In November 2010, UK Prime Minister David Cameron announced plans to transform the UK into a major global hub for innovation and technology. His vision was to make London’s vibrant Tech City one to rival Silicon Valley.

During his speech in London’s Shoreditch area, Cameron revealed the Government’s Blueprint for Technology paper, which outlined how they planned to support this vision to make Britain a global innovation magnet.

To make the UK an attractive option for investors and new enterprises, several measures were put forward.

For example, a new Entrepreneur Visa was proposed, which ensures that innovators from around the world – those with investment already in place – can easily set up shop in the UK.

Assuming no one would demotivate their team intentionally, then why do we see it happen so often? I believe it’s because too many entrepreneurs and leaders are so self-centered that they really don’t see what impact their actions have on others. What these leaders need to do is spend more time eliminating their own demotivating habits, rather than delivering more motivation.

Maybe it because there are plenty of tips, seminars, and books on the motivation side of the equation, starting with the basic Motivating Employees for Dummies, and so few resources on elements of demotivation. To learn about ways that your team is demotivated, most leaders would need to look no further than feedback from their own team, for comments like the following:

1. Be sure your team doesn’t know what is important to you. You do this by changing your mind on an issue several times a day. Or by making sure your answers to employee direction requests run counter to ones given previously. Keeping your team guessing may keep them alert, but it is highly demotivating.

In today's weak job market, it's more important than ever to make your resume stand out.

Unfortunately, even small mistakes will quickly put your resume in the "no" pile. So we went straight to the source, and spoke with a few HR directors and executives about what NOT to do.

"I've seen some really surprising mistakes," says Kathy Simmons, CEO of Netshare, a career services company for senior executives. "My favorite is a CFO whose resume said he has 'extensive experience in pubic (sic.) financing.'"

Annapolis, MD (PRWEB) May 19, 2011

Joined by Maryland business leaders and elected officials, Governor Martin O’Malley today signed into law InvestMaryland – HB173 – an historic initiative which will infuse a minimum of $70 million into promising start-up and early stage companies in Maryland, creating the largest venture capital investment in the State’s history. The program, which will be rolled out over the next year and administered by the Maryland Department of Business and Economic Development (DBED), was proposed by Governor O’Malley nearly a year ago and received widespread support from the business community, academicians and industry experts during the legislative session. Among its benefits, the program has the potential to create thousands of jobs in Innovation Economy sectors – life sciences and biotechnology, cyber security/IT and clean/green tech and attract billions of follow on capital, all with no immediate cost to taxpayers. A video wrap up of the 2011 General Assembly session featuring interviews of Maryland’s business leaders is available here.

NASA will launch a scientific instrument into space next month to measure the salt content of the world's oceans, information that could help confirm scientists' suspicions that climate change is accelerating the world's water cycle.

The instrument, Aquarius, will launch June 9 as part of a joint mission between NASA and Argentina's space agency.

Flying aboard the SAC-D satellite, Aquarius will measure ocean salinity, completing a path around the entire globe every seven days. That's welcome news to scientists who have long relied on salinity measurements collected by boat, buoy or plane, methods that don't provide global coverage.

Conservatism and innovation do not go well together. Conservative parties govern most EU countries and it looks as if only austerity is on the top of their minds. Yet, the work is not finished after the current crisis management. The work is not finished after sole austerity measures. To be prepared for life after crisis management, EU Member States must find ways to boost the economy and tackle societal challenges on the way. The EU must dream the impossible dream.

The current economic crisis has brought about large budget cuts to reduce the extensive long term budget deficits most EU Member States face. Nearly every Member State has reduced the budget for innovation and research and has stricken financial incentives. The question therefore is: how can innovation be boosted in times of tight budgets?

By giving people power and observing what they do with it, a leader can learn a great deal about available opportunities. The problem is in getting out of their way, and consequently, getting out of your own way.

Human capital refers to the set of skills and knowledge that can produce an economic value. Everyone has distinct combinations of social capital, creative capital, and intellectual capital, which they deploy uniquely. The entrepreneurial spirit in indomitable.

Entrepreneurship is the invisible hand of Capitalism. Basically, this means that you can have all the Land, Labor, and Capital in the world, but unless you have entrepreneurs to interact with it, you don’t have much of an economy.

Social Contract Broker

Most social contracts are made today by Brokers who have the ability to connect supply and demand. Brokers, for the most part, gain their influence from the natural or unnatural divisions that may normally restrain information from the supply side to the demand side, and vice versa. ”Social Brokers” are extremely important for exchanging information across different parts of a community that do not normally intermix. However, such “Trust Economics” depends on a closed system where community accountability is strong.

As digital data piles up at ever faster rates, the potential is growing for smart algorithms to dig out insights the human brain never could. IBM's head of analytics research, Chid Apte, directs a team intent on realizing that potential. His group is developing algorithms and other techniques that can extract meaning from data, and it is trying to find ways to use these methods to solve business challenges. Apte talked about his group's priorities with Tom Simonite, the IT editor for hardware and software at Technology Review.

TR: IBM has been creating and selling analytics products for decades. What's new?

Apte: Historically, analytics has been about using well-organized past data from inside an enterprise. Now we have two new and different sources of data. One is unstructured data from customer interactions, such as e-mails to support, or call transcripts. The other is social information that we get by tapping into the Web—the world of Twitter and feeds.

Over the weekend my former colleague Cedric Latessa emailed me a link to a blog post by Rand Fishkin, CEO and founder of SEOmoz, where he talks about his decision whether or not to raise VC (warning: I two of my laptops have thrown up malware warnings before letting me through to Rand’s blog). I like the way he thinks about the decision, weighing up the pros of faster revenue growth and a bigger exit against the cons of more dilution, the impact of the preference, the risks that come with bringing a new director onto your board, and the way that raising a venture round rules out some lower value exits (at least in the short term). His emerging conclusion is that it would be a mistake to raise another VC round.

Today’s economy is more competitive than ever. Take the recession and add in a little (or a lot) of social media plus a high unemployment rate and BOOM, we’ve got the perfect storm for business relevance.

In a recession, savings and value are more important to consumers than in flush times. The abundance of social media and information on the Internet gives these same consumers the opportunity to be more educated and discriminating about their purchases. High unemployment is pushing more and more people into business ownership, increasing the amount of competition in your industry.

Over the course of my career, I’ve helped over hundreds of thousands of small business owners incorporate a business or form and LLC. And certainly there are many questions leading up to the process, such as, What type of business should I form? What’s the difference between an S Corp and a C Corp? But I’ve also found there can be just as many questions after incorporating a business or forming an LLC.

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Venture investor Elizabeth Edwards’ new book Startup: The Complete Handbook for Launching a Company for Less took top honors in business at the National Indie Excellence Book Awards. Edwards’ book, which recently made Amazon’s Top 20 Books for New Business Enterprises, shows entrepreneurs how to start a business on a shoestring budget.

Ellen Reid of the NIEA congratulated the winners, saying, “We had the best pool of submissions ever... the NIEA salutes authors and publishers who make excellence a priority.”

“It’s an honor to be recognized,” says Edwards.

Startup has received enthusiastic reviews from universities, angel investors, and incubators, and is being used as a textbook for students and entrepreneurs around the country. Part manual, part manifesto, the nearly 400-page handbook is packed full of templates, do-it-yourself tools, and proven strategies for bootstrapping.

Moscow, 17 May 2011: Rector Dmitry Livanov of The National University of Science & Technology-MISiS announced today the creation of a new Office of Technology Commercialization, bringing together key initiatives under Russian President Dmitry Medvedev’s Program of Economic Modernization. The university hired Page Heller, formerly with the Office of Technology Commercialization at Texas A&M University in the United States, as Director of the new office to bring seasoned perspective to the process of moving novel scientific innovations from the university to industry. A former entrepreneur, Heller brings expertise in licensing and company startups to the university. The effort is supported through Russian Law 219 which provides universities with funding for infrastructure supporting technology commercialization.

Reform of Russia’s higher education is underway following the enactment of a series of new laws as announced by Prime Minister Vladamir Putin on 21 November 2009, one of which is Law 219. The series of laws support key aspects of President Medvedev’s Program of Economic Modernization designed to stimulate technology innovation as a mechanism to provide diversity to Russia’s classically oil-based economy. Law 219 provides $66 million in 2011 for building university infrastructure specifically for commercialization of innovations created in the laboratories of the university.

Just a decade ago, if you wanted to invest in a startup you had to know someone. A lawyer, an accountant, a friend of friend would give you a referral to a company looking to raise money, or they’d invite you to invest with them. That’s how you got in the door.

You had to have a lot of money to play – often $50,000 or more. And the startups you’d see were from your geographical region. That traditional scenario left a lot of interested angel investors sitting on the sidelines.

Today, it’s a lot easier to become an angel investor, due to crowd funding, micro lending and investment sites like MicroVenture Marketplace Inc., which is opening doors to those looking to invest $1,000 to $10,000 or more.

Efforts to establish Cambridge as a world-leading cleantech cluster will receive a major boost later this year with the planned launch of a business angel network specifically focusing on investment in innovative environmental technology startups.

The cleantech angel network is the brainchild of Hugh Parnell, who as chairman of Envirotech, the networking group/membership organisation for local environmental firms is also working with the Future Business Centre to spearhead the cleantech strand of the social enterprise/cleantech incubator planned for the extension to the SmartLife Centre at The Hive.

Are you just beginning the filing process for an idea? Now is the time to consider how quickly you want your application processed. According to Inventors Digest, the patent office offers a three track system for inventors moving at different paces.

Accelerated Examination. For an additional fee, applicants may request expedited examination for an application. The goal is to grant a patent or reject it within 12 months. To qualify the application must be an original utility or plant non-provisional application; be filed electronically (EFS-Web); have no more than four independent claims and a maximum of 30 total claims.

Setting up in-house incubators for startups, expanding overseas, moving to a more distributed management, and funding venture research to solve specific problems, are amongst the strategies for moving the sector forward discussed at a meeting of venture capitalists at MIT last month.

“You have to proactively identify visionary entrepreneurs and their companies, be a value-add and build the management team, and establish the culture of the organisation,” Henry McCance, chairman emeritus of Greylock Partners told delegates at the event, which was held to celebrate the 65th anniversary of the US venture capital industry.

McCance described turning these ideas into reality when he embarked on a personal mission after his wife was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease 10 years ago. He soon found there are no effective treatments. “Quite frankly, I was appalled,” he said. “The disease affects 5.5 million Americans, and it was discovered 100 years ago. Why is the research so ineffective?"

Look beyond the dramatic mountain scenery and ski slopes, and Switzerland is becoming a hotspot for innovation and university technology spin-outs. The alpine country with a population of 7.6 million is home to 61 technology parks, and its universities are churning out dozens of science-based start-ups every year.

Perhaps the most famous Silicon Valley-type success story is that of GlycArt Biotechnology, a spin-out from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH Zurich), which was acquired in 2005 by pharma giant Roche for CHF 235 (€150 million).

That sum - for a company founded only five years earlier - caught the eye of global investors. “It put us on the radar for venture capitalists overseas,” says Silvio Bonaccio, head of ETH Transfer, the university’s technology transfer organisation. “There were even cold calls from VCs.”