Indian government has a reputation for false claims when it comes to technology breakthroughs – the $10 laptop, which wasn’t really a laptop (turned out to be a USB stick) and then the Google Earth Killer, i.e. ISRO Bhuvan added to the technology achievements of the government and brought international shame.

Today, the Union Minister for human Resource Development, Kapil Sibal unveiled a low cost computing-cum-access device which will be priced at $35, and expects the price to gradually drop to $20 (and ultimately to $10!).

At its best, entrepreneurship captures the essence of childhood imagination and adult endeavour. This slick video, written and produced by Sonja Jacob and designed by Ben White, reminds us that creation and determination, fused with possibility, can create great success.

In an earlier post titled “Doing vs. Knowing What to Do” we said “You can repeat what someone else says yet not fully understanding the value of what they said. You can mimic what others do but it doesn’t mean you are mimicking what they know.

Knowing something is reflected by how well you do that which you know. Doing something you don’t know is reflected by the poor results of what you do.  All this being said do you follow what people do or what people know?”

Within the framework of the EU 2020 strategy, the EU is to devote more than six billion euros on research funding — a windfall that will mainly be of benefit to major companies engaged in long-term projects, explains Dutch academic Alfred Kleinknecht.

Next year, the European Union will spend 6.4 billion euros to fund research and innovation projects — a sum that  the Irish EU Commissioner for Research Innovation and Science Máire Geoghegan-Quinn deems to be indispensable if we are to safeguard the future of Europe. As she explains in her own words, “Investment in research and innovation is the only smart and lasting way out of crisis.” The funds in question will be sourced from the Seventh EU Framework Programe for R&D, which will administer a total of 50 billion euros in funding for the 2007-2013 period. Professor Alfred Kleinknecht, who specialises in the economics of innovation at the Delft University of Technology, monitors what becomes of this money and how it is spent.

Minneapolis, MN, USA, July 22, 2010 (PRESSbooth.ORG) -- Innovation Europe is a private group of chief innovators from Europe's largest corporations. This is not just another association: the group was formed by Chief Innovators for Chief Innovators and connects those who are charged with developing breakthroughs for their customers, and helps members build the corporate bottom line through revenue from new sources.

Innovation Europe is currently being built by Generate Companies and is affiliated with their emerging network of U.S. chief innovators groups. The first group members include Rising Tide in Zurich, Switzerland who is a founding member and has provided seed capital for this new initiative. The group is currently offering invitations to 14 additional members from a variety of industries and to companies not in competition with each other.

Earlier this month, Newsweek declared that America is facing a “Creativity Crisis”. According to some researchers, there is evidence that creative potential in young Americans has dropped for the first time in generations…and that might be an early warning sign of cultural decline.

I’m calling shenanigans on you, Newsweek. From where I’m standing, Americans are more creative today than ever before. Ideas travel halfway around the world in an instant, people can get advice on the best ways to solve their most pressing problems any time of the day or night, and innovative entrepreneurs are doing their part to help pull us out of the recession.

As I sometimes like to say- if the licensing side of the university tech transfer business is 29 years old by now, the practice of spinning-out companies based on university intellectual property is still really a teenager. The field is still young enough such that no one has written the definitive book on its application and in the meantime the field simply continues to evolve and grow at a stunning pace. And, like any teenager worth his or her salt, this form of university entrepreneurship is becoming increasingly boisterous, ambitious, somewhat unruly at times and yet is displaying enormous creativity, energy and imagination. As I approach the beginning of my fifth year in this field and with the benefit of having spun-out almost 50 university startups during this period, I have taken a moment to reflect on what I have seen and am seeing occur.

To me, education is a lot like a team sport; the players, with their individual skill sets and advantages, must work together to "score." Take science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education, for example, where the goals are fairly well agreed upon; to increase the number of students -- especially girls -- that enter into STEM fields, shift the negative perceptions and train teachers to become better informed and more enthusiastic advocates of STEM education. Nonprofits, educators, researchers and companies must combine assets and play together to enact positive change.

Motorola recently convened a conference to bring together some of the most innovative key players in the STEM arena to address just that -- how do we work best as a team to reach our collective goals of improving STEM education in the U.S. At the second annual Innovation Generation Network Conference, we shared best practices and learned from one another how to make a positive and cohesive impact. Our discussions yielded three themes:

1. Communication: We need to do a better job of communicating each organization's specific contributions to STEM -- from educators and nonprofits to companies and researchers -- to see where there are opportunities for alignment and gaps still left to be filled. More so, we need to speak the same language. As John Hosteny, director, Corporation for National and Community Service put it, "Nonprofits need to think with a business mindset; those that cannot speak to impact and return on investment for a corporate partner simply do not get the investment."

You get the impression that Joel Kotkin exists mainly to torment the whole urban design intelligentsia. He dismisses as "wishful thinking" its belief that the current economic crisis will set off big changes in the American lifestyle, specifically the retrofitting of communities to make them dramatically more efficient, compact, walkable and less auto-dependent in the years ahead.

In his new book, "The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050," Kotkin agrees with most everyone that the U.S. will experience major population growth in the coming decades. But he expects growth to occur almost entirely on the perimeter of sprawling, low-cost metro areas like Houston and Phoenix, and not so much in the superstar urban enclaves celebrated by the planning elite. Cars, not mass transit, will continue to be the conveyance of choice for nearly everyone, he says, despite concerns about energy independence and the environment.

In previous articles, I have occasionally mentioned “red flags” which every potential investor unconsciously listens for.

Other writers, like Guy Kawasaki, have irreverently called some of these “entrepreneur lies,” but I prefer to think of them as innocent over-enthusiasm or over-confidence that can kill your deal.

At any rate, here is my summary of the top ten from my experience with hundreds of elevator pitches, business plans, and executive presentations.

Slide decks are like pets. They live, breathe, and adapt to their environment - or at least they should. In each of my roles, I've have 2-3 decks at any time that I use to pitch a deal or sell a product.

At Buzzfeed, I use an advertiser deck and one for publishers. I customize these decks, in many cases for each meeting, and also update the boiler plate versions almost every day.

A deck is never perfect and every day you use it you get good feedback. I've probably revised the core Buzzfeed deck close to 100 times. Some tweaks are big, some are small.

Entrepreneurs are small business people trying to get big. Very big, very fast!  They are one of the main engines that drive job creation and economic growth in our country. In fact, they start entire industries that keep jobs at home for decades.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke was recently quoted in the LA Times saying “Making credit accessible to sound small businesses is crucial to our economic recovery, and so should be front and center among our current policy challenges."

Yet due to the depletion of small business stimulus reserves, hundreds of small business loans are currently on hold and lending is down. There are precious few entrepreneurs in DC -- Sen. Mark Warner is the exception to the rule. So it should come as no surprise that neither the Legislative body nor the Executive Branch intuitively understand how entrepreneurs think or how best to drive technological growth.  If they did, we wouldn’t be facing this shortage of funds at such a critical juncture.

Microsoft says it has sold 175 million Windows 7 licenses since the end of October when the new operating system hit the market.

That's a huge number, but to put it context, we've charted it against Apple's unit sales of Macs, iPads, iPods (Touch only) and iPhones over the same period.

America, are you happy? The emotional words contained in hundreds of millions of messages posted to the Twitter website may hold the answer.

Computer scientist Alan Mislove at Northeastern University in Boston and colleagues have found that these "tweets" suggest that the west coast is happier than the east coast, and across the country happiness peaks each Sunday morning, with a trough on Thursday evenings. The team calls their work the "pulse of the nation".

Supersonic passenger travel was grounded in 2003 when British Airways and Air France cancelled their transatlantic Concorde service because of falling revenues and rising maintenance costs. The Aerion Supersonic Business Jet promises to help travelers break the sound barrier again.

Named after a fleet-of-foot horse in Greek mythology, the Aerion Supersonic Business Jet will be able to carry a dozen passengers at speeds of up to Mach 1.5 for more than 4,000 miles. It is currently undergoing proof-of-concept aerodynamic testing of critical components in NASA wind tunnels and under the belly of a NASA F-15 supersonic jet.

Brother Industries says someday you might shake your appliances to get them to work.

Want to generate innovation? Build a hub to make it happen. The U.S. Department of Energy is embarking on an ambitious plan to speed up energy innovation with a $122 million cash injection for an Energy Innovation Hub in California. Dubbed the Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis, the research center will do exactly as its name suggests--develop a solar energy fuel conversion system through artificial photosynthesis and bring it to commercialization.

The DOE has selected an all-star team of researchers to get the hub going. Participants include researchers from Cal Tech, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, and the University of California, Irvine. The project will probably take a long time to get going--solar fuels have lagged in research and development for years, and bringing them into widespread use will take a concerted effort.

Kevin Nakao: The word intrapreneur was first coined by Pacific Northwesterner Gifford Pinchot III, grandson of the first Chief of the United States Forest Service, who popularized the term in his best-selling book “Why You Don't Have to Leave the Corporation to Become an Entrepreneur." According to Pinchot, Intrapreneurs are those people within a corporation who turn an idea into a profitable finished product through assertive risk-taking and innovation.

Seattle is home to a number of startups and corporations alike, the most successful of which leverage intrapreneurism to foster innovation and bring products to market efficiently. I have been lucky in that intrapreneurship has played a fulfilling role in my professional life at both the startups and mid and large-sized corporations that I have worked for.

The Seed Stage is where the Entrepreneur has the most control on developing the business. It is prior to outside capital, unless of course the Entrepreneur or principals have invested their own seed capital.

The Seed Stage has the following characteristics:

• The Entrepreneur idea is being flushed out
• The Business Plan is in development
• The Principals are recruiting their management team
• Initial Capital Requirements is determined and sought
• The Company most likely has no revenue or very little
• Establishing your legal structure

Here's one more tiny anecdote to go with the news that the iPad is having pretty much the most amazing new-product launch in the history of technology.

(Can you think of a bigger one?  One that proliferated this quickly and generated this much revenue this fast?  Netscape's Navigator went bananas, as did a whole bunch of other software and web site-based products.  But those were free or near-free.  This is a $500-$900 gadget.  And I'm not counting the iPhone 4, which is a new upgrade.  I'm talking about a completely new product.)

Here's my iPad anecdote: One month after we got it, my kids are addicted to the darn thing.