European Innovation Network partnered up with number of European Venture Capital and Private Equity Houses to provide a much needed cash injection for start-up businesses (seed funding), for IPOs and M&As using Private Equity. Our partners seeks to invest into EU-based early stage companies whose businesses are focused around proprietary, highly scaleable, and disruptive technologies.

There are a number of key attributes that the Fund looks for in each business that it backs. Some of the most important characteristics that we look for are as follows:

• Unique, Disruptive Technologies
• Large, Global Addressable Market
• Strong market drivers
• Scaleable Business Model
• Commercial Proof of Concept and/or Funded EU Project
• Strong Management Team

As boomer employees retire in large numbers, it will do more than change the average employee’s waist size, hair color, and infatuation with social media. Boomers will take with them huge troves of personal contacts, technical know-how, and organizational culture and tradition. That’s why businesses that succeed in the coming decade or so will be those that can keep these irreplaceable employees from prematurely leaving. Lisa Orrell, a San Jose, California, consultant on generational differences and author of the forthcoming Boomers Into Business, (Wyatt McKenzie, September 2011), says here’s how you can do it:

Treat them like kids. When it comes to flexibility, at least. Orrell notes that employers are finding that accommodating personalized work-styles — a common demand for members of the Millennial generation — is also encouraging Boomers to postpone retirement. “The Boomers are saying maybe they don’t want to fully retire, but they want to work from home, work part-time, or work on a flex-time basis,” she says.

As venture capitalists, we believe deeply in the value of decentralized, emergent, start-up innovation. The Internet has been an unusually fertile ground for this type of innovation largely because, for the first time in history, it has been possible to get directly to consumers without negotiating with entrenched intermediaries. The result has been a spectacular explosion of innovation with tremendous benefits to consumers and to the global economy.

McKinsey recently studied thirteen mature national economies and found that over the past five years, 21% of GDP growth can be directly attributed to the Internet. They found that 2.4 jobs were created for every job lost to Internet efficiencies. They also found that over the last fifteen years, an increase in Internet maturity is directly correlated to an average increase in real per capita GDP of $500. By contrast, it took 50 years to see that impact during the industrial revolution of the 19th century.

An article in HarvardBusiness.org today examines inventor, innovator and entrepreneur — terms often used interchangeably, but which the article’s author puts forth are fundamentally different. The article suggests that each term refers to “different links in the total value-chain of progress.”

Inventors: Idea-oriented who solve problems in a non-linear way

Entrepreneurs: Action-oriented who solve problems in a non-linear way

Innovators: Can solve problems in either a non-linear way (“revolutionary” ideas) or linear way (“evolutionary” ideas, aka make incremental improvements)

Examples of non-linear innovations include the automobile and the Internet. Along the same theme lines, examples of linear innovations would be better engines and more efficient programming languages.

It's been more than a year since Apple's iPad started shipping, and around the world, it's still overwhelmingly the only tablet that matters. 

ComScore just released a bunch of stats about traffic consumption on non-PC devices in 13 countries, including tablets, smartphones, and other devices, such as the iPod touch. 

We analyzed comScore's data to focus just on tablet usage, and charted the iPad's traffic share in each country. It was 95% or higher in 12 of the 13 countries, with Android the second-place finisher in most countries (and "other" in Canada, home of RIM).

A recent report from the Intellectual Property Association revealed the top 300 organizations granted U.S. patents in 2010. IBM, Samsung and Microsoft led this year's list. Fourteen universities, including 13 U.S. institutions and one from China, made the top 300, according toThe Chronicle of Higher Education. Leading universities include the University of California Regents, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Stanford University. Read the full list...

In the systems perspective on innovation, co-operation between several different types of actors is seen as key to successful innovation. Due to the existence of several gaps that hinder such effective co-operation, the scientific and policy literature persistently points at the need for intermediary organizations to fulfill bridging and brokerage roles. This paper aims to provide an overview of the insights from the literature on such ‘innovation brokers’, and to contribute to the literature by distilling lines of enquiry and providing insights on one of the lines identified. Taking as an empirical basis experiences with different types of innovation brokers that have emerged in the Dutch agricultural sector, it identifies a number of tensions with regard to the establishment and embedding of such organizations. The paper indicates that, despite being perceived to have a catalyzing effect on innovation, innovation brokers have difficulty in becoming embedded as their clients and/or financiers find it difficult to grasp the nature and value of their activities.

Download the PDF

Download the PDF

Investors are people too. They evaluate you like you should assess a possible co-founder or first employee. What are your credentials? What have you done that would convince me that my money is safe in your hands? Only after they see you as fundable, do they want to assess your plan for fundability, not the other way around.

Even with great credentials, it is all too possible for an entrepreneur to come across as a high risk investment. Here are some “rules of thumb” that indicate a marketable and experienced entrepreneur:

• Highlights team strengths, more than his own. Some entrepreneurs seem to never stop talking about themselves, and all their accomplishments. The best ones talk more about how they have assembled a well-rounded team, and will continue to fill in the gaps.
• Talks about the implementation plan, not the idea. Most entrepreneurs are great at envisioning their business idea, but the implementation is fuzzy. Experienced entrepreneurs talk about their implementation and rollout plan, with real milestones and quantifiable results.

Being an entrepreneur is time-consuming, energy-draining, and often thankless—and that's when things are going well. However tough as it is to be an entrepreneur, being an entrepreneur's spouse has its own challenges. Spouses face difficulties that are often isolating because details cannot be shared with or understood by friends and family, says Gina Elkins, 48, of San Jose, Calif. For nearly a dozen years, Elkins has found help and support from the spousal forum program of the Entrepreneurs' Organization, a networking group with chapters around the world. The elementary school teacher, whose husband, Hunter, owns Elkins Retail Advertising, spoke recently to Smart Answers columnist Karen E. Klein about how the forum's Silicon Valley chapter has affected her life and marriage. Edited excerpts of their conversation follow.

According to The Times CEO Summit here in London, Britain is mid-table in the world growth league, but committed to a new rigorous economic agenda. Now that the painful job of drastic budget cuts is underway and an often angry public has aired its grievances, Prime Minister David Cameron appears to be intently focused on new firm formation, the know-how economy, the next digital revolution and private input into “innovating down” health costs. He is determined to protect his AAA Standard & Poors evaluation and keep his economy from heading in the direction of others like Greece.

I report today from the United Kingdom, one year on from Chancellor George Osborne’s June 2010 emergency budget which introduced budget measures designed to create a “strong, enterprise-led recovery,” such as a reduction of payroll and capital gains taxes for entrepreneurial businesses. While, according to Cameron advisors I met in Downing Street yesterday, there appears to be poor utilization of such benefits by new or young firms so far, Downing Street is smartly sticking to a strategy of fostering high-growth firms as a source for new jobs and economic growth. Cameron’s government made several announcements of entrepreneur-friendly policies, which I shared with you in an article at the time. With so many of these budget changes only just taking effect, an analysis of its results will have to wait. However, it is not too early on the non-budget side to see other gears in motion for a new set of efforts to engage more British people in start ups.

1. “To stimulate creativity one must develop childlike inclination for play and the childlike desire for recognition.” – Albert Einstein
2. “If you want creative workers, give them enough time to play.” – John Cleese
3. “If you lose the power to laugh, you lose the power to think.” – Clarence Darrow
4. “The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect, but by the play instinct arising from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the object it loves.” – Carl Jung
5. “The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not ‘Eureka!’ but ‘That’s funny!’” – Isaac Asimov

RIM's stock has gone down so much that an acquirer could buy them for a 50 percent premium and still pay the lowest multiple in the industry, Bloomberg notes.

That may make it very hard for Microsoft to resist swooping in.

Microsoft desperately needs more marketshare for Windows Phone 7. RIM desperately needs a new, good software platform, and Windows is pretty well critically-received. As the Skype deal has shown, Microsoft isn't afraid to uge its ginormous piles of cash to pay top dollar for strategic assets. Microsoft and RIM are complementary, given their strongholds in corporate America, particularly email software. RIM and Nokia, Microsoft's biggest phone partner, are complementary, with RIM strongest in the US and Nokia strongest in the rest of the world (although they are increasingly competing for growth in the emerging markets).

As Iowa seeks to expand the number of homegrown technology businesses and the jobs they create, connecting potential collaborators would appear to be a logical move.

The state’s technology industry employs more than 76,000 workers. It accounts for $10.7 billion, or 8.8 percent, of the state’s gross domestic product.

While you can find an online list by Manta Media of more than 520 information technology companies in Iowa, there is no all-inclusive database of technology companies in the state and their products or services.

The Technology Association of Iowa tries to fill that role on a de facto basis with its membership roster, which lists organizations and links to its website.

“Our directory only includes businesses that are members,” TAI President Leeann Jacobson said. “We have been compiling a database as we go along, but we by no means have everything.

Compounds in blueberries might turn out to have a powerful effect on formation of strong, healthy bones, if results from studies with laboratory rats turn out to hold true for humans.

Jin-Ran Chen and his colleagues are exploring this idea in research funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) at the Arkansas Children’s Nutrition Center (ACNC) in Little Rock. Chen is a principal investigator and lead scientist at the center’s Skeletal Development Laboratory, and an assistant professor in the department of pediatrics at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, also in Little Rock.

Chen specializes in research on how what we eat during infancy, childhood and early adulthood affects growth and development of bones and the risk of developing osteoporosis or other degenerative bone diseases in later years.

Entrepreneurs are in love with their ideas. And oftentimes – especially in the case of first-time entrepreneurs – they want to run the resulting business. That’s usually because they think no one can care about the idea as deeply as they do and as a result, no one can run the business as well as they can. But sometimes, holding onto a business may not be in the best interest of the company – or the entrepreneur.

Here are 5 situations when that might be case:

1. You turned a hobby into a business. You may start your own business in order to transform something you love to do into a profession. In the beginning, you do everything because to you, it’s still a hobby. You make your product, sell it, clean up shop, balance the books, get your supplies, and update your website. You don’t mind all the hard work, because it’s your passion. As the business starts to grow, you may find yourself spending less and less time on what you love and more time in other functional areas of the business. If a lifestyle business is what you want, it may be time to refocus and hold tight to the small business that you’ve built. If you want to see the business take off and move beyond the hobby stage, something has to give and it might need to be your control.

I’ve often said that creating and building a business is not a one-man show, even though it usually springs from the mind and determination of one person – committees don’t start successful businesses. But taking an idea to a business success requires many people to work together effectively, and that requires entrepreneurial leadership.

Leadership is not a skill one is born with, but it can be learned and honed from experience and failures. We all start with what researchers term the “knowing-doing gap.” We know what should be done, but we don’t know how to get it done. Many people assume the solution is to find the recipe, or leader’s checklist, and follow it methodically.

Most entrepreneurs dream of taking an idea and turning it into a successful company, but that takes time and capital investment. Most startups don’t get funded by venture capital or angel investors; the money often comes from your savings, credit cards or friends. Because initial cash flow may be tight, you need to keep your budget realistic in order to stretch every dollar. That’s where bootstrapping comes in.

Bootstrapping means starting a company with little or no money, but utilizing the resources readily available to you. This means keeping your budget low, not taking a salary, working with your team to develop your product for sweat equity or outsourcing some functions altogether. It may take you longer to get your product to market because you are relying on your

Wait a minute. Charlotte, N.C., thinks *we’re* doing something right?

That’s what Pete Strange said this morning at the 2011 MBA Stakeholders Breakfast. The event showcased the success of the Minority Business Accelerator, the economic development initiative housed at the Cincinnati USA Regional Chamber that works to grow sizeable minority-owned businesses in the region.

Strange, who is chairman of Messer Inc., also is chairman of the MBA’s Leadership Council. And he told the breakfast crowd that he got a call about three months ago from an executive at Bank of AmericabizWatch who asked him to visit Charlotte to talk about the MBA’s success.

Greentown Labs, a South Boston startup incubator focused on cleantech, has nearly doubled its number of resident companies since moving from East Cambridge in May, the incubator's founders said Tuesday.

Greentown now houses nine companies and a green business trade group, up from the five original founding startups — Airventions, Altaeros Energies, Coincident, OsComp Systems and Promethean Power. The incubator, located on Summer Street in the South Boston "Innovation District," was set to be opened to the public Tuesday night for a grand opening event.

Tuesday afternoon, the startups busily prepared their prototypes for display, including Altaeros' massive inflatable wind turbine system and Promethean Power's solar-powered milk chiller — which was being readied to cool beer for the evening.

Are you your business’s worst enemy? Let’s make sure that’s not the case.

Here are eight things entrepreneurs and small business owners should never say to themselves:

1. “I deserve a reward for all my sacrifice.” Taking needed cash out of the business as some form of reward for blood, sweat, and entrepreneurial tears will ruin your business. If your business spins off bundles of cash, great. You earned it. If it doesn’t, how hard you’ve worked doesn’t matter. “Deserve” has nothing to do with it: You only deserve what your business generates.
2. “I just need a great idea…” Ideas are exciting but relatively worthless. Executed ideas are priceless. Searching for a brilliant idea to save your business is a sign you lack the discipline to roll up your sleeves and do the execution dirty work. If your business model is sustainable, find ways to fix what is broken. Those are the only ideas you need.