Every year automakers roll out "concept" cars, which incorporate novel design elements that may become standard years from now. Singapore has taken the rarer step of building a concept university, one meant to road-test the latest in teaching theory and academic features.

Singapore University of Technology and Design, now under construction, is a big gamble for a high-tech city-state that considers a globally competitive work force its key to national survival. Government officials are betting more than $700-million that the new venture will cultivate the next generation of innovators in architecture, engineering, and information systems.

One selling point of the institution, which is to start classes on a temporary campus in 2012, is that it is associated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. On many renderings of the logo, the words "Established in collaboration with MIT" appear in red letters, suggesting that the new venture expects to replicate the prestigious U.S. university.

A new laptop designed by students may not self-destruct in 30 seconds, but it can be disassembled in about that amount of time, which makes it easier to safely dispose of when it’s time to throw it out.

A group of seven graduate students, from Stanford University and Finland’s Aalto University, created a prototype of a recyclable laptop as a project for a corporate-sponsored mechanical-engineering class.

The invention, called the Bloom laptop, is made mostly of materials that can be recycled alongside ordinary household items, like metal, plastic, and glass. Materials like LCD screens and circuit boards, which need to be sent to specialized recycling facilities, can be easily separated in a few steps.

When a product manager at Google told his bosses this year that he was quitting to take a job at Facebook, they offered him a large raise. When he said it was not about the money, they told him he could have a promotion, work in a different area or even start his own company inside Google.

He turned down all the inducements and joined Google’s newest rival.

“Google’s gotten to be a lot bigger and slower-moving of a company,” said the former manager, who would speak only on the condition of anonymity to protect business relationships. “At Facebook, I could see how quickly I could get things done compared to Google.”

Google, which only 12 years ago was a scrappy start-up in a garage, now finds itself viewed in Silicon Valley as the big, lumbering incumbent. Inside the company some of its best engineers are chafing under the growing bureaucracy and are leaving to start or work at smaller, nimbler companies.

(1874-1964)
HERBERT HOOVER
Born in West Branch in 1874, Hoover was elected in a landslide in 1928, only to see the U.S. economy begin to crumble just eight months after his inauguration. Contrary to popular belief, Hoover encouraged government activities in agriculture but stopped short of subsidies or production controls. He encouraged Congress to pass the Agricultural Marketing Act, which was aimed at helping farmers to increase efficiency in selling their goods and granting them loans without having to give federal subsidies. But the act and the Farm Board it created failed to overcome corn and livestock surpluses, and when the Great Depression spread to the cities after 1929, the resulting drop in demand plunged agriculture to an all-time low. Hoover failed to carry his native Iowa in his losing bid for re-election against Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932.

Most entrepreneurs have learned that it’s almost always quicker and easier to get cash from someone you know, rather than angel investors or professional investors (VCs). In fact, most investors “require” that you already have some investment from friends and family before they will even step up to the plate.

You see, investors invest in people, before they invest in ideas or products. Since they don’t know you (yet), their first integrity check on you as a person is whether your friends and family believe in you strongly enough to give you seed money for your new idea. If they won’t do it, they why would I as stranger invest in you?

Friends and family will likely not expect the same level of sophistication on the business model and financials as a professional investor, but they do expect to see certain things. Here is a summary of some key items to think about as an entrepreneur before approaching friends, family, or even fools:

1. Don’t be afraid to ask, carefully. If you set around quietly waiting for someone you know to offer you money to fund a startup, you will probably have a long wait. On the other hand, if you open every conversation with “I need money,” you won’t have any friends or any money. Practice your “elevator pitch,” and end it by asking for the order.

CHICAGO — People at risk for osteoarthritis may be able to delay the onset of the disease or even prevent it with simple changes to their physical activity, according to a study presented today at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA).

“According to the results of our study, participating in a high-impact activity, such as running, more than one hour per day at least three times a week appears associated with more degenerated cartilage and potentially a higher risk for development of osteoarthritis,” said the study’s senior author Thomas M. Link, M.D., professor of radiology and chief of musculoskeletal imaging at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). “On the other hand, engaging in light exercise and refraining from frequent knee-bending activities may protect against the onset of the disease.”

Venture capital isn't flowing into U.S. clean-technology companies like it once was, new investment figures show. The sector is suffering from overall uncertainty in the venture market, coupled with fears about investing in businesses that require a lot of capital, insiders say.

"The general trend has been down, but there are a few notable exceptions," says Paul Holland, a general partner with Foundation Capital, which has backed several companies in the energy-efficiency and smart-grid sectors.

Chennai: TiE Chennai's annual flagship conference TiECON CHENNAI 2010 was successfully held at the Chennai Trade on Wednesday. This year's conclave with the theme "money-Money-MONEY" attracted over 1000 entrepreneurs, investors and business school students reinforcing its status as the state's largest show focused on entrepreneurs.

Speaking after inaugurating the conclave and receiving the Lifetime achievement award, N Sankar, Chairman of Sanmar Group said," it is the best time to be an entrepreneur in India, with opportunities in every sector and every area of business." He exhorted the audience to enjoy Entrepreneurship cautioning that it does not work once the fun goes out of it. He also appreciated that values are becoming stronger today and today's younger generation of entrepreneurs are displaying higher levels of integrity.

For the first time in The Scientist’s Salary Survey 10-year history, there has been a dip in salaries over the last year as universities cut bonuses, enforce furloughs, drag out hiring freezes, and even ask faculty members to take one for the team by accepting salary cuts. And with the rising costs of living and operating a lab, it’s not welcome news for anyone.

In 2006, husband-and-wife scientific duo Gia Voeltz and Brian DeDecker moved to Boulder, Colorado, from Boston, Massachusetts, to take up faculty positions as molecular biologists at the University of Colorado. Transitioning from postdoc salaries to two faculty incomes, “I thought we’d have a lot more expendable income,” laughs Voeltz, a biologist at UC. Instead, daycare for two little ones, running upwards of $2,500 per month, and a mortgage for a home in downtown Boulder sucks up most of their collective income, leaving little to stash away for future expenses like college tuition for their kids. “There are plenty of people in the country feeling a lot more pain than us,” DeDecker says, “but we’re not putting away a nest egg, so that’s kind of unsettling.”

Influential technology analyst Mary Meeker has joined one of Silicon Valley’s most respected venture capital firms Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers as a partner.

The move marks the end of an era when investment banks employed high-powered analysts to bring insight to technology trends for their wealthy clients. Meeker, who leaves Morgan Stanley to join Kleiner, was one of a generation of bank analysts who emerged as an early champion of the Internet in the 1990s, and whose excitement about the potential of Internet stocks fueled exuberance that made her banking clients millions, if not billions of dollars — but which later backfired when the stock market crashed in 2000.

Rumors of a Google/Groupon deal have been swirling for weeks, and now Google has apparently bought the daily deal company for $2.5 billion, an anonymous source tells the news site Vator News.

Neither company has confirmed the news yet, and we’ve sent in our own inquiries regarding the deal. All Things Digital reported a few weeks ago that Google and Groupon were in talks, which sparked countless follow-up rumors. At the time, we argued that a Google buyout would be terrible for Groupon because the search giant lacks a human touch.

William Shakespeare once wrote:

There is a tide in the affairs of men
Which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.

See Julius Caesar.

We caught the tide– but just barely. That the Bayh-Dole Act passed was amazing. That it passed in a lame duck session of Congress with its principal author defeated, the US Senate changing hands, and a sitting president thrown out, was a miracle. Even then success was not assured. The bureaucracy was waiting to undermine the implementing regulations. Yet the new law survived, strengthening the economy while improving public health and well-being.

Success depended on slipping through a narrow window of opportunity. In Julius Caesar, Brutus hesitates and is swept away. Fortunately, we launched and caught the tide. This is my “staff’s eye view” of how it happened.

The lightbulb. The telephone. Email. If you’re a specialist in your field, there are two ways to become a household name: create something new, or claim it can never be done. If you want to be remembered on the Internet, choose the second one. Here are 9 examples of breakthroughs, inventions and innovations the experts were completely wrong about.

Earlier this year, Eli Lilly chief executive officer John Lechleiter lamented that US colleges were failing to churn out sufficient numbers of students with bachelor's degrees in science, technology, engineering and math to meet the high-tech needs of the future. This development, he argued in a series of speeches and newspaper columns, is contributing to a lack of needed innovation and, subsequently, placing the long-term health of the U.S. economy at risk.

Congratulations! You’ve decided to take the startup leap.

One of the best parts? Having 1:1 access to incredibly successful people (especially if you’re working with 500 Startups!)

One of the challenges? Making sense of conflicting advice.

I polled some friends and fellow entrepreneurs and they all agreed — you’re going to receive 180-degree conflicting advice on just about every aspect of your company. I’m not just talking about advice from wantreprenuers, armchair quarterbacks, bankers-who’ve-never-run-companies and your mom. I’m also referring to advice from very experienced entrepreneurs with multiple successes under their belts.

Economists say the Great Recession--the longest and deepest since World War II--ended 18 months ago and that the U.S. economy is, in fact, growing again. But growth is relative. Even the rosiest economic forecasts for 2011 come in well under 3 percent growth. Unemployment is still high, and consumer spending is still sluggish.

"However optimistic you may be about your business, you need to let the overall economy temper your expectations," says Scott Shane, an economics professor at Case Western Reserve University and author of The Illusions of Entrepreneurship: The Costly Myths that Entrepreneurs, Investors and Policy Makers Live By. "You need to assume that the recovery is going to be tepid and plan accordingly."

Humans are well-intentioned but lazy creatures; give us a long-winded report about sustainable retailers and we will quickly forget about it. Give us a printable, color-coded guide telling us what brands to avoid and it just might make an impact. Climate Counts, a non-profit that rates companies once a year on their voluntary efforts to mitigate climate change, hopes to do just that with its Striding Shopper campaign.

The campaign, which is being rolled out over the next five weeks, ranks 150 companies representing over 3,000 brands with a color-coded system--red for "stuck," yellow for "starting," and green for "striding." The ranking is based on 22 criteria that determine whether companies have measured their climate footprint, cut down on their potential climate change impacts, supported progressive climate change legislation, and publicly disclosed their climate actions.

“These are difficult days for Ireland,” said Máire Geoghegan-Quinn, Commissioner for Research, Innovation and Science, addressing her compatriots in a speech at Dublin City University this week.

Speaking as the Irish government was negotiating a €85 billion loan, whilst simultaneously preparing spending cuts and tax increases worth €15 billion to add to €15 billion cuts made over the past two years, Geoghegan-Quinn expressed her “absolute confidence” in Ireland's ability to “build a positive future for itself.”

Here, in some highlights from the speech, Geoghegan-Quinn lays out in detail how the EU envisages its science and innovation policies helping Ireland and Europe’s other battered economies to get back on their feet.

‘Science  is more essential for our prosperity, our security, our health, our environment, and our quality of life than it has ever been before’-President Obama, National  Academy of Sciences, April 27, 2009

For those interested in technology-led and innovation-led economic development, recent steps at the federal level to bring some new thinking and programs aligned to the 21^st century economy are running into the reality of the federal budget deficit.

As reported by the State Science and Technology Institute www.ssti.org the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform chairs report has recommended some drastic changes in federal economic development programs.

Unfortunately the press of deficit reduction has moved into policy discussions. Merging the SBA into the Department of Commerce may well be a good idea operationally, but that idea needs to stand on its own and shouldn’t be premised on reducing the deficit. Similarly, the EDA’s recent reforms to link its programs to commercialization, job creation, and an innovation economy should be applauded, and not criticized as straying from ‘its core mission of supporting depressed areas.’

The budgets of these agencies are very small and will have little effect on the overall deficit. Eliminating programs to support U.S, advanced manufacturing, for example, come right at the time when other nations are pouring strategic funds into programs to support their manufacturing sectors. Making cuts in science budgets will only hurt long term prosperity of the US.

Note that these proposals are the views of the chairs of the Commission only. Whether these changes will be adopted by the full National Commission when it issues its report in December, or by the new Congress, are two very big questions. But clearly we need to become engaged and active. All programs will have to share in the burden, but all analysts agree that the big deficit reduction plays are in Social Security, Medicare and the budgets of larger agencies. These commercialization and innovation programs and the accompanying science budgets need our support.

Brian Darmody

Immediate Past President, Association of University Research Parks

Associate VP for Research and Economic Development, University of Maryland

(The views expressed here are solely his own)