The Commission’s Innovation Union proposals were endorsed by the EU27 heads of state at their council meeting on Friday (4 February). The time available to discuss the plan was cut short by the more pressing issues of energy security, stabilising the Euro, and unrest in Egypt. But it is clear that measures to promote innovation are now seen as central to attempts to revive national economies and increase Europe’s competitiveness.

This was billed as the first time ever that innovation had made it onto the agenda at an EU Council meeting, but in the end the topic was squeezed into the late afternoon, as EU heads of state dedicated the morning to energy, had a long lunch break in which the 17 members of the single currency discussed governance of the Euro area, and then made time to exchange views on the unrest in Egypt and Tunisia.

As a result, EU leaders focussed only on the headline innovation issues, including the single European patent, completing the European Research Area, joint research programming, moves to create a single European market for venture capital, effective standardisation and using public procurement as a driver of innovation.

U.S. Senators Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and Scott Brown (R-MA) introduced bipartisan legislation this week that they say would help revitalize America’s innovative edge and ability to compete in the global economy.

The Innovate America Act would cut red tape to help businesses utilize research and development for new products, target successful education programs, and promote U.S. exports in new markets to strengthen America’s ability to innovate and compete in the global economy.

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.

Most technology startups seem to be funded by product people or business people. Specifically what is often not in the DNA of founders are sales skills. Nor do they exist in the investors of early-stage companies.

The result is a lack of knowledge of the process and of sales people themselves.

My first startup was no different. I had never had any sales training so everything we did for the first couple of years was instinctual. While we did fine learning on the fly, it turned out that a lot of what we did was wrong. I’ve started writing up some of those sales & marketing lessons and I plan to continue to build that section out over time.

The AgeLab at M.I.T. is partnering with businesses to develop new technologies geared toward helping seniors stay healthy, active and independent.

GIVEN the widespread adoption of smartphones, text messaging, video calling and social media, today’s professionals mean it when they brag about staying connected to work 24/7.

Technology allowed Karen Riley-Grant, a manager at Levi Strauss in San Francisco, to take care of some business with her New York publicist while she was in labor in the hospital last November. “I had time on my hands,” she says, and “full strength on my phone — five bars.”

It once enabled Craig Wilson, an executive at Avaya in Toronto, to take his children to a Linkin Park concert and be able to duck out to finish a task for a client in Australia, he says, “without disruption to my family commitment or my work commitment.”

America's story has been forged in large part by entrepreneurs who have, against great odds, created innovative products and services that have changed the world - and created millions of jobs.

Today, as the Internet and new social technologies continue to explode and create new opportunities, as science and medicine advance at lightning speeds, and as the world grows more interconnected, the opportunities for entrepreneurship abound, but it’s up to a new class of creative risk-takers to unleash the next wave of American innovation.

I recently spoke at a CEO summit with a group of IT executives from Silicon Valley and China. Naturally many were concerned about the slowdown of Silicon Valley innovation as well as the copycatting and IP protection issues in China. I challenged the group to think about innovation in the bigger context of human civilization. Is tech innovation really slowing down, and is copying really that bad?

A proposal by Gov. Terry Branstad to replace the Iowa Department of Economic Development with a public-private partnership is drawing praise from private sector developers.

Branstad’s “Iowa Partnership for Economic Progress” would be charged with promoting and marketing the state to attract investments and jobs. The public part of the partnership would take over the duties current handled by the Iowa Department of Economic Development and the non-profit portion would solicit and accept private donations that would be used to recruit and retain business.

On Thursday, my analyst, Tim McIntosh, and I participated in the “reverse venture fair” put on by FundingPost in New York City. Instead of VCs going around to see the displays and visit the tables of start-up companies, it was the VCs who had the tables, and entrepreneurs came to check us out. Tim and I had about 75 companies come to visit us during the 4 hours we were there. So I have a sufficiently large sample size to make some suggestions, with the hope of being helpful to leaders of small companies.

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.

Today, we publish our fourth State of Green Business report, GreenBiz.com's annual effort to take the pulse of what and how the world of sustainable business is doing.

It's an interesting time to take this accounting, to say the least. In society, environmental issues seem to have faded from view, at least in the U.S., thanks in large part to the recession. "Saving the earth" has taken a back seat to simply saving the day. The politics of the moment seem to have made clean air, clean water, biodiversity, and planetary survival a controversial thing -- something we can afford only in "good times." Consumers continue to sit largely on the sidelines, taking small (but, for them, meaningful) actions, like recycling, employing reusable shopping bags, and buying energy-efficient products.

The economist Joseph Schumpeter coined the term "creative destruction" in the late 1930s—long before Moore's law and the creative destruction that was unleashed by a doubling of computing power every 18 months. Compared with the events of recent decades, what Schumpeter saw was creative destruction in slow motion. And the pace of innovation has picked up markedly in the last five years, because the spread of smart phones, tablets, and other mobile devices is letting us all take the incredible power of the Internet with us wherever we go.

To come out ahead, companies should follow four principles:

Think big, start small, fail quickly, scale fast.

Soaring. Sky rocketing. Surging. Call it what you want. The companies on our list of this year's fastest-growing franchises -- gleaned from Entrepreneur's 2011 Franchise 500® list -- have exploded in size despite a difficult economic climate.

The rankings are based on growth as measured by the number of open and operating units in the U.S. and Canada during the 12 months ending July 31, 2010. A majority of the franchises on our list of 10 are commercial cleaning companies.

Is success in social networking measured by the number of “Friends” you have on Facebook, or “Followers” you have on Twitter, or “Connections” you make on LinkedIn?

The jury is still out on how social media and social networking will ultimately play out, but new research shows real benefits are being realized from it.

A Harris Poll conducted December 6-10, 2010 found, “Social media has opened the door, or more accurately, many doors, to increasingly numerous ways for people to interact with others, customize their online experiences and receive positive, enriching benefits from their activity therein. In fact, two in five Americans say that they have received a good suggestion for something to try as a result of their use of social media (40%).”

NASVF is looking for speakers and topics for the 18th Annual Conference.  This year’s theme:  “Innovation Capital:  Leading America’s Recovery” and is being held October 17-19, 2011 in Arlington, Texas.

• Entrepreneurial Development
• Economic Development
• Innovation Capital Formation
• Tech Transfer Strategies for Commercialization

You have to love when someone “makes your case” – that is – says or supports something you believe in as well.

Today’s post by Seth Godin makes the case that space matters.

This supports what I call the 3Ps of brainstorming and strategy meetings: people, process, and place. The most successful and productive meetings are a result of pulling together the right people, using the right process, hosted in the right place.

While money doesn’t seem to grow on trees (yet), it’s easier today for the little company to get the funding they need to turn a dream into reality. With crowdfunding sites, you can begin to find investors who are interested in sending money to you to support your project. Whether you want to begin a new company or get a movie into a film festival, crowdfunding is a way to reach out to the larger community, to a community that wants to see the underdog win the race toward success.

Drexel University plans to boost its research and technology-transfer efforts and will look to the east to expand its campus, its president, John Fry, said in an interview with the Business Journal.

Fry, who began his tenure as Drexel’s 14th president on Aug. 1, said the university’s Office of Research will be adding at least eight people to its staff of nearly 50. The additions include four who will join the five at the Technology Commercialization Office, which is part of the Office of Research.

The Maryland Technology Development Corp. plans to launch its first venture capital fund later this year.

Tedco’s goal is to create a pool of money — between $50 million and $100 million — to back early-stage Maryland companies, said Robert Rosenbaum, Tedco’s president and executive director. Rosenbaum expects to begin recruiting institutional investors and wealthy individuals for the fund starting in mid-2011. His goal is for the fund to make its first investment by January 2012.