Looking for funding for small business ventures in these competitive economic times? The Commercialization Funding Coach, Inc. proprietor, Fred Patterson, best known as The SBIR Coach®, has weighed in on the future of SBIR (Small Business Innovation Research) funding as a viable option for startup ventures after a recent visit to talk to legislators in Washington, DC about SBIR reauthorization.

The Commercialization Funding Coach, Inc.

The SBIR, created in 1982, provides much needed funding to tech industry startups working on developing and bringing to market new and innovative technologies. Reauthorization of the SBIR Program is scheduled to be addressed in this session of Congress, but debate was stalled due to both the House and Senate dealing with the economic stimulus bills. Without a continuing resolution to extend the current law being signed by March 20, 2009, the future of SBIR grants may become uncertain.

Temple University's business plan competition, the annual Be Your Own Boss Bowl, has received a $500,000 donation from Goldman Sachs Gives, a donor-advised fund, to further expand university-wide entrepreneurship during the next five years.

The gift was made at the recommendation of Alan and Deborah Cohen, both Temple alumni, and will go to the Fox School of Business, which organizes the competition via the Temple Innovation and Entrepreneurship Institute (IEI).

Alan Cohen, a 1972 alumnus of Temple's College of Liberal Arts, is the firm's executive vice president and global head of compliance. Deborah Cohen, also Class of '72, earned her degree from the business school.

3:34 | Feb 6, 2011 – If you're looking for new sources of cash for your business, you may want to experiment with crowdfunding. It's now possible to raise money online from a variety of investors. Bruce Sellery, the founder of personal finance training company Moolala, tells us how crowdfunding works and why it may be a good fit for your business.

Contrary to what most of you might guess, the highest rate of entrepreneurial activity over the last few years is not Gen-Y young upstarts, but Baby Boomers in the 55-64 year age group. In fact, according to a study by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, these Boomers are actually driving a new entrepreneurship boom.

Actors want to direct. Directors want to produce. And consultants want to be kick ass speakers. And why not? The pay is good. It doesn't take much time. And it's a lot less heavy lifting than most consulting gigs.

Easier said that done, however. Delivering a kick ass kick ass is not as easy as it looks. If you want to get into the game, begin by reviewing the following guidelines to see if you have what it takes.

1. Be in tune with your purpose: If you're going to hold an audience's attention for more than 10 minutes, you've got to begin by holding firm to your purpose... your calling... what gets you out of bed in the morning. If it's missing, all you could ever hope to deliver is a speech -- which is NOT what people want to hear.

You can’t win as an entrepreneur working alone. You need to have business relationships with team members, investors, customers, and a myriad of other support people. That doesn’t mean you have to be a social butterfly to succeed, or introverts need not apply.

It does mean that you need to look, listen, and participate in the business world around you, and network through all available channels, like business-oriented social networks online (LinkedIn), local business organizations (Chamber of Commerce), and events or conferences in your domain.

For a glimpse of the wireless future, take a look at the Yurok Indian reservation, an out-of-the-way spot just south of the California-Oregon border at the mouth of the Klamath River. There, among the giant redwoods, stand three new towers built to create a new type of wireless network, known as "super Wi-Fi." If the U.S. Federal Communications Commission gets its way, super Wi-Fi will become a key part of rural America's digital infrastructure.

Most people living on the Yurok's 63,000-acre reservation lack phone service. Almost none have high-speed Internet. The new towers aim to fix both problems. Unlike regular Wi-Fi networks, which are generally limited to beaming high-speed Internet around a house, super Wi-Fi promises to blanket entire neighborhoods with high-speed access.

When Rich Friedrich of HP Labs looks into the future, he sees desks used as 3-D displays, printers that automatically tailor a newspaper to a reader's tastes, faster and more secure cloud computing servers, and wireless nano-sensor networks that monitor the environment.

But he also sees that achieving these technologies will require tapping into resources beyond HP's own intellectual property. It will require an embrace of "open innovation," the idea that companies should make wider use of ideas and technologies that come from other sources—and allow their own technologies and ideas to be adopted by others.

The National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (NESTA) announced today that it has asked Andy Payne, a key industry figure, to lead the establishment of ‘The Games Consortium’. The ground-breaking new organisation will allow independent video games developers to exploit their games through digital distribution.

NESTA is now also seeking to find up to eight UK independent developers working in social, mobile and traditional gaming to establish the Games Consortium. Expressions of interest are invited by 12 noon on 14th February 2011.

The underpinning of most technology based startups is the creation of intellectual property (“IP”) in the form of patents, trademarks, and trade secrets (including proprietary designs, software, process recipes, etc.). Yet surprisingly, many technology startups manage this poorly. Management must be diligent in avoiding IP risks, which include:

* Loss of IP rights through failure to obtain proper assignments
* Loss of IP rights through failure to adopt or enforce a lab notebook policy
* Disclosing too much proprietary information in provisional patent applications
* Loss of trade secret rights and foreign patent filing rights through disclosure of the startup’s secrets without an effective non-disclosure agreement
* Breach of non-disclosure obligations through disclosure of a third party’s trade secrets to outsiders
* Misappropriation of the trade secrets of others, especially prior employers
* Infringement of patents and trademarks owned by others
* Having to change the name of the company or its products after brand equity has been built up, due to trademark infringement

Well, that was a swell three-decade run.

It seems a foregone conclusion that French pharmaceutical-maker Sanofi-Aventis will buy Cambridge's Genzyme Corp. sometime soon for about $20 billion. That'll end Genzyme's thirty-year stretch as one of the most innovative (and at times, controversial) pioneers of the biotech industry. With about 12,000 employees and $4 billion in annual revenues, Genzyme is not only the biggest biotech company in Massachusetts, but it's one of the last of the first-generation biotech companies still standing as an independent business. (Two years ago, a Swiss company, Roche Holdings, paid $46 billion for the very first biotech firm, San Francisco-based Genentech, founded in 1976.)

As we enter the second decade of the 21st century, the Internet is no longer an optional resource. It is a fundamental tool encountered in every aspect of our daily lives. We rely on it for business, information, education, communication and personal expression. We use it at our offices, in our homes, on desktops and laptops and even on our phones. The vibrancy of our nation's economy increasingly depends on the growth and utilization of this transformative technology.

After struggling to create your business plan for months, every entrepreneur likes to think that their document is inspirational and will reach someone who is smart enough to see the brilliance of the idea, intuitive enough to recognize their business acumen, and enthusiastic enough to offer the money required to make it happen.

Every serious investor, on the other hand, has a stack of these in their in-basket (email or real plastic) awaiting review, and is looking for the flaw or less-capable entrepreneur in each that predicts failure, allowing them to discard it like another piece of junk mail. Many VC firms and investment banks receive as many as ten plans per day, so it’s hard to get them salivating.

The move from a fully-equipped office--with copiers, doughnuts and an IT specialist--to a home-based office can be tricky. What elements are essential and what can you outsource so you can effectively start, run and manage your business?

The same daily operations need to be taken care of and your computer will still crash, but there are people and programs out there to help. Here are some of the best ways to make "working for yourself" work for you.

The San Jose Mercury News today has a laudatory profile of Susan Wojcicki, SVP Product Management at Google, whom they call with good reason "the most important Googler you've never heard of."

She oversees Google's two main advertising products, AdWords and AdSense, which bring in the vast majority of Google's revenues (and even more of its profits).

As of today, there are 59,300 Google results for the exact search phrase “email vs. social media.” Apparently it’s a hot topic and some people have declared war. It appears that the social-media mavens are already claiming victory by stating that “email is dead.”

On the other hand, many (email-marketing vendors in particular) have come to email’s defense with a lot of data and pretty charts, claiming that email and social media are two peas in a pod and “we’re all in this together.” While I tend to agree with this idea, it’s important to tease out what’s really going on out there.

As western countries jump further into the embrace of open innovation, countries in Asia are forging ahead with innovation investments through R&D. R&D spending is up 27% in India and 40% in China, year on year but in decline globally. Georges Haour runs a rule over the numbers and what they mean for the outlook of the enterprise.

Harvard University has a long way to go to match MIT’s 100K competition for startups - but North Bridge Venture Partners is bringing the storied institution $10,000 closer.

The Waltham venture capital firm will announce today it is putting 10 grand toward this year’s Harvard College Innovation Challenge TECH Prize, tripling the pot for Harvard’s startup competition to $15,000.

Thanks to entrepreneurs like Andrew Mason, Mark Zuckerberg, Jack Dorsey, and others, it has never been cooler to create a startup. The potential for exponential user growth, the raising of angel and VC funding, and of course, the exits via acquisition, IPO or other sort makes the dream of the startup so attractive.

But at what point does the startup simply become just like any other company? At what point does your innovative, young and revolutionary startup lose its “startup” status?

It's been nearly a year since Formula Capital's James Altucher discussed his theory on why sending your kids to college is a bad idea.

The segment proved to be one of Tech Ticker's most popular...and controversial of 2010. (See: Rethinking College as Student-Loan Burdens Rise)