Company leaders often say to me “we need to innovate faster” and we need to increase our yield of ideas to market. It’s a core area of competitiveness.

But what is interesting to me is that their emphasis on this is often how many talented engineers they have, and how may patents they file, and the pedigree of those engineers.

I think those things are necessary for sure but it seems to be missing some kind of secret sauce.

Last week, we talked about linking sustainability or sustainable development with corporate decisions that maximize benefits to the environment and communities where a business operates, while at the same time maintaining and enhancing its financial viability. We discussed the concept of sustainability reporting which stakeholders are increasingly expecting from corporations.

This week, we will give an overview of another generic non-financial sustainability reporting that is fast gaining global acceptance -- AccountAbility AA1000 Principles Standard 2008 (AA1000APS).

Montgomery County's Department of Economic Developmentis seeking $2 million from the county's rainy day fund to invest in biotech startups and other venture capital projects.

Maryland law prohibits local governments from making equity investments, but the General Assembly this year allowedMontgomery to do so at the urging of county delegation members.

There was no talk of extra costs when the bill was passed.

"We don't have a funding source at this point," Steve Silverman, director of the economic development department, told The Washington Examiner. "It will require a special appropriation of money that would be likely to come out of reserves."

It’s not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one that is most responsive to change. -- Charles Darwin

Companies have a fairly predictable life cycle. They start with an innovation, search for a repeatable business model, build the infrastructure for a company, then grow by efficiently executing the model.

Innovation is the key to so much of what we need to do, to move beyond recession. The OECD has just published a revealing report that points to the need for innovation more than any other strategy as to the route to growth.

The recently published OECD report on innovation reveals some interesting statistical information about how the UK government investment and support of innovation compares to other countries around the world. It is interesting to note that the report specifically argues that innovation is the single most effective way for economies to build themselves out of recession and that making cuts alone can not enable economic growth.

Winners of Drexel University’s LeBow College of Business Baiada Center for Entrepreneurship Incubator Competition were announced yesterday at the Laurence A. Baiada Center for Entrepreneurship’s annual conference held at World Café Live in Philadelphia.

News ImageSix teams, comprising Drexel undergraduate and graduate students and their colleagues, competed to win space in the Baiada Center Incubator and other prizes for their startup operations.

RICH BENDIS HAD THE PLEASURE OF SERVING AS ONE OF THE JUDGES OF THIS GREAT COMPETITION WITH INNOVATIVE STUDENTS.

Learning has a curve to it regardless of subject. Learning to use all things social follows typical learning curves, some learn faster while others never learn.

The term learning curve refers to the changing rate of learning (in the average person) for a given activity or tool. Typically, the increase in retention of information is sharpest after the first attempts, and then gradually even out, meaning that less and less new information is retained after each repetition.

Obviously data are related to information and information is related to knowledge and knowledge is related to innovation and innovation is related to wisdom (whew!). But how are they related? What few people realize is that if you take out any of these components, the whole relationship falls apart.

data > information > knowledge > innovation > wisdom

A tiny, nearly invisible nanowire can convert the energy of pulsing, flexing muscles inside a rat's body into electric current, researchers at Georgia Institute of Technology have shown. Their nano generator could someday lead to medical implants and sensors powered by heartbeats or breathing.

Zinc oxide nanowires show the piezoelectric effect, producing electricity when they are under mechanical stress. Georgia Tech professor of materials science and engineering Zhong Lin Wang and his group first demonstrated these nanowire generators in 2005. Since then they have made devices that can harness the energy of a running hamster and tapping fingers, and have also combined their piezoelectric nanowires with solar cells.

Foundations should play a key role in designing the EU's new 'Europe 2020' strategy designed to boost employment and economic growth, according to a survey of MEPs presented in Brussels as part of European Foundation Week.

70% of European Parliament members believe foundations should contribute to drawing up the EU 2020 agenda, the survey found.

But MEPs were unsure exactly how they expected foundations to fulfil this role, with only four in 10 (41%) agreeing to elaborate further.

Xconomy founder Bob Buderi confirms this morning that the Cambridge-based start-up is planning to launch its fifth local business news site in Silicon Valley. Buderi, formerly the editor of MIT's Technology Review magazine, also says that chief correspondent Wade Roush will return to the Bay Area, where he'd long worked as a reporter and editor for Tech Review, to open the Xconomy bureau there.

As to rumors I'd heard that Gregory Huang, Xconomy's Seattle editor (and a one-time Bostonian), was moving east to take over Roush's old post, Buderi said, "There's going to be a series of promotions and additions, but we're not ready to announce them yet."

WASHINGTON -- Higher education researchers collectively lamented the barriers to real innovation at colleges and universities here Thursday, while acknowledging that precious few agreed-upon strategies for transformational change have gained any real foothold within the “industry.”

Gathered at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, panelists provided a litany of familiar reasons why colleges fall short of graduating students in sufficient numbers and often lack a real plan for dealing with diminishing resources. As is often the case, they suggested that colleges have failed to improve learning outcomes and productivity because they are resistant to change, underfunded and married to a process of shared governance that is at times cripplingly deliberative. But some panelists went further Thursday, arguing that there’s simply a dearth of shared ideas that a critical mass of institutions can rally around.

Early-stage entrepreneurs need to pull inspiration from all kinds of places; how about the movies? Here’s a list of movies that are perfect for just the right time or right situation you might face with your high growth startup.

Instead of a coffee…: Having trouble getting charged up for that very important first customer meeting, or need to inspire the team when you’ve had a tough week? War movies show the purest form of competition and Gladiator has the best opening of any. “Unleash(ing) hell” on the competition is a good thing! (Honorable Mention:  Jerry McGuire. How often do you think “help me, help you”?)

China joins America as the most attractive location in which to invest in renewable energy after spending $34.6 billion on clean-fuel projects last year, almost double the investments by the U.S., Ernst & Young LLP said.

The world’s third-largest economy climbed two points in Ernst & Young’s Renewable Energy Country Attractive Indices while the U.S. fell a point, the accounting firm said in an e- mailed report dated June 3.

The U.S. Economic Development Administration gave a $1 million grant to i2E Inc. to fund the Oklahoma City Technology Business Launch Program, which will be located in the Presbyterian Health Foundation Research Park.

The total project cost is estimated at $2 million. The program focuses on identifying early stage, advanced technology companies that fit specific criteria for launch/growth stage business assistance.

A diverse array of scholars gathered here on Thursday at the American Enterprise Institute for a conference on "Reinventing the American University: The Promise of Innovation in Higher Education." There is, of course, no shortage of material on that theme, but the speakers at Thursday's meeting gamely tried to say something new.

The structural incentives within higher education "seem to push against innovation," said Dominic J. Brewer, an associate dean and professor of urban leadership and education at the University of Southern California. "They seem to push toward mimicry."

Business executives are welcoming a proposed private-public partnership designed to boost venture capital investment in Maryland's technology and life sciences companies by upward of $100 million, although some have expressed more caution.

Venture capital deals in Maryland last year dropped to the lowest dollar amount in at least a decade, with 66 deals worth $277.1 million, according to the latest MoneyTree report by PricewaterhouseCoopers and the National Venture Capital Association. The value declined 42 percent from 2008 and the number of deals fell 32 percent.

Something exciting happened on the 19th of May, on the 52nd floor of the MetLife Building in midtown Manhattan. (If MetLife means nothing to you, it was originally known as the PanAm Building.) These are the offices of Hunton & Williams. It's a leading international law firm and no doubt exciting things happen there every day. But in this particular case, Hunton & Williams was generously hosting the first member and Board meeting of the new Intelligent Community Association (ICA). Fifteen of the more than 80 communities that ICF has honored in our Award program over the past decade have become the Founding Members of this new nonprofit. As ICA's newly elected Board Chair Mayor Brenda Halloran of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada put it, "The member communities are now doing together what they have each done individually: collaborate to create economic growth and social inclusion, to build prosperous communities in the Broadband Economy. But it is not just for us. We want to share our knowledge and best practices with communities around the world, so that their citizens and businesses and institutions can advance."

A newly funded start-up is betting consumers will pay up to a few thousand dollars to rid of their love handles with a non-surgical procedure.

Zeltiq Inc. soon expects to earn 510(k) clearance to market its fat-reduction system that uses cool temperatures to kill fat cells noninvasively. To help with the launch, a group of venture firms led by Aisling Capital have invested $25 million in Series D funding for Zeltiq.

Finland is quite a paradox. One would not think that a country with only 5 million people, plunged into darkness for a greater part of the year, would be the inventor of Linux, SSH, IRC, Nokia, F-Secure and MySQL. While the country is known for its technical feats, heavy metal bands, saunas, and educational system, it's less known for its startups.

Success stories include Sulake, owner of Habbo Hotel (one of the largest virtual worlds, with tens of millions of users, and pioneers of micro-transactions several years before Farmville) and Irc-Galleria, which is the largest social network for Finns.