVI™ now means immediate access to Data on Demand™.

DEBATE about America’s energy supply is heating up: gas prices are rising, ethanol is under attack and nuclear power continues to struggle in the shadow of the Fukushima disaster in Japan.

But an abundant, safe and clean energy source once thought to be the stuff of science fiction is closer than many realize: nuclear fusion. Making it a reality, however, will take significant investment from the government at a time when spending on scientific research is under threat.

Harnessing nuclear fusion, the energy that powers the sun and the stars, has been a goal of physicists worldwide since the 1950s. It is essentially inexhaustible and it can be created using hydrogen isotopes — chemical cousins of hydrogen, like deuterium — that can readily be extracted from seawater.

The European Commission intends to throw open the definition of SMEs to debate next year but the idea has met with a mixed response from stakeholders, who are unsure what purpose such a consultation will serve.

The announcement came last week in a review of the Small Business Act (SBA) held in the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC), a consultative EU body representing workers and employers.

Massimo Baldinato, a member of the cabinet of EU Internal Market Commissioner Antonio Tajani, told the meeting that the Commission would open a consultation on the definition of SMEs next year.

Currently there are three broad parameters which define SMEs.

• Micro-entities are companies with up to 10 employees;
• small companies employ up to 50 workers, whilst;
• medium-sized enterprises contain up to 250 employees.

We have been hearing about the baby boomers for decades and we will hear about their impact for decades to come.  I remember studying them in high school and college, so I’m guessing that it was on all Generation X and Y curricula. They are still the largest group of babies born in the U.S. at one time and their decisions have and continue to affect business, retirement and your small business bottom line—if you know how to get and keep their attention.

Baby Boomers, Retirement and Education

Anita Campbell, in an article on American Express OPEN Forum titled, “When Big Companies Go Back To School, Will Small Businesses Benefit?“, broaches the idea of replacing the baby boomer in the manufacturing and engineering fields. “In manufacturing, nearly one-fourth of employees are already 55 or over, creating concerns about coming mass retirement,” she writes.  In response to this concern, Anita says, “many big employers are asking community colleges to create custom training programs for them.”

To My SBIR Clients and Friends,   I'll be sending out my regular July issue soon (subject will be "Advisory Boards for SBIR-funded Companies"), but I wanted to make you aware of a very special opportunity this week.

My good friend Earle Hager and his colleagues at Panidea Inc. are presenting an extraordinarily ambitious program this week: "24 Hours of Technology" - A global online FREE Super-Webinar focusing on technology commercialization ideas and support with speakers from around the world.  Imagine - 24 solid hours of continuous presentations focusing on global innovation!   And, yes, you did read that right - registration for any and all of the sessions is free!

The SBIR Coach will be one of the speakers (Session 02B - Tuesday, July 12th, 9:30PM CDT).  See the full schedule of all the presenters HERE.

Just south of Virginia's Shenandoah Valley, in a rural town called Radford that was once a thriving rail and manufacturing center, biotechnology has slowly taken root over the past few decades. From the outside, there's little to explain biotech's presence in the pleasant, 20,000-person town, with its parks, quaint downtown and local university. But locals know the reason: Randal J. Kirk, a local lawyer turned entrepreneur who, according to Forbes, is worth about $2.2 billion, nearly all from a decade or so of venture investing, company building and dealmaking.

Kirk, 58, is a major figure in biotech these days. "He seems to have sort of a prescience in terms of what new drugs and technology will gain value in a matter of years," says George Zavoico, an analyst with New York-based McNicoll, Lewis & Vlak LLC who has covered Kirk's companies. "He has a tremendous value-add to anything he's touched so far. If that pattern continues, he'll make a lot of people wealthy as well."

You have a moment of inspiration for a new product.

You do a quick sketch of your idea. It all looks like it might work and could make some money.

You conduct a patent search on uspto.gov or freepatentsonline.com or Google. So far, so good – it appears no one has thought of your idea yet. Just to make sure, you conduct furthermarket research.

And if you’re interested in obtaining a patent, you definitely hire a patent agent or patent attorney to conduct a professional search.

The next step: See if your invention actually works. You’ll need a prototype. Fear not – they don’t have to cost an arm and a leg.

Dow Jones is reporting mixed numbers for venture fundraising this morning, releasing data that shows that capital raised for U.S. venture funds rose 20 percent over the same period a year ago, to $8.1 billion. But that stat comes with a caveat— the number of funds that held closings plummeted 38% to 50 funds. Seven firms were responsible for raising the bulk of the $8.1 billion, raising almost 80 percent of the total, or $6.3 billion. For basis of comparison, in the first half of 2010, 81 U.S. venture funds raised $6.8 billion. This trend was illustrated in this morning’s Thomson Reuters and the National Venture Capital Association report.

In the first half of 2011, a number of well-known VC firms closed significant funds. Bessemer closed a $1.6 billion fund, Sequoia closed a $1.3 billion fund, and Greylock added a $1 billion fund. In June, Accel closed two funds for a total of $1.35 billion in new capital. Andreessen Horowitz added a $200 million growth fund in April.

People in the biotech business (most, anyway) aren’t delusional. They know the odds are stacked against anybody who dares to develop a new drug. But even during the darkest days of recent economic history, December 2008, I heard a seasoned executive explain why the U.S. was, and would remain, the leading place in the world for biotech.

It was about attitude.

“Europeans always want to focus on the 100 reasons why something won’t work,” Bruce Carter, the British-born former ZymoGenetics CEO said. Americans, he went on, know the 100 reasons why a drug probably won’t work, yet “are willing to look at the one reason why it will.”

I’ve been wondering lately whether this is still true, whether biotech has lost its nerve, its anything-is-possible swaggering attitude. Sure, everybody tries to cast their companies and products in the best possible light, that will never change. But deep down, there’s a lot of lingering insecurity. People (me included) keep saying things like the venture capital model for biotech is broken, the IPO market is cruel, Big Pharma is slowly imploding, everything must be outsourced to China and India, young scientists can’t find jobs, drug price controls are inevitable, and the FDA is smothering life sciences innovation.

Last June, the United Nations Development Program released its Human Development Report for Egypt, which noted that 90 percent of the country’s unemployed, estimated to be 8 million, were younger than 30. Not surprisingly, time and again at post-revolution gatherings of political leaders and civil sector organizations set on creating a clear roadmap for the country’s political and economic development, youth entrepreneurship emerges as a key recommendation.

President Obama identified this himself during his last speech on the Middle East. One of the four pillars in aid to the region will be economic modernization, including establishing Egyptian-American Enterprise Funds to stimulate private sector investment, as well as building networks of entrepreneurs and fostering cooperation in science and technology. The hope of his $1 billion debt relief strategy is that Egyptian partners will invest resources to foster growth and entrepreneurship. “Entrepreneurs are brimming with ideas, but corruption leaves them unable to profit from those ideas,” he said.