Venture capital funding in Israel’s high-tech sector slumped to its lowest level in five years in the first quarter of 2010. Companies raised $234m from domestic and international venture investors during the quarter, a 15 per cent drop on the final three months of 2009.

The capital raised was even 12 per cent below the first quarter of 2009, which had been the worst-performing for three years, until now.

Koby Simana, CEO of the Israel Venture Capital IVC Research Center, said, “Figures for the first quarter of 2010 emphasise that Israel's high-tech industry is still experiencing substantial difficulty. The decrease in the number of active Israeli VC funds and a reduced amount of capital available for investments were the main reasons for the decline in capital raising.”

In the early 1980s, Pittsburgh responded to the collapse of Big Steel with a strategy centered on economic growth through technological innovation. These efforts bore fruit and helped cement the city’s reputation as a role model for other cities faced with the challenge of deindustrialization, as evidenced by Pittsburgh’s selection to host the G-20. How can we improve on this success? What are some ways that Pittsburgh’s government, universities, and students could contribute to technology development in the region? What do interns and new employees in tech firms and start ups need to succeed? What could local government and universities do better?

Mike Matesic of the Idea Foundry, David Ruppersburger of The Technology Collaborative, and Don Smith of the Regional Industrial Development Corporation, all three Fellows of the Heinz College’s Center for Economic Development joined special guest Limor Fix of Intel Pittsburgh Labs to tackle the above questions and more.

Good morning. I’m Mark Muro, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and the policy director of the Metropolitan Policy Program there, and I want to thank all of you for coming to this session on innovation and entrepreneurship.

It’s an important time for our discussion so it’s a pleasure to participate especially since the IEDC’s forums are always timely and on-point.

Anyway, what I thought would be most useful this morning is for me to say a little about the new federal push on innovation and entrepreneurship especially in regards to the strong regional flavor that runs through it.

Download the Presentation PDF.................... POWERPOINT IS WELL DONE, TAKE A LOOK........ ........RICH BENDIS

Most business owners I know go into business because they want wealth, freedom and a lifestyle of fun and enjoyment, fuelled by the money they expect to make from their business. Most of them end up horribly disappointed.

For most business owners, rather than becoming a gateway to freedom and fun, their business becomes a trap that imprisons them. In this article I’ll reveal why that happens and demonstrate how you don’t have to sacrifice your life for your business to achieve success. Business is fun for successful entrepreneurs and it can be fun for you. If it isn’t fun, you must be doing it wrong.

At a recent seminar for entrepreneurs I attended, one speaker, a very successful entrepreneur, asked everyone to stand and remain standing if they could honestly answer yes to the following questions. Think about your answers to these:

1. You work on average less than fifty hours per week in your business. (That sent around 60% of the audience to their seats.)
2. You regularly take at least four weeks per year vacation from your business. (That one accounted for another 20%.)

A report evaluating European regional policy from 2000-2006 paints a generally positive picture, but experts said errors had been made and urged EU lawmakers to be realistic about what regional funds can and cannot achieve in future.

The report, presented yesterday (19 April) in Brussels, was an 'Ex-Post Evaluation' of 2000-2006 programmes financed by the European Regional Development Fund in Objective 1 and 2 regions. The report was commissioned by the European Commission and produced by a team led by Belgian independent research company Applica.

Speaking at the launch of the report, Regional Commissioner Johannes Hahn argued that the evaluation proves that the vast spectrum of regional policy programmes and projects can be evaluated in a meaningful way.

The human brain is considered to be pretty quick, but it lacks many of qualities of a super-efficient computer. For instance, we have trouble switching between tasks and cannot seem to actually do more than one thing at a time. So despite the increasing options—and demands—to multitask, our brains seem to have trouble keeping tabs on many activities at once.

A new study, however, illustrates how the brain can simultaneously keep track of two separate goals, even while it is busy performing a task related to one of the aims, hinting that the mind might be better at multitasking than previously thought.

"This is the first time we observe in the brain concurrent representations of distinct rewards," Etienne Koechlin, director of the cognitive neuroscience laboratory at the French National Institute for Health and Medical Research (Inserm) in Paris and coauthor of the new study, wrote in an email to ScientificAmerican.com. 

Business Week has published a special edition this week of the Top 50 most innovative companies. The list is based on an annual survey of Corporate Executives conducted by BCG. 

Reading through the list it comes as no surprise to discover the Top 4 is Apple, Google, Microsoft and IBM. Nor is it a surprise to discover there are no Europeans in the Top 10 or that there are now more Asian Companies in the Top 50 than Europeans. 

The Top 4 Europeans are Volkswagen, BMW, Nokia and Virgin. The Top 4 Asians are Toyota, LG, BYD and Sony. The back story to all this of course is the rise of Asian Innovation and how China is rapidly emerging to challenge the US as the world’s 21^st Century innovation economy. 

If we take a closer look at the list we discover that 31 out of the global Top 50 are operating in the Mobile Convergence landscape. 16 of these corporations are based in the US, 8 in Asia and 7 in Europe. This would clearly suggest that the MobCon is the primary focus of innovation in the world today.

If you’ve ever been frustrated by having an idea (or 100 ideas) that you thought were great, only to have them never get off the ground or shrivel up and die half-way done, then you’re going to love “Making Ideas Happen:  Overcoming the Obstacles Between Vision & Reality.”

Scott Belsky has written a book about the nuts and bolts techniques of taking a great idea — that spark between synapses in our brain — and turning it into something real and tangible.

Having a great idea is the easy part. Developing a product you can make a profit from, or offering a new service that will differentiate your business — that’s where the rubber meets the road. Easier thought than done.

Two years is a lifetime in China's digital communications and technology entrepreneurship market. What's happened to the start-ups I profiled in my book Silicon Dragon? Plenty!

There have been some big hits, particularly among those earliest to the market. But there have also been more disappointments and delays than investors would have expected two years ago, during the height of the China venture bubble. Many of the start-ups that were poised to go public or break through haven't--yet.

But with the Chinese economy on the rebound and entrepreneurs and investors gaining more experience in managing PRC start-ups, expect a second round of action. It will be different from the first, with more local winners rather than Silicon Valley-groomed start-ups and a broader array of successful companies in biomedical, clean tech and consumer goods--not just the Internet and wireless communications.

The European Commission will formally establish a subgroup of at least eight EU commissioners with a stake in innovation policy when it meets this week.

The committee, chaired by Máire Geoghegan-Quinn, the EU's commissioner for research, innovation and science, will work on a new research and innovation strategy due to be published in the autumn.

A full meeting of the College of Commissioners last Wednesday (14 April) has already discussed the outline of the plan and the new working group will be expected to flesh out the proposal over the coming months.

The final composition of the Commission's innovation subgroup will be agreed this week but it is expected to include Antonio Tajani (Industry and Entrepreneurship), Johannes Hahn (Regional Policy), László Andor (Employment), Neelie Kroes (Digital Agenda), Androulla Vassiliou (Education), Michel Barnier (Internal Market), and Günther Oettinger (Energy).

America has lost more than 8 million jobs since the Great Recession began. And even though most economists believe the recession ended last summer, unemployment remains at 9.7 percent. We clearly need more job creation.

Because half of all jobs in the U.S. are in businesses with fewer than 500 employees, small businesses need to begin creating jobs if we are going to replace the millions of lost jobs. So are small businesses hiring yet?

Recently, I took a look at some key data sources to answer that question. While a couple of indicators suggest an answer of “yes,” most do not.

A few people have asked me [Mark Suster] to try and define the perfect startup organization chart. I don’t believe that one exists. Every team configuration is different. But I do have more insight into understanding your startup team. This time I thought I’d try and address engineering talent. Often I’m asked by startup CEO’s about how to best build an engineering team. I have much experience in this domain.

Because more technology people probably read startup blogs I’m guessing this post will come under more scrutiny. The terms “CTO” and “VP Engineering” have such stigmas associated with what they are that I’m sure some people will feel uncomfortable with the definitions I’ve put forward. Still, I believe I’m offering an accurate representation of the ideal configuration of the main technology leaders.

This post is designed mostly for non-technical founders. I hope many will read this and have an answer for the question, “what’s the different between a CTO and a VP of Engineering?”

Rep. Mike Doyle (D-Penn.) wants federally funded research to be available for free online within six months of appearing in a peer-reviewed journal.

The government funds billions of dollars worth of research projects, but the results are often locked up into expensive scientific journals without easy access to the public. Doyle's Federal Research Public Access Act "will give the American people greater access to the important scientific research results they've paid for," he said in a statement.

The bill would require federal agencies with annual research budgets of $110 million or more to submit an electronic copy of the final manuscript that has been accepted by publication in a peer-reviewed journal. Manuscripts that have been produced even partially with federal money must be available online no later than six months after it appears in the journal.

When Robert Rauschenberg and a buttoned-down Bell Labs engineer named Billy Kluver began thinking, in the mid-1960s, about ways that people from the world of technology could help artists make art, Mr. Kluver surveyed the mighty gulf between the two groups and almost thought better of the idea. “I was scared,” he said once in an interview. “The amazing thing was that it’s possible for artists and scientists to talk together at all.”

Nearly half a century after that influential experiment, one in the same spirit, though crazily compressed into a single day, was taking place on Friday in a chilly loft office on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. An artist and a technical whiz sat together at a long table, their faces made silvery by the glow from their laptops — the only tools they had brought, besides their digital cameras. Anyone unfamiliar with the pair — Evan Roth, a kind of Web-centric graffiti artist, and Matt Mullenweg, a creator of the popular blogging platform WordPress — would have had to listen a long time to figure out which one came from which world. They free-associated at Web speed, their conversation sprinkled with things like hex values, detection algorithms and executable code.

(Sent to ID by Krista Bard........ thanks Krista)

Long story short, last year, the American Recovery & Reinvestment Act dedicated a lot of money to supporting SBA loans.

And since the passage of the Act, the U.S. government has repeatedly increased its ante, guaranteeing more and more SBA loans.

According to National SBA Administrator Karen Mills, "thousands of small businesses across the country have taken advantage of these Recovery loan enhancements to get the capital they need during these tough economic times. The increased guarantee and reduced fees on SBA loans helped put more than $23 billion into the hands of small business owners and brought more than 1,100 lenders back to SBA loan programs."

KANSAS CITY, MO--(Marketwire - April 20, 2010) -  A new licensing process for commercializing university research will support American universities' startup companies and enable long-term economic growth, according to a new paper released today by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. As universities are debating how best to expedite commercialization of research, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has developed the Carolina Express License Agreement, a standard licensing agreement to commercialize academic discoveries that promises to ease the formation of new companies and maintain American competitiveness by promoting new firm formation.

As the paper outlines, accelerating the process by which university researchers license innovations to a startup company is a way to drive economic growth and create jobs -- but at many universities, this will require systemic changes to the commercialization process. The groundbreaking agreement allows potential startups to select an appropriate standardized licensing agreement rather than undertake a customized negotiation with the university that can take considerable time with unpredictable results.

Let's face it - your million-dollar business idea is never going to get off the ground. You'll push it on company after company until you've drained your piddly seed money and your network's resources. Eventually, you'll end up eating Dinty Moore Beef Stew on a futon in your parents' basement, complaining about how nobody "gets" you.

At least, that's what will happen without a little financial help. Venture capital firms are comprised of private investors who research, negotiate and (hopefully) fund businesses in their early stages of development. Even some of the leaders in business today - Home Depot, Starbucks and Google, to name a few - relied on venture capital in their early stages. (To learn more, check out Cashing In On The Venture Capital Cycle.)

In Pictures: 8 Tips For Starting Your Own Business

Studying the Competition
Applying for venture capital isn't quite as informal as the ABC TV show "Shark Tank" would have you believe. Before you have the opportunity to present your idea or invention to the sharks, paperwork filing, business-plan writing and demographic analysis must be conducted. Many of these firms receive up to 5,000 business plans per year, all competing against your business plan for funding consideration. Only 10% of these plans are seriously considered, and 1-2% are actually picked up and funded. And this process can often take years.

The information-technology industry, which produced some of the world’s largest tech companies and spawned Silicon Valley, continues to lose favor with venture capitalists.

Tech giants like Apple, Cisco Systems, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, Oracle and Sun Microsystems all benefited in their early days from venture capital. By 2001, nearly 60% of venture capitalists’ money went into IT - everything from electronics and computing devices, to the software and semiconductors that power them.

But these days information technology is no longer the dominant force. Many venture firms lost patience with companies developing costly hardware like chips and networking equipment, and over time begin plowing an increasing share of money into less capital-intensive start-ups on the services side. At the same time, some IT investors began dabbling in the burgeoning clean technology field, while adding health care to their investment stable.

Creativity fosters innovation, but how can you ignite creative sparks within your organization? We’ve compiled lessons on developing and maintaining a vibrant research and development strategy.

To come up with their best new ideas, most companies turn to an inexpensive and efficient source of innovation: their own employees. How can you unleash the creative spirit lurking in your workforce? Here are eight of the best strategies we've uncovered in recent months.

1. Let Every Employee Play Designer.

Three years ago, the five-person research and development team at pet-accessory company West Paw Design had a case of collective writer's block. A production manager named Seth Partain proposed holding a contest for the company's three-dozen employees. Everyone from salespeople to seamstresses were encouraged to spend an afternoon designing and producing prototypes for new products. Following an end-of-day vote, a winner was crowned at an award ceremony. By making employees feel a part of the idea-creation process, West Paw Design set up a new  pipeline of product development. Read more.

This year’s Index of the Massachusetts Innovation Economy was released today, and in it the John Adams Innovation Institute for the first time compares the Bay State not only with other innovating states in the U.S., but with other countries. The result? Massachusetts leads the nation and the globe in patents per capita.

Massachusetts also sits in the top seat among all states and the leading R&D countries for the amount of research and development done as a percent of its gross domestic product, according to the institute, which is part of the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative. As it has for years, Massachusetts also ranks No. 1 in Small Business Innovation Research awards per capita, receiving $227 million in federal SBIR funds for proof-of-concept research and prototype development.

When it comes to fundraising, Massachusetts is holding its own against the rest of the nation. The Index shows that, while the rest of the country saw a 57 percent drop in the dollar amount raised by venture funds, Massachusetts companies saw only a 35 percent drop in the amount of funds distributed to them by VCs.