The Google-Apple technology battle is among the fiercest in tech.

But how about something even more important: The food each company provides its employees.

With great career opportunities at both companies, potential Google or Apple hires will have a tough decision to make. And in the end, it may come down to the food. 

Both Google and Apple offer exclusive, gourmet meals to their employees. Apple is known for its Caffè Macs cafeteria, but Google maintains at least a dozen restaurants in Mountain View and New York.

Who wins this one?

The incoming Belgian EU Presidency plans to devote the autumn European summit to innovation policy, but a long-awaited report by President Van Rompuy on economic governance is set to overshadow long-term strategies.

EU leaders are due to debate a new 'Research and Innovation Plan' when they meet in Brussels in the autumn, with the focus likely to be on intellectual property, research funding, public procurement and innovation infrastructure.

The final version of the plan is due to be approved at a subsequent summit in December, leaving ample time for national industry and research ministers to flesh out the Commission's proposal in detail. 

It will be the first time an EU summit has been earmarked for innovation policy, but ongoing instability in the euro zone could relegate the issue to the bottom of the agenda – just as the Greek debt crisis took the spotlight off the 'Europe 2020' jobs strategy at the Spanish Presidency's spring summit.

Someone emailed last year to ask what we would do to set a “creativity movement” in motion in Memphis. The answer came quickly: “Appoint Jeff Nesin the Memphis czar of creativity.”

That’s because we don’t know anyone who understands the importance of creatives and the creative economy more than the gifted president of the Memphis College of Art; however, we also know that Mr. Nesin would immediately demur, suggesting that the movement would be best led by the people it seeks to serve – the creative members of our city themselves.

Since that email, Mr. Nesin has relocated to New York City to have quicker response times for his aging parents.

Every firm has the capacity to innovate, so what’s often lacking has to do with strategy and vision. To be an “innovative” company means being willing to be different – to upset the structure of competition in an industry. So, one of the first things a non-innovative company must do is to decide to be different – to become a leader and a pioneer rather than a follower. To become proactive rather than reactive. As we like to say, the firm must leave the “safety of sameness”.

Next, once the decision has been made at the executive levels to embrace innovation, someone must communicate or define clear innovation goals or strategies. This can be as simple as defining a major problem to solve or opportunity to address. Innovators need clear targets, and those targets need to align to important corporate strategies.

Douglas P. Hart, a professor of mechanical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who sold his last start-up for a tidy $95 million, is already on to his next big thing.

On Tuesday, he expects to lock up $1.5 million in funding for his new start-up, Lantos Technologies, Bob Tedeschi reports in The New York Times. The company has developed a 3-D scanner that it hopes will streamline the current generation of earphones and hearing aids by precisely fitting them to the dimensions of the ear canal, right up to the eardrum.

“We’re hoping people will be able to walk in the store and have their ears scanned like people get their ears pierced today,” he says. “That’ll lower the cost because they don’t have to go to a specialty doctor.”

BEIJING] Elite science 'studios', the dispersal of graduates into rural areas, and awards for overseas scientists who return home form part of an aggressive plan to transform China into a hotbed of talent over the next decade.

The Medium and Long-term Talent Development Plan (2010–2020), the first ever national-level talent cultivation plan, was issued by the Communist Party of China (CPC) and the State Council earlier this month (6 June).

China hopes to develop six major categories of talent — including one for high-tech researchers — with the ultimate aim of transforming itself from a labour-rich country to a 'talent-intensive' one.

The plan includes a key goal of increasing the ratio of researchers from 25 per 10,000 in 2008 to 43 in 2020. By 2020, the ambition is to have 3.8 million researchers — and 40,000 high-level scientists leading innovation.

A decade ago, Germany launched a renewable-­energy plan on an unprecedented scale. Its parliament, the Bundestag, enacted a law obligating the nation's electric utilities to purchase green power at sky-high rates--as much as 60 cents per kilowatt-hour for solar--under fixed contracts lasting up to 20 years. (German market prices for electricity, largely produced by coal and nuclear plants, were about 12 cents per kilowatt-hour.) The idea behind this "feed-in tariff" was that anyone would be able to build a renewable-power plant--or install rooftop solar panels--and be guaranteed predictable profits by feeding energy into the grid, where utilities would buy it at premium prices. The higher costs would be passed on as monthly surcharges to ratepayers, spread out among all homes and businesses in a country of about 80 million people. Fossil and nuclear fuels amount to "global pyromania," said Hermann Scheer, the German politician who championed the policy. "Renewable energy is the fire extinguisher."

How we see the world impacts our use of language and our use of language impacts how we see the world. Cognitive scientists in the vein of Benjamin Whorf regularly investigate the connections to thought and language use, including how visual perception varies across languages. Since I use (authentic) visual media to assist in foreign language acquisition, my research does have a practical side to the normally impenetrable fields of visual cognition and psycholinguistics. I use photographs at the earliest stages of language learning to train the brain not only in the use of new words, but literally how to "see" in the new language. Seeing a language differently embeds that language into a visual cultural context for the learner and makes for more effective recall later.

Let's look at two aspects of the visual world that provide good examples of how the visual impacts language and vary between languages and cultures: Color & Space.

Times are not good for the venture capital industry. A recent press release from the National Venture Capital Association and Cambridge Associates explained that ten year returns for investments in venture capital funds were now negative.

While the decade-long trend of poor financial returns to limited partners is the headline grabber, the venture capital industry has witnessed a number of other changes over the last decade.

At a May 2010 workshop on venture capital at the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, I made a presentation outlining some of the industry trends. Rather than write about what the presentation said, I’m posting it here.

June 28 (Bloomberg) -- New York University created a venture-capital pool to encourage discoveries by faculty and students that can turn into profit-making undertakings.

Outlays by the fund will range from $100,000 to $1 million each, beginning next year, and will go to start-up companies commercializing NYU research, the university said today in a statement. The fund expects to start producing income for the university in five to seven years, said Frank Rimalovski, the fund’s managing director.

NYU received $2 million toward the pool from the sale of an information-technology venture earlier this year, and will seek $18 million from donors, said Rimalovski, who assumed his post in May.

“We’re looking to build an investor syndicate to support the growth of companies -- Internet, life sciences and information technology, for example -- that we spin out of NYU,” Rimalovski said in an interview.

EMILY, which stands somewhat awkwardly for EMergency Integrated Lifesaving lanYard, is a new robotic lifeguard that could help save lives at our nation's beaches. It's a four-foot-long motorized buoy in appearance, but there's a lot more under the hood.

Says PopSci, EMILY is equipped with an electric motor somewhat similar to that of a Jet-Ski, which gives the buoy enough power to move at 28mph through even difficult waters--about six times faster than a human lifeguard. It's got some serious tech under the hood as well. EMILY uses sonar to sense the motions of a swimmer in distress (I assume "panicked flailing" is a distinctive motion in the water), working as a guide to find anyone in need of help.

Unlike a majority of academicians, Dartmouth’s Tillman Gerngross’ approach to biological research has always been extremely focused and, most importantly, practical. This, along with a relentless drive to push the “scientific envelope” and an uncanny willingness to embrace change, has enabled him to transform himself from a tenured professor at an Ivy League college in New Hampshire’s White Mountains into a financially successful biotechnology entrepreneur.

Gerngross, who grew up in Austria and graduated from a science high school, started his undergraduate college career as a French major at the Sorbonne in Paris. But, he soon realized how much he missed science and subsequently transferred to the Technical University in Vienna, Austria, where he earned undergraduate and master’s degrees in chemical engineering. Never satisfied with the status quo, Gerngross decided to pursue a Ph.D. in molecular biology so he could combine his passion for engineering with his love of biology.

After earning his Ph.D. in 1991 and honing his molecular biology skills in Arnold Demain’s laboratory at MIT, Gerngross joined the faculty at Dartmouth’s Thayer School of Engineering in 1998. His early research focused on making plastics from corn rather than fossil fuels. While Gerngross’ work was successful and lauded by granting agencies and experts in this field, he concluded that the process wouldn’t be cost-effective, and also it produced unusually large amounts of greenhouse gasses.

During Barack Obama’s first Oval Office address to the nation, he called on America’s innovative spirit to drive future sustainability initiatives, particularly in clean energy. Innovation doesn’t stop at reducing our dependence on foreign oil; innovation pushes our society, businesses — small and large — culture and political process into the future. To help usher in a new innovation era, we will rely on forward thinking leadership, our human capital and find new resources to spur ideas, make those ideas appealing and measure our effectiveness:

Innovation Leadership
The first person that comes to mind regarding innovation leadership is hands down, Steve Jobs. He is the archetype leader with a small ego, meaning he respects the minds that surround him; a strong belief in and passion for creativity. Steve Jobs takes a steadfast, yet well-thought approach to change, a strong independence from other market players, and has the ability to put things into perspective. Under his leadership, Apple developed game-changing products, such as the iPhone, iPod, iPad, etc. Although Apple only “invented” the tablet market with its iPad, Jobs found potential in the personal computer, mobile and mp3 markets and found ways — through innovative thinking — to make products distinctly Apple.

A reader asks: I started a small business and have come up with a brand that is getting a lot of traction. Should apply for a federal trademark to protect it?

Answer: Filing for a federal trademark can be an expensive endeavor, costing thousands of dollars. So unless you have the resources, it might be best to try more cost effective ways of protecting your brand.

The good news is you don’t necessarily have to do anything to have a protectable “common law” trademark.

Another profitable quarter and another hit to RIM’s stock price. People are buying Blackberries, but investors are not buying RIM. Why? Short answer. No buzz. Despite continuing to reign supreme as America’s smartphone of choice, RIM’s Blackberry devices are not creating enough excitement in the market. Sure, RIM saw 20 percent profit growth in the first quarter of 2010, but they’ve also watched their market share dwindle as rivals Apple and Android grow. If there was ever a time for a change, it’s now.

BlackBerry, which is still ranked ahead of the iPhone and Android in worldwide popularity, can’t keep telling the market its working on an iPhone-killer that remains in the distant horizon. It needs a business makeover.

I suggested in my blog following President Obama’s Presidential Summit on Entrepreneurship earlier this year that what we now need is for routine global ministerial level economic meetings to concentrate on policies that encourage the creation of new firms. As I depart Toronto where we have been gathering for the official G20 Young Entrepreneurs Summit, I note at least one minister arriving having put his money where his mouth is for entrepreneurs - UK Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne.  

While no doubt all the attention at the G20 Summit this week will focus on UK bank levies, financial regulatory reform and the wisdom of German, Spanish and now British cuts in public spending (despite U.S. and Canadian appeals to put growth ahead of restraint), a closer look at George Osborne’s new budget might be in order. In the new Chancellor’s budget speech, he refers to budget measures designed to create a “strong, enterprise led recovery”.  He has my attention.

Known as the “Emergency Budget,” the June Budget 2010 contains some measures designed to encourage startups.  First, from April 2011, the threshold at which UK employers start to pay National Insurance will rise by £21 per week above indexation, thereby reducing payroll taxes.  However, more significantly, employers will be exempt from a proportion of Nation Insurance Contributions for the first ten jobs they create (except in London, the South East and East of England).

A new report examining the commercial activity resulting from academic research shows that a large number of scientists bypass university patent and licensing offices. The study, conducted by David Audretsch and Taylor Aldridge of Indiana University, also shows that those who bypass the tech transfer offices (TTO) are more likely to produce startup companies.

Thirty-percent of the scientists studied chose a "backdoor route" to commercialization, not assigning patents to their TTO. Those scientists were more likely to start new firms rather than license their research. They were also more likely to 'have their work cited in subsequent patent applications -- suggesting that "those innovations with a potentially greater value are less likely to be commercialized through the technology transfer office."'

1. How snakes see heat » Finally, an explanation for the long-standing mystery of how snakes sense warm-blooded prey from just their body heat, sometimes at a meter’s distance—the “wasabi receptor” TRPA1, which detects chemical irritants in mammals, has evolved in pit vipers to respond to heat.

E.O. Gracheva et al., Nature 2010 Apr 15, 464(7291):1006–11. Evaluated by Roger Hardie, University of Cambridge; Paul Garrity, Brandeis University; Felix Viana, UMH Instituto de Neurociencias; Andy Groves, Baylor College of Medicine ID: 2579956

2. How H. pylori does it » The ulcer-causing H. pylori can survive indefinitely in the human stomach, and its transcriptome might explain why—extensive regulation by small RNAs could limit bacterial growth, reducing its impact on hosts (which thereby leave it be).

C.M. Sharma et al., Nature 2010 Mar 11, 464(7286):250–55. Evaluated by Alberto Danielli and Vincenzo Scarlato, University of Bologna; Stefanie Vogt and Tracy Raivio, University of Alberta; Shannan Ho Sui and Fiona Brinkman, Simon Fraser University ID: 2136965

There's traveling, and then there's traveling with really cool gadgets that make your trip more comfortable, more productive, and a lot more fun.

From the best adapters, to tiny video cameras and translators, here's a look at the 10 best gadgets to bring along on your next business trip.