President Obama’s second State of the Union address presented a comprehensive economic philosophy for the progressive movement in this century. The mantra of the conservative movement since Reagan popularized the now-defunct concept of trickle-down economics has been clearly stated and often repeated: tax cuts, less government. Ask anyone what forms the basis of the conservative economic philosophy and those four words will be among the first you will hear.

But what is the correspondingly simple mantra for the progressive economic philosophy? That is a harder question to answer, even for progressives. But after last night’s address we now have a strong candidate: innovation and competitiveness.

As more and more electrified vehicles hit the floors of car dealerships, conventional wisdom has it that the market won’t get moving without richer incentives and dense battery-charging networks.

Yet our research on demand for electric cars in very large urban areas1 shows that plug-in hybrid electric vehicles and battery-only electric vehicles could account for 16 percent of overall new-car sales in New York, 9 percent in Paris, and 5 percent in Shanghai by 2015. That’s true even with today’s financial incentives and limited public charging facilities.2

I spend most of my time at Babson launching projects in other countries to foster entrepreneurship, but I was in the U.S. this week, the White House specifically, for the start-up of Start-Up America. Bravo President. Bravo White House. Bravo corporate America. Bravo private foundations, think tanks and NGOs. Bravo entrepreneurs. Bravo venture capitalists. This could be a good one. Start-Up America is getting a few things right, not to be taken lightly; but it is far from a done deal:

* Obama has convened a broad group of entrepreneurship stakeholders. Many governments play too interventionist a role, and forget that to succeed, entrepreneurship requires an entire ecosystem, each aspect with its own committed stakeholders, not just government reform and support.

Just as the Internet replaced telephone operators and the nightly news anchor as the default source of information, teachers may be next on the chopping block. Automated learning is a cheap solution to recession-swelling class sizes and renewed calls to make technological innovation a centerpiece of education.

Districts all over are experimenting with teacher-less computer labs and green-lighting entire classrooms of adult-supervised children exploring the Internet--an Android powered tablet designed specifically for students. Teachers' unions' protests notwithstanding, the cybernetic takeover might mean a redefinition of "teacher" as a research assistant or intellectual coach, since subject-matter lecturers are no match for access to the entirety of human knowledge.

Biosciences and Job Growth

America’s bioscience industry is helping to diversify and grow the U.S. economy. American bioscience innovations in health, energy and agriculture are creating high-skill, high-wage jobs, driving economic growth and output and helping to improve the quality of life for Americans from coast to coast.

Defining the "Biosciences"

The biosciences are a diverse group of industries and activities with a common link- they apply knowledge of the way in which plants, animals, and humans function. The sector spans different markets and includes manufacturing, services, and research activities. By definition, the biosciences are a unique industry cluster and are constantly changing to incorporate the latest research and scientific discoveries. The bioscience industry sector is defined as including the following four subsectors:

* Agricultural feedstock and chemicals
* Drugs and pharmaceuticals
* Medical devices and equipment
* Research, testing, and medical labs

Since its inception in 1996 the Global Award for Entrepreneurship Research has become firmly established as the foremost global award for research on entrepreneurship. This Prize is awarded annually and it consists of the statuette "The Hand of God”, created by Swedish Sculptor Carl Milles, and a Prize sum of 100,000 euros.

TechStars, the Boulder-born business incubator, is expanding to include entrepreneurship boot camps in 12 U.S. cities, creating a network of startup accelerators that aims to create 25,000 jobs nationwide by 2015.

The TechStars Network was among several partnerships between the tech industry and the federal government announced Monday as part of the Startup America program.

Water flowing into the Arctic Ocean from the Atlantic Ocean is about 2 °C warmer today than it has been for at least 2,000 years, according to a study published in Science1. The findings add to the picture of Earth's warming waters and melting sea ice, and the researchers suggest that the temperature rise is linked to amplification of climate change in the Arctic.

Robert Spielhagen, a palaeoceanographer at the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences in Kiel, Germany, and his colleagues focused on the Fram Strait, which runs between Greenland and Norway's Svalbard archipelago, and which hosts the biggest channel of warm water flowing into the Arctic. The current of warm water lies 50 metres below the surface, and can reach a balmy 6 °C in summer — warm in comparison to the frigid Arctic, where icy surface waters can be -2 °C.

– When Jabber Jury officially goes live with its online programming at 10 a.m. Tuesday, it will be largely due to out-of-state venture capital that funded the Chicago startup.

The company had little more than a concept to show investors last November when it attracted $1.2 million from Everett Palmer, a venture capitalist at Lightwater LLC in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla. Palmer knew president and chief executive Kevin Wielgus and liked Jabber Jury’s concept, which invites users to view videos depicting two sides of a dispute and vote on who’s right. “This will be the Facebook of conflictainment,” Palmer said.

MANCHESTER, N.H.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--FIRST ® (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology), a not-for-profit organization founded by inventor Dean Kamen, announced today that FIRST ® LEGO® League (FLL®) teams across the globe can compete for the chance to win a cash award and recognition toward patenting a proposed invention in the newly created FLL Global Innovation Award. The award, which provides FLL teams an opportunity to submit ideas stemming from their current season’s FLL Challenge, will first be ranked online by public vote and later judged by an expert panel to determine the winning idea.

One winning team will be granted a cash award of up to $20,000 presented by the X PRIZE Foundation, and the top three teams will be invited to the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) just outside of Washington, D.C. to present to a panel and to participate in an awards ceremony.

This Saturday I attended the Humanity+ conference in London which was packed full of incredible talks about the impact of technology on biology and what it might mean for medicine and human longevity (topics you might remember me covering when I wrote a series of posts on Kurzweil’s Singularity theory).

The second presentation was a standout from an instant impact point of view though. Professor Kevin Warwick of Reading University has created a robot with a biological brain that learns. We only saw videos, but they were incredible to watch. The robot was built in 2008, so this is not new news, just new to me.

UPDATE: Even airplane pilots are caught up in the excitement. Check out this photo of pilots waving Terrible Towels.

EARLIER: Steeler Fever has taken over Pennsylvania in anticipation of Sunday's Super Bowl XLV.

At St. Clair Hospital, newborns are being wrapped in the Steelers' trademark Terrible Towels this week because "They’re born Steelers fans here in Pittsburgh,” according to Sharon Johnson, a clinical supervisor at the hospital.

January 31, 2011 – The DCU Ryan Academy Propeller Accelerator is today announcing that it is now a member of the TechStars Network, a newly launched White House sponsored alliance of independently owned and operated startup accelerator programs from dozens of cities across the United States and around the world.

The TechStars Network is comprised of other startup accelerator programs similar to the Propeller Accelerator that provide seed funding and mentorship to innovative entrepreneurs. The DCU Ryan Academy’s Propeller Accelerator will collaborate with these organizations and learn best practices from the mentorship-driven model pioneered by TechStars, the leading startup accelerator program in the United States. As a member of the TechStars Network, the Propeller Accelerator will have access to a rich set of strategic resources including professional development and ongoing support to effectively lead and mentor innovative entrepreneurs in Dublin.

Governor Terry E. Branstad today unveiled the legislation to replace the current Iowa Department of Economic Development (IDED) with the Iowa Partnership for Economic Progress (IPEP). This will be a public-private partnership tasked with promoting and marketing our state to attract new investments and jobs.

The proposed legislation is found here.

The mission of IPEP will be: “To grow and diversify Iowa’s economy by encouraging the creation of high quality jobs for its citizens through business recruitment, retention, expansion and creation.”

Venture capitalists are feeling good about the launch of Startup America, a White House-led partnership of private companies and investors to promote entrepreneurship in the U.S., but acknowledge that it’s impossible to say what long-term impact the program will have.

“It will be interesting to see what this ultimately becomes,” said Randy Hawks, a managing director with Claremont Creek Ventures. “At a minimum it’s a good showcase for what everybody’s already doing. It helps the policy makers understand how much force is behind the entrepreneurial economy.”

Representatives of Startup America couldn’t be reached in time to comment about the group’s specific plans for the future.

New Ontario $50 million Smart Grid initiative will launch in 2011 to enable research, capital and demonstration projects

Phoenix, AZ – EUEC2011 – Jan. 31, 2011 – Executives from the Ontario Clean Technology Alliance are attending 2011’s Energy, Utility & Environment Conference in Phoenix, AZ this week to invite environmental technology companies from around the world to participate in the Province of Ontario’s clean technology revolution. The Canadian province offers North America’s most advanced green energy policies, targeted incentives and a generous Feed-in Tariff (FIT) Program to expansion-minded clean technology companies.

The Ontario Power Authority’s FIT Program is modeled after successful programs in Germany and France. It features North America’s first comprehensive, guaranteed pricing structure for renewable electricity production, offering stable prices under long-term contracts for solar photovoltaic, on-shore and off-shore wind, biomass, biogas, landfill gas, and waterpower energy.

We could be just a few weeks away from running out of Internet addresses.

Vint Cert, one of the fathers of the Internet, didn’t realize back in the 1970s that we might one day run out of addresses for his creation. Back in 1977, he was one of those who came up with a system which allocated 4.3 billion addresses for users and other entities, an unfathomably large number at the time. No one, Cerf included, foresaw that billions of smartphones, PCs and laptops would need their own unique addresses.

It’s well-known that women-owned companies receive only a tiny fraction of angel and venture capitalist money. The latest Angel Market Report, from the University of New Hampshire’s Center for Venture Research, says women-owned ventures account about for 11% of angel funding. But whether it’s because so few women seek VC dollars or there is rampant discrimination has been a matter of debate.