What? You mean now? Like right now? Uh, levitating unicycles, no, wait, monster segways… oh man, I can’t do this! I’m just not the creative type…

Bouncing from brainstorm to brainstorm as we often do in this line of work, I am constantly struck by how many people are convinced that they just don’t have the “creativity gene”. The belief that “some have it, others don’t” is pervasive.

In truth, this makes sense. It’s common knowledge that creativity is, in essence, taught out of us once we start school – “Here’s the way to do this...” And, when we are put on the spot and told to exercise our creative powers on-demand, we tend to perform poorly. Who wants to go through that? I know if that was my main exposure to “creative thinking” then I’d rather suppress any creative capacity than repeatedly put myself through that pressure-riddled brain-racking.

Ryan Academy for Entrepreneurship ‘Propeller’ Accelerator first Demo/Investor Day will see Six Technology Startups Pitch for Funding

The Propeller Venture Accelerator, part of the DCU Ryan Academy for Entrepreneurship, has its first Demo/Investor Day in Citywest on the 6^th of May. Over seventy investors, from Ireland, the US, the UK and Italy are due to see pitches from the six technology companies on the mentor-led incubation programme. Grant Thornton have been confirmed as sponsors of the Demo Day.

These startups, five from Ireland and one from the UK, cover key technologies such as mobile applications, cleantech, online gaming, health informatics, and internet applications. The Propeller Venture Accelerator was established in 2010 with the funding of €1 million from Irelandia Investments. The aim is to accelerate early stage technology startup companies, both Irish and international, in Dublin. The Propeller Accelerator has taken the successful US accelerator model and adapted it to the Irish context.

We are glad to welcome you to the website of the International Forum FROM SCIENCE to BUSINESS.

May 11-13, 2011 | Saint Petersburg, Russia

Aim of the Forum – constructive discussion of issues and international experience in formation of the economics, based on knowledge

Task of the Forum - assistance to innovative development of countries on international and national level through:

• Creation of constantly operating international platform for meetings of "the innovative West" and "the innovative East" with a view of wide discussion and exchange of experience by governmental, scientific-educational and business groups for the development of economies based on knowledge;
• Elaboration of recommendations on effective and mutually advantageous cooperation of authorities, business and a science with a view on introduction of innovative approaches and innovations in all life spheres - social and economic, scientific-educational, culture and so on;
• Case-studying of the leading countries experience in the field of innovations, development and diversification of innovative economies, stimulation of processes of innovative transformations in science, education and society;
• Assistance to formation of net and cluster structures in innovative sphere.

I hope that like me, you have had the chance to witness the burgeoning phenomenon of entrepreneurship curriculum in American higher education. More and more, students have the opportunity to explore entrepreneurship on campus. In the process of creating entrepreneurship programs, universities have become more entrepreneurial themselves. This is great news. Colleges and universities are natural incubators of creativity and new ways of looking at things. And this new reality might mean that colleges and universities are better preparing students for success in the American economy where more professionals need to make their own jobs.

Who would have thought entrepreneurship would be one of the fastest-growing fields of study on campus? When the Kauffman Foundation launched the Kauffman Campuses initiative in December 2003, many questioned whether entrepreneurship could even be taught (similar to the doubts around teaching management in the past century). At that time eight universities were awarded up to $5 million each to make entrepreneurship education available across their campuses, enabling any student, regardless of field of study, to access entrepreneurial training. These eight institutions were the first generation of campuses offering entrepreneurship programs, followed by a second set of six U.S. universities in 2006. As Carl Schramm remarked at the time, universities have never been the same since.

Growth is a pre-requisite for business success. In today’s rapidly changing business environment, most companies need to grow just to stay in place. They need to expand market share, seek out related and new market opportunities, and constantly pursue new customers just to stay even over the long haul.

To grow successfully, businesses need to build upon their success with current customer and grow outward from there. As such, the five steps to business growth are:

1. Satisfy Your Current Customers: As discussed in 8 Steps to Satisfy Your Current Customers and Re-Charge Growth, the first step for business growth is to exceed the expectations of current customers. This reduces your customer turnover (churn), which means that you no longer have to find new customers just to replace current customers that have stopped buying from you due to poor service. Further, satisfying your current customers allows you to increase your share of wallet with them.

On a recent afternoon, two young entrepreneurs were brainstorming names for the online dress shop they were starting, playing as usual off each other's strengths.

"Let's call it Enticing," Elona Myftaraj, 17, said to her business partner, Newon Dennis, 16. Both are juniors at Philadelphia's Science Leadership Academy (SLA).

"That sounds really nice," Dennis said. "I hadn't thought of a name."

Dennis has been designing the dresses; Myftaraj has been sewing them.

"I can picture dresses, but can't draw, and Newon can draw, but can't make the dresses," Myftaraj said, explaining how the two came to collaborate in an unusual program called StartupCorps.

The Aspen Institute announced on Monday the 120 community colleges eligible to compete for its first $1-million prize to reward excellence at two-year institutions.

The community colleges chosen represent the top 10 percent in the country, according to the Aspen Institute College Excellence Program. President Obama announced the Aspen Prize for Community College Excellence during the White House Summit on Community Colleges, in October. The purpose of the prize is to recognize community colleges with outstanding academic and work-force outcomes.

How to break a cycle of investment and entrepreneurship leaving the region proved a central theme of the One Great Idea panel discussion and forum held by the Philadelphia Media Network as part of Philly Tech Week.

Hosted Wednesday night in the historic Inquirer building on North Broad Street, the panel was moderated by Greg Osberg, the new CEO of PMN and publisher of the Inquirer, Daily News and Philly.com. It was the first event based on the network’s One Great Idea series, which asks leading Philadelphians for a single, actionable idea for making the region stronger.

Our lives are awash with ambient electromagnetic radiation, from the fields generated by power lines to the signals used to send data between Wi-Fi transmitters. Researchers at Microsoft and the University of Washington have found a way to harness this radiation for a computer interface that turns any wall in a building into a touch-sensitive surface.

The technology could allow light switches, thermostats, stereos, televisions, and security systems to be controlled from anywhere in the house, and could lead to new interfaces for games.

"There's all this electromagnetic radiation in the air," says Desney Tan, senior researcher at Microsoft (and a TR35 honoree in 2007). Radio antennas pick up some of the signals, Tan explains, but people can do this too. "It turns out that the body is a relatively good antenna," he says.

"DirtPud.Ding, a ground-breaking, mobile, digital media, clean-tech, social networking app developer seeks a world-class, ROCK STAR software developer. Must have a proven track record developing high profile, killer iPhone applications, be a team player, pro-active self-starter, and willing to work for equity only. Candidates should have worked in a startup that successfully exited to Google and know Mark Andreesen on a first name basis."

Sound familiar? Just another Silicon Valley job posting by some startup seeking an "A-player" for peanuts. After all, it's a given that for a startup to succeed, everyone you hire must be an "A-player," right? Get the team right and everything just flows!

Maybe.

Now don't get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with trying to hire "A-players." One should try to hire the best talent possible. But how realistic is it to expect that you will be able to hire WORLD CLASS, ROCK STAR talent for all of your positions when you' haven't even reached Ramen-profitability and your office is the local Starbucks? What if you can't?

Although every startup is unique, there are certain common avoidable mistakes that can lead to legal complications which jeopardize the long-term success of the business. I’m not suggesting that every startup needs a lawyer, but you should definitely pay attention, and not be afraid to consult legal counsel if any of these raise qualms for you.

Like other environments, most legal issues don’t result from fraud, but from ignorance on specific requirements, or simply never getting around to doing the things that common sense would tell you to do. Here are five of the most common examples:

1. Failure to document a founder agreement at the beginning. This oversight can lead to the so-called “forgotten founder” problem. Early co-founders often drop out of the picture due to disagreements, and you forget about them, but they don’t forget about the verbal promises you made.

If you're not good at math, stop reading right now.

Braingle, a brain teaser website, shared its most challenging riddles with us, as voted on by users.

Wake up your brain and give these a try. If you get stumped, don't worry. The answers are on the slides following each question.

We bet you don't get more than 3 right.

Many men drive businesses like they drive cars.

They don't ask for directions, or stop to make sure they're headed the right way.

Women, on the other hand, are planners.

Jenn Houser, co-founder of UpStart Bootcamp, says there are a few things men can learn from women in the office:

Come up with a plan before you start a company. Business plans are essential, says Houser. They serve as working outlines to keep founders on track and focused.

Super angel investor Chris Sacca doesn’t like all the new competition pushing up valuations in angel deals and seed rounds these days. “It is a train and it is kind of running away,” he says on a panel this morning at the Wired business conference. “That layer of the market has an abundance of capital.”

Sacca, who funded Photobucket from his credit card and was one of the first to put money into Twitter, is now shying away from early stage deals. “I have definitely refocused Lowercase Capital on later stage deals and my existing portfolio.” Everyone wants to be an angel investor all of a sudden. “It is very hip to be an angel investor now,” he laments. “There used to be a dozen, two dozen guys at these demo days writing checks. Now there are hundreds.” And half of them don’t even read the term sheets! How retail of them.

When we first covered Stipple in September of last year, it seemed like a really cool idea: tag people in images no matter where they reside on the web — not just on Flickr or Facebook. It was quickly clear that investors like Kleiner Perkins, Mike Maples, and even Justin Timberlake agreed, as they poured $2 million into the company just three months post-launch. And now that Stipple is ready to reveal the full product they’ve built, it’s pretty clear why the initial investment came so quickly. This platform has the potential to be massive, and to make a lot of people a lot of money.

So what is Stipple now? Well, there’s still the people-tagging element for sure. And that’s still really cool. If you tag a person in a photo on the web, you can enter their Twitter name or Facebook name and then anyone can see their most recent updates as overlays on that picture. But the much bigger idea is that Stipple is teaming up with photo services, fashion brands, publishers, and others to possibly alter the way people browse and buy things on the web.

A new report issued today by venture capital company Clearstone Venture Partners on how well the venture capital community is doing says that VCs who put their money into technology startups now will get the best return on their money since the boomtimes of the dotcom era last decade.

Titled “The State of Venture Capital in America,” the report says that because conditions have improved considerably due to a shakeout in the number of VC players involved in the tech sector, there’s been a reduction in capital allocated, making the money VCs do invest count even more.

If you googled “crowdfunding” before September 2010 and searched for Brazilian sites, it would have been rare to find any mention. Back then the crowdfunding business model, which now a mere six months later is widespread throughout the country, was almost unknown.

Crowdfunding Without Knowing It

In September 2010 some friends in Rio de Janeiro were upset because one of their favorite bands wouldn’t perform there, so they decided to gather a group of friends and organize a crowdfunding initiative - a term they didn’t know existed. They collected money from 60 people, totaling R$20,000 (US $13,000), and managed to bring the band to the city. A couple of months later they launched Queremos, a website that uses crowdfunding to promote concerts. Through this platform they sell shares at R$200 each to collect the funds necessary to cover the cost of the concert. If they reach this goal, they then start to sell tickets. The coolest thing about this model is that the group of people that buy the initial shares may get their money back if a certain amount of tickets are sold – and they get to watch the show for free!

The Bangalore success story has been dramatic and has generated enormous brand presence, employment opportunities and wealth. Bangalore is seen as India's connect with the outside world. Right from software giants like Infosys and Wipro to new-age start-ups like Flipkart, product companies like Tejas Networks to biotechnology innovators like Biocon, Bangalore has witnessed the creation, incubation and success of many ideas. Google's Map Maker, Intel's six-core Xeon processor, Microsoft's search engine Bing and HP's Dynamic Smart Cooling Technology have all been designed or have key components built in the city.

However, I think we have a long road to travel before we can truly call Bangalore the 'Global innovation hub .. The past success has mostly been driven by companies doing things cheaper, faster or better than the existing set or multinational giants setting up captive offshore centres, but not really through new innovative products or services. To get there, what we need are three key things: a drastic change in mindset, the way institutions work together and a well-defined path to take innovative research ideas to market, quickly and effectively.

Corporate venture capital is the least understood category of venture capital. Most venture capitalists fear -- if not despise -- corporate venture capital, while entrepreneurs are often confused about whether they should take this capital or not.

The concept of corporate venture capital is simple. A company takes a minority stake in a start-up or growth-stage company, typically, to achieve its own short-term or long-term strategic goals. The investee company, in theory, gets access to all the resources of the investing company.

The concept has been around in the U.S. and other developed countries for a long time. Quite a few of the Fortune 100 companies – Intel, Cisco, Unilever, BP – have a separate venture capital entity for such investments. In India, corporate venture capital is a relatively recent phenomenon. Local companies such as Reliance, Airtel and Future Group have started their own investment entities.

The city is humanity's laboratory, where people flock to dream, create, build, and rebuild. In his book Triumph of the City, Harvard economist Edward Glaeser observes that to stroll through the world's great cities is "to study nothing less than human progress." Each year, we spotlight the building blocks of that progress -- bold ideas that promise to enrich our cities and economies. You'll find plenty in diverse, surprisingly creative Houston, our 2011 CITY OF THE YEAR which urban theorist Joel Kotkin tips as "one of the world's next great cities." You'll also find these ideas across America: