WHEN Barbara Landau, an environmental and land-use lawyer in suburban Boston, was shopping for insurance on the energy-efficient home she and her husband were building in the woods just outside of town here, she was routinely asked what sort of furnace the home would have.

“None,” she replied.

Several insurers declined coverage.

“They just didn’t understand what we were trying to do,” Mrs. Landau recalls. “They said the pipes would freeze.”

There’s some press chatter around about “express” licenses. Here and here and here.

We were using this sort of approach a decade ago to manage non-exclusive licensing programs for specific projects. The idea is, for a given technology base, use a stable agreement so everyone gets reasonable, non-discriminatory access to what you have. Open source licenses such as the BSD and GPL are obvious examples. Our variations allowed recipients to negotiate from the standard agreement 1) to meet their local conditions 2) to offer something back to the project and 3) to improve the standard relationship for everyone. A take-it-or-leave-it approach doesn’t do this, and is only more efficient in that you don’t care about anticipating early relationships and only will deal with folks willing to take what you are offering.

KWR International, Inc., a consulting firm specializing in global market entry, has identified six critical steps for businesses looking to break into foreign markets. The steps include detailed guidelines and tips about foreign vs. local market differentiation, timing market entry decisions, tips on due diligence, market entry project management, tips for small companies and guidelines for taking the initial steps into foreign markets.

"It's all but axiomatic," posits an article in haaretz.com, an Israeli business website, "at least among the public that reads the papers."

"High-tech is the main growth driver of Israel's economy."

High-tech is in trouble because of the global economic crisis, the article explains, noting that the scarcity of funding and the reluctance among Israel's institutional investors to invest in it.

The high-tech industry is drying up the argument goes, and soon startups will starve for cash.

Activision Blizzard, Inc. (Nasdaq: ATVI) announced today that it has joined Change the Equation (CTEq), a corporate-led initiative to cultivate widespread literacy in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). First announced last week by President Obama, CTEq will not only achieve the President's Educate to Innovate campaign mission to increase private and philanthropic involvement in STEM education, but also will meet a critical need for a workforce and a citizenry fluent in science and math.

Instead of another boring lecture, last week my students at UC-Berkeley got quite a treat: a lively discussion with TechCrunch founder Mike Arrington. I once described Mike as a cross between Oprah Winfrey and Howard Stern; so I was ready for a little controversy. But he ended up lighting such a big fire, that I’ve been bombarded with questions from students about their education and careers. The questions aren’t just coming from Berkeley; after the discussion was posted on TechCrunch, students at Duke asked me to discuss this at a keynote I am giving at their entrepreneurship symposium on Wednesday; and students at other schools, from as far as India and Singapore, have asked for advice.  So I’ll just respond here in the hope of quenching this fire.

Apple has tipped its hand on future iPad designs by filing for patents in China. According to Patently Apple, the new patent filings show a number of changes to the design of the iPad, which has become the hottest-selling tablet computer in history.

The designs may or may not be used in future iPads. One change is the ability to plug an iPad into a dock in horizontal mode rather than just vertical. The designs show an extra 30-pin connector on the horizontal bezel of the iPad. The second picture shows how the extra dock port could be useful; you can turn the iPad sideways and plug it into a keyboard so that you can type and view the screen in horizontal mode.

If economic development experts agree on one thing, it's this: If your city doesn't change with the times, it will wither and die.

It's an adage that's on the minds of Charlotte leaders, who quietly worry that a city built for so long on banking won't be able to veer from its familiar course and forge into the new economy.

But plenty of cities have seen their main industry decline or even disappear and have met the challenge head-on, emerging stronger and more diversified. Here's advice from a few of them for Charlotte:

Special to Innovation America by Dr. Janice Presser, CEO, The Gabriel Institute

I got into it with a ‘sales expert’ yesterday. He told me that “sales is a warrior’s job and the warrior works alone.” I thought, don’t bet your moccasins on that.

It’s true that the best salespeople seem to be ‘hunters’ and not ‘gatherers’. But it’s also true that the most valuable hunters are the ones who hunt for the good of their tribe—not just for themselves. In sales, these hunters remain true to their mission. The needs of their tribe take precedence over their personal interests.

[Cut to scene in forest clearing, as the famed hunter returns to village with his kill.]
Hunter: “Chief, I bring back this white crow. What a great challenge it was to stalk and kill it. What perfect aim of my arrow. My skills as a hunter are unsurpassed!
Chief: “There are fifty mouths to feed, and you call this dinner?”
Hunter: “Ingrate!”

There’s more to being a great salesperson than closing deals. Let’s suppose that sales dollar volume is being met, but most of the ‘wins’ are on low-margin existing product, or product that is in short supply, when the company really needs to move the new high-margin product line, or to reduce excess inventory. Where does that leave you? And what if you have a sales ‘superstar’ who surpasses quota by telling customers just what they want to hear, without a care that the Support, Tech, and/or Production teams will have to miss deadlines and burn up time and cash trying to meet unrealistic expectations.

Today's world looks increasingly like the future. Robots work factory assembly lines and fight alongside human warriors on the battlefield, while tiny computers assist in everything from driving cars to flying airplanes. Surgeons use the latest technological tools to accomplish incredible feats, and researchers push the frontiers of medicine with bioengineering. Science fiction stories about cloning and resurrecting extinct animals look increasingly like relevant cautionary tales.

But even the best of science and technology has yet to solve climate change and famine, or conquer disease. More and more people live on a planet with shrinking resources, which leads to political strife and conflict.

Despite the presence of an established and developed venture capital sector in Ireland, small enterprises are struggling for support. Unless this funding gap is met it could damage Ireland’s smart economy agenda

A NATION DRIVEN by a smart economy and populated by innovative entrepreneurs bursting with new ideas. That’s the dream. The Government is backing these leaders with strong words. But, as with every business idea, to get from the back of the envelope, the laptop or the garage workshop and into practice takes investment. And that’s where the much-lauded roadmap out of recession starts to look a little threadbare.

Do you have an old PC collecting dust in the garage? Don't let it end up as landfill. Here are some creative ways you can upcycle your PC.

This site covers the basics such as recycling, donating or selling your old PC. In the UK, your old PCs can be recycled by Computeraid who'll wipe all the data (including your search history, if you're wondering) and give them to schools and communities who need them.

You’re busy. I’m busy. As small business owners, we’re all busy and we’re all looking for ways to get more done in less time. And that means doing everything we can to increase our productivity. Below are six ways that I’ve been able to be more productive. I’d love if you could share your own tips.

1. Use the right tools.

One way small business owners kill their productivity is by using the wrong tool for the job. They keep using their pen and notebook when they should be using a tool like Evernote to trap and record their ideas. They waste time manually entering receipts into QuickBooks instead of using something like Shoeboxed that can quickly handle their accounting for them. As a small business owner, it’s worth it to spend some time finding the tools that you need to better run your business. Don’t try to hack a tool to do something it’s not supposed to do. We live in an economy where it’s pretty easy to find free, online productivity tools. Don’t be afraid to use them.

AFTER Kenya’s disputed election in 2007 Ory Okolloh, a local lawyer and blogger, kept hearing accounts of atrocities. State media were not interested. Private newspapers lacked the money and manpower to investigate properly. So Ms Okolloh set up a website that allowed anyone with a mobile phone or an internet connection to report outbreaks of violence. She posted eyewitness accounts online and even created maps that showed where the killings and beatings were taking place.

Ms Okolloh has since founded an organisation called Ushahidi, which puts her original idea into practice in various parts of the world. It has helped Palestinians to map the violence in Gaza and Haitians to track the impact of the earthquake that devastated their nation in January. It even helped Washingtonians cope with the “snowmaggedon” that brought their city to a halt this year. Ushahidi’s success embodies the principles of wikinomics.

Micro-VCs and super angels have crowed about remaking the traditional venture-capital model, but are they really any different traditional venture capital investors?

That was up for debate this morning, not in a blog flame war, but on a live panel, Mass High Tech's Finance Forum, before about 120 angels, VCs and entrepreneurs in a hall at Bingham McCutcheon’s Federal Street headquarters in Boston.

“The question for today is, how [expletive deleted] up is venture capital,” said moderator Shawn Broderick, executive director of TechStars Boston and a 2010 MHT All Star.

The City's first Culture Plan was approved, by unanimous vote, on Tuesday, Sept. 21 by City Council.

This document, which will guide the cultural development of Kingston over the next decade, was the result of year-long process lead by the City's Cultural Services Department that engaged the Canadian Urban Institute to facilitate a wide range of consultations both inside City Hall and within the community to look at ways to support cultural vitality to benefit local residents as well as visitors to the area.

Between September 2009 and May 2010 numerous meetings, workshops and discussions were held with key stakeholders in the visual, performing, and literary arts as well as museums, the heritage community, social services, local business and those involved in the creative economy. The purpose of these sessions was to identify a shared set of needs, aspirations and values to shape the cultural development of the Kingston community going forward.

WASHINGTON -- Eli Lilly and Co. Chief Executive Officer John Lechleiter on Thursday praised some of the steps the federal government has taken to encourage regional innovation clusters such as Indiana's life-sciences initiative.

The help includes about $50 million in federal funding for the state's health information exchange, the nation's most advanced health information network.

But Lechleiter pushed for additional steps, including tax changes, improving math and science education, and making it easier for companies to hire top scientists from other countries.

Maybe you've noticed that the economy isn't so hot.

And Saeed Amidi isn't going to lie to you: It's not likely to get better any time soon.

"It's going to be tough for a couple of years," says Amidi, an Iranian immigrant who's become one of the quiet giants of Silicon Valley. I ran into Amidi outside his office as I toured the Plug and Play Tech Center in Sunnyvale, which Amidi started nearly five years ago.

Plug and Play is an entrepreneurial hothouse of more than 200 young companies. I'd come in search of an answer to a question: With the economy in deep distress, what is it that keeps entrepreneurs going?

I believe rural communities need to strengthen their brand as a part of their economic and community development plans. Too often people see rural communities as places of the past rather than of the future. We need to change that.

So when I stumbled across an opinion piece offering a contrarian view, I thought I’d encounter arguments I disagree with. I was right and wrong.