Colors are probably the most obvious way that design varies across cultures (a theme that came up in our interview with Frog Design about designing for China). But the funny thing is that for most designers and companies, those color sensibilities often don't rise past "Red is lucky in China; blue is soothing in the West." That's naive, as this superb infographic by David McCandless and Always With Honor shows.

The chart encompasses 10 different cultures, and 62 emotions (!!!). The cultures are represented by concentric rings, and the emotions are represented by slices of the circle. Thus, if you want to understand about Japanese color sensibilities, you read around the graph. And if you want to learn what colors mean "danger" across cultures, you just read vertically, down section 15:

Every social enterprise startup knows the drill:  pitch + plan + powerpoint = profit.

But what if that's just a mirage?

That's the question raised by this must-read TechCrunch post by Vivek Wadhwa.  As Wadhwa observes, in the real world of mainstream commercial funding relatively few startups get funding from venture capital firms or even angel investors--most successful startups attract substantial outside support only after building a workable product and "selling for survival."  Instead of encouraging people to focus on elevator pitches and five-year plans, Wadhwa offers essential advice for bootstrapping a venture to the point that it might attract funders' attention.

However, there's another important lesson here for budding social entrepreneurs: pitch contests and business plan competitions do not accurately model the most likely path to profit. Rather, they are a relic of the dot-com boom, which fostered the myth of venture capital as a veritable ATM for people with an idea and a slide deck. It's an alluring myth to be sure, but despite recent efforts to develop a vibrant social venture capital markets, the brutal reality is that outside investment for budding social entrepreneurs--especially the seven-to-nine figure deals that make headlines in the business world--is even less available for social ventures than it is for wholly commercial tech startups.

The IPO pipeline fattened considerably in the first quarter, especially among smaller companies, according to a quarterly report from Ernst & Young LLP.

In the first quarter there were 49 new IPO registrants, leading to a backlog of 80 deals seeking $11.4 billion. That compares with a pipeline of 54 deals seeking $10.3 billion in the fourth quarter. Also in the first quarter, 27 issues went effective, with 20 of those deals in the pipeline for less than six months.

The IPO activity is tilting toward smaller companies, Ernst & Young said. Of the deals in the pipeline, 26 of them seek $100 million or less. That’s a bright sign for the venture capital industry, which has found it hard in the past decade to get smaller high-tech companies to the public markets.

Celebrating a “new beginning” with Muslim nations, this week the White House hosted 275 entrepreneurs from over 50 Muslim-majority countries. The purpose of the summit was to reach out to Muslim counterparts with a new collaborative approach.

This is good foreign policy, but what about U.S. entrepreneurs at home? Silicon Valley start-ups, venture capitalists, and U.S. small business owners were noticeably missing from the event. A Lebanese entrepreneur described the new business contacts he had made as all Muslim entrepreneurs. He had hoped to partner with Americans, but few were in the room.

Still, President Obama claimed that “together, we’ve sparked a new era of entrepreneurship” and went on to outline the administration’s plans to launch new exchange programs for Muslim entrepreneurs to come to the United States and for their American counterparts to share best practices overseas.

An Exploratory Study of University Entrepreneurship Centres i

Because syncing with Twitter wasn’t enough, professional social network LinkedIn has taken further steps to increase the site’s social sharing aspect for SMBs and business professionals. As of yesterday, sharing news on LinkedIn got a whole lot easier with the adoption of a bunch of new site features. Here’s a look at the best of what’s new.

Better Controls

One of the most useful parts of Facebook has always been the ability to control which members of your network have access to which information. For example, you could set your filters so that your family and professional contacts were seeing different items and updates. LinkedIn has finally adopted this feature, giving users’ complete control over who sees which updates – whether it’s everyone, specific connections, a group you belong to or a specific user. Depending on how you use your LinkedIn statuses, this can be a really powerful way to target individual pieces of content toward the right audience. It gets rid of that firehouse effect that we often get trying to share information in social networking and ciphers directly into the group you’re most interested in reaching. This is a nice add from LinkedIn.

Thursday was a good PR day for the social buying site Blippy. They were featured in two New York Times articles. But Friday wasn't so great, as the major technology blogs reported that credit card information from its users were found on Google. An hour later, Blippy responded with a post on its blog, explaining that the leak was months old and affected only four beta users, not current Blippy users. Later, they amended the blog post to include an apology. News of more credit card leaks continued on Saturday. Of course, Blippy is by no means the only startups to suffer from potential public relations disasters, and it remains to be seen what, if any, impact this has on the site.

Blippy's response, including the need to re-edit its official announcement, demonstrates the importance in responding quickly and correctly to a crisis.

Starting in the summer of 2009, Russian holding firm Digital Sky Technologies (DST) began taking huge stakes in successful American startups.

First it plowed $200 million into Facebook at a $10 billion valuation.  Then it dropped $180 million into Farmville-maker Zynga, setting its value between $1.5 billion and $3 billion. Finally, last week, DST invested $135 million in discounts-for-group-buyers site Groupon, setting a $1.2 billion valuation.

So what the hell is going on, right?

It's all part of DST CEO (and billionaire) Yuri Milner's clever strategy that's changing the way tech companies grow up.

In response to Google's recent Fiber for Communities project, a group of entrepreneurs in Philadelphia have decided to conduct their own broadband stimulus experiment.

The Philly Startup Leaders are offering a Gigabit Genius Grant, and they plan to award $10,000 to the person who submits the best idea for using super high-speed Internet to improve their community.

According to Philly Startup Leaders founder Blake Jenelle, "Our contest is showcasing dozens of ways that ultra-fast broadband will change communities. There are projects that will change how we deliver medicine, protect neighborhoods, perform art, educate children, experience history, connect with each other and more." The projects will be available to view on the Startup Leaders' website.

Welcome to our April Update on what’s new at Philadelphia Social Innovations Journal. In this update …

1. PLEASE JOIN US! May 11th, 2010 for our SPRING EDITION Philadelphia Social Innovations Journal LAUNCH at The Union League of Philadelphia, 140 South Broad St., Philadelphia, from 4-7 PM
2. GET YOUR QUESTIONS ANSWERED by the most well-known expert on innovations!
3. YOU’RE INVITED: An Education Forum facilitated by authors Clayton Christensen and Michael B. Horn on "What Our Education System Will Look Like When Transformation Is Complete"…join us for this exciting event at The Union League of Philadelphia, 140 South Broad St., Philadelphia, from 10 AM - 4 PM!
4. NEW BLOGS on socially relevant business trends and seniors in healthcare!
5. SNEAK A PEEK at the upcoming spring edition of the Philadelphia Social Innovations Journal
6. SOCIAL INNOVATOR NOMINATIONS
7. NEW Op-Ed from co-founders Tine Hansen-Turton and Nicholas Torres: “Back to the Basics and Good Ideas; Let the Spirit of Innovation Prevail”
8. How to GET INVOLVED …

Boulder, Bend, or Boca Raton? ZoomProspector.com, a business location Web site, says smaller cities have become the best places to start new companies. ZoomProspector weighed 11 factors—including the number of startups, quality of the workforce, and resources like universities and venture capital—to compile a list of the top places to build the next Apple (AAPL) or Google (GOOG).

Penn’s Center for Technology Transfer (CTT) introduces UPSTART, a program aimed at developing Penn intellectual property by helping faculty form new companies based on their inventions and technological innovations.

The program, a comprehensive suite of services geared to connect entrepreneurs, investors and funding organizations with Penn researchers, combines the business-creation strengths of CTT and its New Ventures Team with the entrepreneurial interests of faculty founders and regional investors.

UPSTART representatives partner directly with University faculty and staff to complete the steps required to legally form a company, raise funds and recruit employees to manage the company.

WASHINGTON -- A new report from the Science and Technology Innovation Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars defines the criteria for a new technology assessment function in the United States. The report, Reinventing Technology Assessment: A 21st Century Model, emphasizes the need to incorporate citizen-participation methods to complement expert analysis. Government policymakers, businesses, non-governmental organizations, and citizens need such analysis to capably navigate the technology-intensive world in which we now live.

The U.S. Congress set a global precedent in 1972 when it created an Office of Technology Assessment (OTA), but then reversed course in 1995 by shutting down the OTA. In the meantime, 18 European Technology Assessment agencies are flourishing and have pioneered important new methods, including Participatory Technology Assessment (pTA). By educating and engaging laypeople, pTA is unique in enabling decision-makers to learn their constituents' informed views regarding emerging developments in science and technology. pTA also deepens the social and ethical analysis of technology. European pTA methods have been adapted, tested, and proven in the U.S. at least 16 times by university-based groups and independent nonprofit organizations.

T he number of European patent applications filed last year fell for the first time in 20 years, according to new figures released by the European Patent Office (EPO).

In 2009, 135,000 applications were received – 8% fewer than in 2008.

The drop in the number of filings from outside the 36 member states of the European Patent Office (EPO) was sharper (-11%) than for filings from European countries (-5%).

At 52,000, the number of patents granted was also lower than in 2008, a fall of 13% compared to the previous year.

The EPO says the fact that the fall in approvals is partly due to its increased focus on quality over quantity. In an effort to chip away at the backlog of applications, patent examiners carried out more examinations but the grant rate was lower.

The U.S. Commerce Department’s Economics and Statistics Administration released two new reports last week: one that defines and measures the size and scope of the green economy and another that looks at the ways in which the American economy's greenhouse gas emissions have changed over the past decade.

Commerce Secretary Gary Locke said the reports will provide a basis against which the Obama administration's success can be measured in creating cleantech jobs, clean energy supply and energy efficiency improvements.

The first of the two reports, “Measuring the Green Economy,” provides an initial step toward measuring the size and composition of the emerging green economy and the number of cleantech jobs it has created. By using publicly-available data on more than 20,000 products and services, the report shows that the green economy is well-poised for growth:

- Shipments/receipts of green products and services comprise between $371 billion to $516 billion in 2007.

- The number of green jobs ranged from about 1.8 million to 2.4 million.

- Green manufacturing jobs totaled between 200,000 and 240,000.

- Green services jobs were much higher, and totaled between 1.4 million and 1.8 million.

- Energy conservation, resource conservation and pollution control were the predominant green activities, accounting for about 80% to 90% of green shipments/receipts and employment.

Our Green Economy Map illustrates the sectors that make up the green economy.

You know the value is there in social media, but despite your best efforts (or what you think are your best efforts), you’re still struggling to attract anyone. What’s going on and how can you change your social media luck? Below are six reasons SMBs often fail in social media and how you can turn it around.

Stop me when this sounds familiar.

You have no framework: Perhaps the largest reason small business owners fail to see an ROI with social media is because they jumped in without creating a social plan or framework for what they were trying to do. Social media may be ‘newer’ (in theory, anyway), but it’s still a marketing channel. That means before you go into it you want to develop a framework for your objectives, know how you’ll achieve them and determine the key performance indicators you’ll note along the way to make sure you’re on track. Walking into any marketing channel without a clear plan for why you’re there is a recipe for disaster.  Make sure you create your strategy BEFORE you try to implement one.

For nearly four decades, Boy Scout merit badges have been awarded for the qualities, principles and virtues society most values in young people.

Though an Entrepreneurship merit badge was quietly introduced in 1997, this year the Boy Scouts are updating the badge and re-introducing it with greater prominence. The new Entrepreneurship Merit Badge is a true testament to the age of the entrepreneur, encouraging business savvy and innovation from an early age.

By earning the Entrepreneurship merit badge, Scouts will learn about identifying opportunities, creating and evaluating business ideas, and exploring the feasibility (how doable it is) of an idea for a new business. They will also have the chance to fit everything together as they start and run their own business ventures.

The move shows the increasing value of entrepreneurial thinking as a social problem-solver and a necessary lifeskill in the pursuit of success today. It also validates geekiness as a proverbial -- and now physical -- badge of honor, much-needed vindication for us geeky kids everywhere.

Ramping up customer satisfaction, maximizing the effectiveness of human capital and repairing supply chains were just a few of the ambitious aims of the ground-breaking "tools" entered in the inaugural Wipro/Knowledge@Wharton Innovation Tournament, whose final round of judging took place on March 23 in Philadelphia.

One innovation promised to reduce unfulfilled customer orders, while another sought to monitor customers' satisfaction with a product or service. Four other innovators focused on improving how people do their jobs by sharing knowledge or monitoring performance. Another found ways to connect companies with new suppliers, while another devised a bridge between humans and machines.