The “marriage” of David Cameron and Nick Clegg offers Britain a chance to avoid America’s polarized politics—and get truly creative in solving the country’s problems.

I was just in London, where bookmakers are now betting on whether David Cameron and Nick Clegg will set a new standard for blended governance or be one of the shortest political marriages in history. I hope for the latter, as this could turn out to be one of the most important partnerships for driving societal creativity and innovation that we have seen in a century.

I say this for several reasons.

Cameron was seen as someone who “gets it” even if he is a conservative—one would be harder pressed to imagine an American conservative enjoying the same reception.

This post is a summary of a 19 page white paper available here.

New market dynamics are emerging as social technology and the use of it proliferates. Making sense of the dynamics and the strategic implications is everyone’s goal. The goal is not an end rather a never-ending pursuit to learn, share and improve.

Learning and sharing is how people and organization can gain clarity of purpose on how to continuously improve. The real value in all things social is the sharing of knowledge with clarity for others to use. Imagine if an audience was focused on sharing of knowledge with clarity. What would be the outcomes? The answer: never-ending improvement and innovation.

Officials with the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Research Service (ARS) today signed an agreement with the Pennsylvania Ben Franklin Technology Development Authority to help commercialize technologies and bring world-class research opportunities to Pennsylvania.

The five-year Partnership Intermediary Agreement was signed by ARS Administrator Edward B. Knipling and Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development Secretary George Cornelius at the ARS Eastern Regional Research Center in Wyndmoor, Pa. "This increases the access of Pennsylvania companies and researchers to the technology and world-class research capabilities in ARS' more than 100 research labs across the country," said Knipling.

"This agreement will strengthen ARS' partnerships with Pennsylvania's colleges, universities and small businesses to promote research, product development, commercialization and economic development for Pennsylvania companies."

"I am a strong proponent of technology-based economic development because I know that up-and-coming technology companies, entrepreneurs and researchers are critical to Pennsylvania's future," Cornelius said. "This agreement will expand Pennsylvania's research and intellectual property base, and represents an important next step in our technology-based economic development agenda."

An environmental permit granted last week for the Cape Wind power project is not the last hurdle facing the most advanced offshore wind farm proposed for the United States. However, wind power technology developers and analysts express confidence that the nine-year-old offshore wind project will get built, and that more like it will dot U.S. coastal waters by 2020.

The drive toward offshore wind, however, may be driven more by politics than economic and energy policy. Offshore wind farms cost up to twice as much as land-based wind installations, but they offer political leaders in densely populated U.S. coastal states a source of local energy other than offshore oil and gas. "They want their energy to be local. They want to harvest it inside their own state. And for the first time they can conceive of that possibility," says Walt Musial, who leads offshore wind energy research activities for the U.S. Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, CO.

Musial's analyses show that the 28 U.S. coastal states consume 78 percent of the nation's electricity, but only six could meet even one-fifth of their power demand with land-based wind energy--the fastest growing source of energy. Add in offshore wind potential in shallow waters, however, and that number jumps to 26 states; for many it could serve 100 percent of power demand. But achieving favorable economics will be hard.

Convincing Internet service providers to pinpoint infected computers on their networks could eliminate the lion's share of zombie computers responsible for churning out spam and initiating other online threats, according to a new analysis.

The researchers analyzed more than 63 billion unsolicited e-mail messages sent over a four-year period and found more than 138 million unique internet addresses linked to sending out the spam. Typically such machines have been hijacked by hackers and are corralled into a vast network of remote-controlled system known as a "botnet."

NAPLES — Collier County government leaders are ready to establish economic development zones to foster new business and job growth, part of an ongoing effort to diversify the economic base of the community.

The Collier County Commission on Tuesday is expected to approve a new ordinance that allows for establishing innovation zones in various geographic areas of the county.

A zone could be established where a business venture or multiple groups are able to demonstrate that new jobs would be created, among other criteria that would have to be met in an application submitted to the county, Commission Chairman Fred Coyle said.

A piece in the New York Times addresses the assessment of creativity, and has some interesting bits. Quoting "Rex Jung, a research scientist at the Mind Research Network in Albuquerque:"

One study of 65 subjects suggests that creativity prefers to take a slower, more meandering path than intelligence.  “The brain appears to be an efficient superhighway that gets you from Point A to Point B” when it comes to intelligence, Dr. Jung explained. “But in the regions of the brain related to creativity, there appears to be lots of little side roads with interesting detours, and meandering little byways.” 

 This sounds like the diagram I [Author] use with students, to explain how to do proofs or other creative math work.The task is to go from some question (?) to a resolution (!) through structured inquiry.  Which is a fancy way to say trial and error.  Read  the diagram from left to right.

John Foley 05/10/2010 The U.S. Intelligence Community comprises 17 federal agencies and departments that gather, analyze, and share information for national security and defense, foreign relations, law enforcement, and other purposes.

Often people tell me they feel stuck and don’t know what to do. They blame their lack of resourcefulness on an inability to find creative solution to the issues facing them. From personal experience I have faced many moments where my thoughts have felt backed up against a wall, unable to think of what to do next, my creative centre experiencing a moment of draught. I don’t think of myself as being highly creating but with these 7 tip have shown me how to boost my problem solving capacity and my creativity.

The creative doldrums effect even the most creative people. They to get bored, starts going round in circles, or hit cul-de-sacs. Try the following 7 unusual creativity boosters that research has shown will increase your creativity:

1. Psychological distance

People often recommend physical separation from creative impasses by taking a break, but psychological distance can be just as useful.

Participants in one study who were primed to think about the source of a task as distant, solved twice as many insight problems as those primed with proximity to the task (Jia et al., 2009).

◊ For insight: Try imagining your creative task as distant and disconnected from your current location. This should encourage higher level thinking.

SÃO PAULO — Brazilian engineer Carlos Eduardo Guillaume was a veteran in information technology, but when he set out to raise funds to invest in Brazilian start-ups, he felt like he was breaking new ground in Brazilian private equity investing.

Guillaume launched his venture capital firm, Confrapar, five years ago in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais. At the time there were few firms, if any, providing seed capital to information technology firms running on inspiration and invention rather than real revenue. The vision of Confrapar was to partner with the government to offer these fledgling companies venture capital financing so they didn’t have to depend on family or friends for the money necessary to start a business.

“We were their first-ever Brazilian seed fund,” Guillaume said. “It was a learning experience.”

San Jose, CA (Vocus) May 11, 2010 -- Sergio Rezende, Brazil’s minister of science and technology, and Eduard R. Weichselbaumer, CEO of Brazilian chip-making CEITEC S.A (www.ceitec-sa.com), will be in San Jose to meet with select business leaders at a luncheon on May 12, 2010. Executive attendees will learn from the two men about Brazil’s business prospects and the limitless possibilities of the next emerging-technology market as well as discuss success strategies. The event will be valuable for any company that is planning to establish a presence in or expand an existing operation in Brazil.

"This is a terrific opportunity for businesspeople to learn first-hand about the incredible opportunities Brazil has to offer technology companies for both multinationals and start-ups,” said Mr. Weichselbaumer. “The climate to establish or expand businesses in Brazil has never been more favorable.”

The luncheon is co-sponsored by CEITEC S.A. and SEMI, the global industry association serving the semiconductor and related industries, and it will be held from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. at the San Jose Athletic Club.

Entrepreneurship programs like to boast the success rates of their entrepreneurs. Most find that five years out about 80% of the alumni businesses still operating. Not bad when compared to the national average of about 50%.

Well, academic entrepreneurship programs have met their match -- it is the Amish. Recent studies have found their five year success rate to be over 95%!

The race to own your virtual identity is on. In announcements made just days apart at the end of April, Facebook and the Mozilla Foundation launched parallel efforts to extend the way users are identified and connected on the Web.

The two approaches are fundamentally different. Facebook's Open Graph Protocol uses the oAuth standard, which lets a website identify a user via a third-party site without exchanging sensitive information. Facebook--whose 400 million active users make it the world's largest social network in the world--stands to benefit as other sites come to rely on the information it holds about users and their social connections.

BEIJING, May 13 -- China is an Asian country with many neighboring countries. There are 14 countries border China, plus countries that face China across the sea, China has more than 20 surrounding countries.

In recent years, China's rapid economic development has become the major force of the world's economic growth, and China's surrounding countries directly benefited a lot from China. China's continuously expanding foreign trade undoubtedly stimulated the economic development of the surrounding countries.

From 1978 to 2008, the total export-import volume of China's foreign cargo trade had increased from 20.6 billion U.S. dollars to 2561.6 billion U.S. dollars, with an average yearly growth of 18%, and a total increase of 124 times. The share of the total export-import volume in the world had increased from 0.8% to 8.9%, and the economic aggregate increased with a yearly average of 9.8%. In 2009, the most economic depressing year after the World War II, China's economic growth rate was still over 8%, with a total contribution of more than 20% to the world economy.

As states jockey to attract and keep business, the cookie cutter public policy as lobbied for by the National Association of Seed and Venture Funds (NASVF) has come to Minnesota. More than 29 states adopted their version of the Angel Investor Tax Credit legislation, with some establishing their policy as early as 2004.

Minnesota’s massive state deficit and staggering unemployment has pressed legislators to “spur” job growth in any way; hence, the passing of a bipartisan Minnesota Jobs Creation Bill.

This bill includes angel investor tax credits (redistributed revenue by government to targeted industries.) In today’s economy, it is extremely difficult for all businesses to find the capital necessary to start and expand.

Green usually reminds people of the environment or money, but in the case of Vice President Joe Biden’s Conservation Bloc Grants for General Innovation in Education, it should strike both tunes.

What is green economy? It is industry and jobs set on a sustainable foundation of growth.

“It is really the green and blue economy,” said Merylee Shelton, a communication studies professor and coordinator for the Community Arts and Lecture Program at SJCC. “A green economy is recognizing that some of the greatest jobs in the future will be tied to healing our Earth (green) and preserving our resources, such as water (blue).”

The goal of competitive grants is to rouse activities that move beyond public awareness campaigns, according to GSP Consulting Corporation, an organization that identifies grants at the state and federal level.

Paul English, the cofounder of travel search engine Kayak.com, wants to blanket all of Africa with free and low-cost Wi-Fi. It's a "big, big project," one that will consume the next decade of his life, English tells FastCompany.com.

JoinAfrica aims to bring a world of information to a continent whose population only has 8.7% Internet penetration right now. At the core of JoinAfrica is the belief that providing basic Internet is as essential to society as clean water and clean power.

English plans to kick off the nonprofit/for-profit hybrid this summer and begin creating partnerships between JoinAfrica and local African for-profit telcos. JoinAfrica would first branch out existing Web connections in villages using, for example, simple WiMAC hubs. Through these hubs, JoinAfrica would provide residents with free basic Web service, including access to email, Google, Wikipedia, and various news sources. Downloads of data-rich video, porn, or other non-essential sites would be limited (similar to what libraries in the U.S. do now), via a process called "bandwidth shaping." Local for-profits would charge for upgraded access and faster connection speeds, and English is also searching for ways to make sure these local companies continuously improve the service and lay more fiber.

Up until now, the story of the Gulf Oil Spill has mostly told through pictures and harrowing stories. But after weeks of delaying the inevitable, BP has relented and posted video of the main leak (hat tip, Kevin Grandia). The oil company even kicked in a suspenseful clip of the giant containment dome being lowered onto the site.

The videos don't tell us much that we don't already know. Scientists can't predict how much oil is coming out of the well from the first clip and we learned that the underwater dome failed earlier this week. But if you know anyone who doubts the severity of the spill, sit them down in front of these clips and let the enormity of the volcano-like eruption sink in.

Read more about the Gulf Oil Spill

PHILADELPHIA--(May 12, 2010) – Technologies to advance heart disease treatment and gene therapy received awards from the University City Science Center’s QED Proof-of-Concept Program in May. Three researchers from The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, Penn Medicine and Rutgers University will each receive $100,000 from the Science Center, a $100,000 match from their supporting institution, and business advice for one year.

This is the second round of awards by the QED Program, the first multi-institutional proof-of-concept program for life science technologies in the U.S. Awards are made to bridge the “valley of death” -- the gap between research grants and commercial seed investment, by awarding grants to life science technologies with high potential in the healthcare industry.

Robert J. Levy, MD, Professor of Pediatrics & Pharmacology at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia developed a technology that is expected to significantly reduce the 100,000 surgeries performed each year in the U.S. to replace blocked stents. Peripheral Arterial Disease (PAD) is a common disease caused by blockage of blood vessels in the arms or legs. It is currently treated by the insertion of a metal stent that re-opens the blocked vessel. However, most stents typically become re-blocked over time. The proposed technology, Vascular Magnetic Intervention, uses magnetically-charged nanoparticles to deliver circulation-preserving drugs to implanted stents. Dr. Levy’s proposal was supported by Business Advisor Richard Woodward.