The Triangle Region of North Carolina has many, many assets that will almost ensure a perpetual place in the high tech innovation space. Some of these:

- The foresight to reserve land and build infrastructure 50 years ago in RTP
- The constant production of tech talent by our locally based institutions of higher education including our three R1 universities, NC Central, our independent Colleges and Universities, Wake Tech and Durham Tech.
- The diversity of our base — biotechnology, medical devices, technology infrastructure, decision analytics, health care, financial services IT–we are not beholden to any one industry and it somewhat blunts the effect of a downturn in any one area.

All this being said — we have moved into an environment where adoption of innovation is becoming more and more rapid. Think about how long it took for 50 million users to adopt the car, the radio, the television–think about how long it took for 50 million users to adopt the iPod, register for Facebook. What used to be country by country innovation is now global interconnected innovation. Countries, areas that show a penchant for bringing ideas to market and scale will out compete other areas of the world.

In an entrepreneur’s perfect world, money would be every bit as plentiful as great ideas; then no one would need bankers, venture capitalists, or rich uncles. Alas, the money tree has yet to be invented, leaving most entrepreneurs to bootstrap their way to success. No one likes being short of cash, but it certainly compels you to be disciplined and creative. Last week, at New York Entrepreneur Week, I heard several young entrepreneurs talk to panel moderator Scott Shuster about how they managed to grow successful ventures without boatloads of cash. Here are some tips from the panel:

Use Barter. Abhishek Sharma, president of Bergen Newspaper Group, recalled that before he purchased his company with his partners, he went to The Bergen News to buy a print ad. Noticing that the ad salesperson was somewhat frazzled with various marketing projects, he offered to help out in exchange for a free ad. Now that he owns the newspaper, he frequently barters ad space for a variety of goods and services. “I barter with everyone, from the water cooler guy to legal counsel,” he says. “I leverage my platform. Everyone has money problems, so you have to get creative.” Be careful, though. Barter transactions are taxable, so familiarize yourself with the rules that govern bartering.

Recently Penelope Trunk stirred up debate on BNET by offering three terrible pieces of career advice women give each other. Among them: learn to be a good leader from business books. She argues that most business books are written by men who just don’t understand the unique challenges facing women.

Selena Rezvani, author of The Next Generation of Women Leaders: What You Need to Lead but Won’t Learn in Business School, would most likely agree with Trunk about the limitations of traditional male-driven business education. But instead of complaining about terrible female-to-female tips, she has compiled a book of successful women’s best advice to up-and-coming female strivers.

Writing on blog The Glass Hammer, Rezvani goes into detail, offering a distillation of top businesswomen’s advice on one area in which women sometimes struggle — negotiating. Here are her five tips to help young women overcome their jitters and become master negotiators.

Every now and then we hear the story of the entrepreneur who left his or her steady job at a large company to follow their dreams and create a startup, but we aren't all as daring and brave to quit steady work, especially in a time of economic uncertainty. If you have the entrepreneurial itch but aren't in a situation that would allow you to sacrifice your day job, there are still ways you can scratch said itch and bring innovation to a "startup" within a larger company.

This morning I talked with Eric Ries, the driving force behind the "lean startup" movement, which encourages high efficiency and meticulous metrics tracking within entrepreneurial ventures. Ries, who is often asked to speak on the subject, says he noticed a trend among some of the people attending his talks. Many managers from large companies were coming to his sessions to learn what they could, because, as Ries discovered, the principals of lean startups can exist within larger corporations that are attempting to innovate.

"A startup is a human institution designed to create something new under conditions of extreme uncertainty," Ries told ReadWriteWeb. "There is nothing in there about the size of the company, or what industry you're in, or whether you're the manager of a division or if you're two guys in a garage, its just about the conditions in which you operate."

Dear friends and supporters of Innovation Philadelphia,

Innovation Philadelphia (IP) has experienced several successful transitions, regarding Mission, Focus and Leadership, since its inception in 2001. 2010 brings us to a new evolving chapter, which is not as clearly defined, since our current leader, Kelly Lee has departed IP as of April 16th to pursue other interests. We thank Kelly for her commitment to IP and wish her the best in her future endeavors.

This transition in Leadership, has led Innovation Philadelphia and its Board of Directors to re-evaluate the future direction of the organization and the role it can play in the Innovation and Entrepreneurial Economy of the Greater Philadelphia Region. As the Board performs this analysis , through research and communicating directly with key stakeholders and partners, the activities of IP will be managed by the Board.

As the founding CEO and a Board member, who has remained on the Board through its total history, I have been asked to serve as the Chairman of the IP Board to lead the organization through this transition. The Board will determine what the potential future role of IP could be in Philadelphia. This evaluation will require significant dialogue and outreach to all our partners and supporters, as well as patience.

The IP Board appreciates your understanding of this transition and hopes that you will communicate with us any comments or suggestions that may contribute in formulating the future direction of IP. We will keep you updated on the progress of our evaluation and recommendations. Please contact me or the other members of the Board with any comments you may have.

Best Regards,
Rich Bendis
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Chairman of the Board
Founder, President and CEO, Innovation America

As a business owner, I’ll bet you’re incredibly busy and find that there never seems to be enough hours in the day to complete all your work.

Have you ever noticed that some of your everyday activities are just deeply ingrained habits – driving your car, putting on your watch, brushing your teeth or taking a shower? You wouldn’t dream of not doing them, they are part of your routine and they just seem to happen automatically.

In your business you also have habits — such as checking your website, opening the mail, reading emails, grabbing a coffee and glancing at your diary. You do them without conscious “thought” and they seem to fill up hours in your day…

But what about all the actions you need to take in order to build a more profitable and efficient business? Like following up with your best customers, asking for referrals, strategic planning and goal setting to grow your business? When do you do these activities? Do they often get relegated to “tomorrow” or “sometime soon”?

The country's economic growth rate surged to 11.9 percent in the first quarter of the year, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) announced Thursday, prompting fears of an overheated economy and qestions regarding the withdrawal of the massive stimulus package.

The gross domestic product (GDP) in the first three months totaled 8.07 trillion yuan ($1.19 trillion), the NBS said, attributing the fastest quarterly rate of expansion since 2007 to last year's low comparison base and the government's stimulus.

"China's economy welcomed a strong start at the beginning of the year, showing that overall economic development is rising in full swing," Li Xiaochao, the NBS spokesman, said Thursday.

The surge in economic growth was up from just over 6 percent in the same quarter a year ago and up 10.7 percent in the final

After seeing its first crop of 13 start-up companies raise funding rounds, get bought by other companies or at least reach “ramen profitability,” mentorship program Launchpad LA is hoping its second wave of companies will fare just as well.

Entrepreneurs based in Los Angeles are often pressured to move their offices to Northern California, where the networks of angel investors and venture capitalists are stronger, said Launchpad LA founder Mark Suster, who is a general partner at venture firm GRP Partners.

“The whole goal of the program is to see more Southern California companies get funded,” Suster said. “LA is a city of 16 million people, with a lot of success stories. We’ve had MySpace, Shopzilla, Price Grabber, EHarmony, LegalZoom and many others.”

Innovative entrepreneurship is a growing area of research with an interdisciplinary reach. Modern conceptions about ‘innovating’ have led to a broadening of the term, reflected by the definitions in the latest Oslo manual (OECD 2005). Under a mandatory need for innovation to be “as radical as possible”, open innovation and virtual networks aim to exploit knowledge resources on a global scale so that firms can innovate adequately and in time. Current social problems also provoke the social component of innovation, with eco-innovation at the forefront of the terminology of relevant policies. In accordance with the overall landscape of innovation emergence, innovative entrepreneurship is just arriving in the higher education curricula across Europe, whilst it is already a mature topic in the USA.

Apparently, sources of innovation compounded with relevant polices and learning procedures constitute an underlying semantic triplex for innovative entrepreneurship investigation. For instance, an understanding of the dynamics and motives of innovative networks, of the necessity for innovation to ‘go open’ or of the capability of innovation to face social needs, can widen its scope and may reveal the routes to further research. Although the inherently social nature of innovative entrepreneurship renders the whole phenomenon susceptible to policy-making, a better understanding of such a bidirectional interaction has to be gained. Complementary to entrepreneurial innovation, entrepreneurial learning is an essential core-procedure to be studied and optimized for practitioners, organizations and would-be entrepreneurs. As this type of learning is primarily empirical, it confronts underlying beliefs, and thus, it lies beyond traditional teaching. Consequently, this call for papers seeks to focus on up to date research relevant to the aforementioned triplex.

Our region has a unique combination of innovation assets, yet is 37th in the nation in innovation performance. We are viewed almost exclusively as a political city -- the home of lawyers and lobbyists, feeding off of a federal government viewed by some as the very definition of bureaucracy. Perceived largely as a cost-plus, risk-averse business community, we have a job to do to convert a nation-leading $25 billion in research-and-development spending in this region into new innovation-based products, small businesses and jobs.

It is time to rally to a new vision of this region as a robust economic engine built on innovation and imagination. We have the assets to do this:

1. A necklace of robust research universities that extend from Johns Hopkins and the University System of Maryland through George Washington, Georgetown, Howard and George Mason to the University of Virginia, Virginia Tech, James Madison and Old Dominion.

2. The highest per-capita concentration of scientists and engineers anywhere in the country.

Quality Magazine - A new white paper prepared by the Hollings Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP) Board discusses the state of domestic manufacturing and the characteristics of good manufacturers, and plots a course to improve the competitiveness of manufacturing in the United States. The MEP is managed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). The Manufacturing Extension Partnership Advisory Board (MEPAB) is an external advisory body created to provide guidance and advice on the MEP program from the perspective of industrial extension customers and providers who have a vision of industrial extension with a national scope.

Resolving the competitive disadvantages that U.S. manufacturers face is similarly nuanced. Although many observers have pointed to innovation as the key characteristic of successful companies, the report finds that innovation alone is not enough. To be meaningful, innovation must result in new products, new production processes, or new management practices. Manufacturers also need to be green, care about their workforce and develop their in-house talent, and find their niche in the global marketplace.

What do Google Analytics and print newspapers have in common? They’re both one day out of date when you read them. I’ve been using Chartbeat for over a month now to track performance of my blog and I find myself looking at Google Analytics much less these days.

In fact, I’m surprised by how antiquated Google Analytics feels.

Chartbeat is a relatively young company and product.  I’m not a shareholder and I’m not even actively looking at making an investment.  I’m only writing about the product because I’m passionate about it.  Basically, it rocks!

The USC Graduate School has announced the creation of a program that both encourages and serves as a symbol of innovation.

Beginning in the fall, graduate students will be able to earn a Ph.D. diploma in innovation through the USC Stevens Institute for Innovation. The program is the first of its kind and is meant to complement students’ disciplinary work with practical skills.

The program will be free for all Ph.D. students at USC and consists of 12 units leading to a Certificate in Innovation. Participants must maintain a 3.0 GPA and pass a qualifying exam.

The courses offered include The Innovation Process: Development, Diffusion and Leadership (GRSC 610), Legal Issues and Financing of Innovation (GRSC 612) and Disciplinary Perspectives in Innovation (GRSC 615). The 12-unit structure of the program allows Ph.D. students to still focus on their disciplinary work while gaining experience in innovation.

The elevator door opens. And there stands your ideal investor. It's the chance of a lifetime. But that chance only lasts as long as the elevator ride - you have less than a minute to make an impression. Hopefully, you've got a well-crafted elevator pitch ready to give.

The elevator pitch is not the hurried presentation of a full-blown business plan. It's an introduction, an overview and a pitch - and a short one at that - meant to capture the attention of a potential investor. Of course, an elevator ride is a short one. Guides for elevator speeches that say you have one minute surely overestimate the amount of time it takes for an elevator to move from floor to floor. Of course, an elevator speech isn't restricted to elevators. Rather, it comes in handy for any occasion where a concise presentation is appropriate.

When crafting your pitch there are two key things to keep in mind: its content and its form. In other words, it's not just what you say but how you say it. Here are a 10 tips to keep in mind as you craft your elevator pitch.

1. Keep it short. Be succinct. According to Wikipedia, an adult's attention span is eight seconds, so be sure to give just enough information (and more importantly perhaps the right information) so that after only hearing a sentence or two, someone knows what you do - and if it's a pitch, what you need.

2. Have a hook. As Mel Pirchesky advises, "The objective of the first ten or fifteen seconds is to have your prospective investors want to listen to the next forty-five or fifty seconds differently, more intently than they would have otherwise."

3. Pitch yourself, not your ideas. As Chris Dixon writes, "The reality is ideas don't matter that much. First of all, in almost all startups, the idea changes - often dramatically - over time. Secondly, ideas are relatively abundant." Instead of talking about ideas, highlight what you've done - the concrete accomplishments or skills - rather than some intangible concept or a future goal.

There's more than the gloomy television images of Detroit as local and state officials turn to innovation to revive Motown and the President sets a new course for space exploration with a significant new role for private enterprise in the April 19 Innovation and Equity.

The first private university in North Korea, the decades-long dream of an American businessman from Korea, has been completed and will enroll its first students this spring, demonstrating the potential to build a science-based relationship with a nation often perceived as isolated.

James (Chin Kyung) Kim, the founder and president of Pyongyang University of Science and Technology, said the institution is the first international university of its kind in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. The university, built entirely with money and support from outside North Korea, hopes to offer Korean students the education, training and experience they would gain if attending colleges outside of that country.

The goal is to train a new generation of technical and business leaders to help guide the nation’s economic growth as it becomes more of a part of the world economy.

At a presentation given at the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington, D.C., Kim said classes are to begin in late spring with 60 graduate students and 150 undergraduates. Eventually, the university aims to have 2000 undergraduates, 600 graduate students and 250 faculty members.

The Denver Office of Cultural Affairs has hosted the Create Denver Week for 5 years now. I attended their Town Hall meeting to discuss ways to support the growth and development of the creative sector. On several occasions, guests from other cities mentioned their jealousy in how Denver is a leader in supporting its creative sector. Three bills have passed supporting creative assets and creative industries.  

Most notably, Senate Bill 158, consolidates the Offices of Colorado Council for the Arts, Arts in Public Places and Film and Media Production into a Creative Industries Division within the Office of Economic Development. This division will support Colorado’s numerous artistic industries so that they become more competitive nationwide.

Key strategies:

1. Financial: help sector access the resources to thrive.  Support existing NGOs. Provide “catalyst” funding. Small step funding, micro loans, VC funds.  Also looking at public-private funding opportunities.
2. Professional Development: Build business skills of the sector, and access existing resources, i.e. chamber.  Support conferences, vendor fairs and other networking opportunities.
3. Promotion and advocacy:  Help with branding.  Celebrate creative individuals, groups, NGOs.
4. Education:  Working k-16 to create curriculum, embrace creative learning, etc.

Two vulcanologists published a paper in 2008 suggesting that as climate change continues, the next decades could see more volcanic activity in regions such as Iceland that are now under ice.

Climate change could spark off more volcanic eruptions in the now frozen volcanic rim regions, Alaska, Patagonia and Antarctica and Iceland says Dr Carolina Pagli, at Leeds University; one of the authors of the research. As ice melts above volcanic rocks they are able to expand to turn into magma more readily as pressure from above is reduced.

Global warming melts ice and this can influence magmatic systems, says Dr Freysteinn Sigmundsson, the paper’s other author, at the Nordic Volcanological Centre at the University of Iceland.  "Our work suggests that eventually there will be either somewhat larger eruptions or more frequent eruptions in Iceland in coming decades."

Ah to sleep on it, the classic delay tactic. Recent research out of Maastricht University School of Business and Economics shows that indeed delaying a choice, in general, can help us make better decisions.

Researchers presented subjects with an ultimatum game, where player A offers a portion of 10 dollars to player B. If B accepts the offer, both parties get the suggested amounts. And if B refuses, both parties receive nothing. Low offers (say two dollars) are almost always rejected, even though one dollar is better than none.

As I discussed yesterday, it looks like streetcars are making a comeback. Curious about which cities are on the move? The Community Streetcar Coalition held a summit earlier this year in Alexandria, Virginia where it brought together people working to get new streetcars running in 22 cities across the nation.

Cities that may be constructing streetcar lines within a year or two are below, as well as a few insights on and expectations for those most likely to be built.

Cities working on plans to create their first modern streetcar lines include:

* Little Rock, Arkansas
* Los Angeles, California
* Sacramento, California
* Fort Lauderdale, Florida
* Atlanta, Georgia
* Boise, Idaho
* New Orleans, Louisiana
* Baltimore, Maryland
* Grand Rapids, Michigan
* Charlotte, North Carolina
* Cincinnati, Ohio
* Columbus, Ohio
* Lake Oswego, Oregon
* Providence, Rhode Island
* Dallas, Texas
* Fort Worth, Texas
* San Antonio, Texas
* Salt Lake City, Utah
* Arlington, Virginia
* Kenosha, Wisconsin
* Tucson, Arizona
* Washington, D.C.