One of history's greatest quote machines, Winston Churchill, once said that success is based on going from failure to failure without a loss of enthusiasm. I'm going to borrow that quote today and apply it to innovation success. Innovation success is based on going from "failure" to "failure" without a loss of enthusiasm. Here's what I mean by that.

Probably the biggest roadblock to innovation in most firms is what I like to call the failure expectation. I've rarely been in any firm that didn't have any ideas (if so, go ahead and close up shop). I've rarely been in firms where people thought they weren't creative, and most firms have been "innovative" at some point in their history. This means that every firm has the opportunity to innovate and some experience at doing so successfully. What inevitably creeps in is the fear of failing - not just at innovation, but at any new change or experience. This fear of failure isn't relegated to innovation alone, but to any significant change. The two easiest ways to kill an idea are to trot out the old saws 1) "The last time we did that it (fill in the blank) or 2) "We've never done that before". Both of these statements, which you will hear in every firm that attempts to innovate, indicate that safety and comfort and status quo have become more important than discovering needs and changing as the market demands change.

Solar power involves wondrous quantum physics and materials science, but its fate may hinge on whether contractors can learn to bolt on the panels without losing too many screws. The panels themselves account for only about half the cost of a solar array; the rest is the installation and back-end equipment. As panel makers slash their prices, the nuts and bolts loom ever larger. Fortunately, a quiet revolution is now underway in installation. Brendan Neagle, the chief operations officer of Borrego Solar, a major U.S. installer, says they've sped up installation by 40 percent over the past two years. Zep Solar has invented a new roof mounting system, already supported by the module maker Canadian Solar, that speeds things up by another factor of two. And Nat Kreamer, president of Acro Energy, another large installer, says they've streamlined the preparation work and can get a system up on your roof within 30 days of your first phone call -- quite an improvement on the eight or so months it took me.

In fact, historically, most of the cost savings for solar power have come on the low-tech side. According to a Lawrence Berkeley Lab study last year, arrays in 1998 cost about $11 per watt of generating capacity: $5 for the modules themselves, $6 for the installation and equipment. By 2008 the modules have fallen by $1 per watt, the installation by $2. Prices have come down as installers have climbed up the learning curve. And there's clearly room for them to do even better. The study reported that arrays in Germany are $2 per watt cheaper than in the U.S. "Anything that is inefficient needs to be attacked," says Mike Miskovsky, the general manager of Canadian Solar.

AUSTIN, Texas -- Feb. 28, 2010, was a banner day for Texas wind to set the clouds -- and electrons -- flying.

In the Panhandle, gusts reached 47 miles per hour and wind generators delivered a record 6,242 megawatts of power to Dallas, Austin and other population centers. At 1 p.m., 22 percent of all the electricity consumed in the Texas grid was coming from wind.

To proud Texans like Public Utility Commission Chairman Barry Smitherman, such records document the state's position as the "epicenter of land-based wind production" in the United States, if not the world, as the chairman put it.

One of my favorite blogs to peruse now and then for amazing advice on web design is Webdesigner Depot which produces excellent in depth guides for various design related issues. Monday they produced an excellent in depth post that provides a step-by-step breakdown of best practices for creating a screen-cast for a Web page, a feature many startups like to include on their homepage to familiarize new visitors with their product.

This article focuses on the creation of live screen capture videos of someone demoing the website, but I think a lot of this same methodology can go into creating any sort of introductory video a company uses to explain their site. The first step, as with any project, is to plan, and the first questions you need to ask yourself before you even start to storyboard include "What do we want to accomplish with this video?" and "How detailed do we want to get?"

Once you figure out the content, length, tone, and medium of your video, then move on to storyboarding. Storyboarding is an important step in creative processes such as these because it is much easier to visualize the end product before putting any real technical effort in. Filmmakers don't just storyboard as a way to outline their plot, they use it to do early edits to the film before wasting any time shooting stuff that will never make it past the cutting room.

You’d think it would be obvious what business you’re in. If you make drills, you’re in the drills business. If you bake cookies, you’re in the cookie business. Right? Wrong.

When Trish Karter started her firm, Dancing Deer, it sprang to fame for unbelievably delicious and beautifully presented cookies. Molasses clove was the best selling cookie (it won the food industry equivalent of an Oscar in 1997), but her peppermint fudge brownies became pretty popular, too. Largely through word of mouth, the bakery had become famous for fantastic indulgences, gorgeous packaging and for the major contribution it made helping the homeless of Boston, where the company was based. Swiftly, Dancing Deer became a very easy business to love. But, like many entrepreneurs, Karter struggled with the company’s growth, especially  with the markedly seasonal nature of her product: sales peaked between Thanksgiving and Valentine’s Day.

But that pattern revealed a different truth: Dancing Deer wasn’t a bakery; it was a gift shop. Most people bought the products as presents — the brownie towers and cookie samplers were mostly seasonal gifts. But of course, if you give cookies one year, you probably don’t want to give the same gift the following year — so unless Dancing Deer offered a great variety, you would move on. This revelation was important: it meant that variety was key to the business and that the talent and effort Karter had always poured into packaging was crucial, not peripheral. It also identified partners and marketing channels previously invisible. In short, it changed the way the company thought about building customer loyalty.

Forecasts at mid-decade rosily predicted that post-career boomers would be much in demand by under-resourced employers. Those numbers have all changed now, thanks to the job-chomping recession.

So what’s the employment future look like in the coming Boom Years? Not bad, actually, reports Harvard Business Review editor Bronwyn Fryer. He points to recent research showing the need for 5 million workers by 2018. He writes:

“Nearly half of them will be in the social sector — which makes them appealing to boomers who might be ready use their hard-earned expertise to give back to society.”

A new innovation economy is emerging from the ashes of the global crisis, turning the age-old practice of economic development upside down and challenging international organizations and regions to embrace an adapt-or-perish strategy in the face of new economic realities.

In this brave new world, knowledge is king, and by extension, universities, and their like, are becoming central players in an emerging, global revitalization network. Innovation is the new currency of commerce

Called a "new paradigm" by some, this new economic order also celebrates geographic location as a center of both knowledge and connectedness.

The latter is is a very different algorithm from the sum-of-all-incentives equation that has driven economic development decisions for decades, if not centuries, observers note.

Since the times of Galileo and as recently as climate change researchers’ battles with the Bush administration, scientists have defended themselves against what they perceive to be undue intrusion into their research by government and other authorities. But rarely have scientists gone out of their way to start a fight with Johnny Law.

This dynamic seems to be changing in the field of DNA forensics. Two dozen scientists (along with several other scholars and practitioners) recently published an open letter in the prestigious journal Science that called out the Federal Bureau of Investigation for stonewalling research access to the federal DNA database. This database houses almost eight million DNA profiles used to identify unknown offenders who leave biological materials at crime scenes.

Why are scientists poking this bear with a stick? DNA evidence is particularly compelling because the chance that any two samples match coincidentally is slim to none; experts often express the probability as only one in several million. This is also why DNA is useful in exonerating individuals who are wrongly accused; testing can show that unknown samples either match or do not match any one individual with a high degree of certainty. But things become more complicated when forensic labs compare unknown samples with thousands or millions of stored profiles in search for a “cold hit”—an attempt to identify suspects solely on the basis that a stored profile matches the unidentified crime scene sample.

This case describes a bottom up innovation initiative at a large Dutch insurance company. The case shows that bottom up innovation in large enterprises through the use of an internal community, results in lower costs and an improvement of the speed and quality of the first 2 stages of the Stage-gate process.

It also suggests that, compared to the traditional way of innovating, it increases the innovation momentum within the organisation leading to more and better quality ideas and eventually a more innovative, collaborative culture within the organisation.

Bottom up innovation is the concept where ideas ‘bubble up’ from anywhere in the organisation. Employees lead the idea through the innovation process by utilising relations based upon knowledge, experience, and influence in their network and not so much by navigating company hierarchies.

With the issue of board governance still on the minds of many shareholders and government agencies, the CIBC Presents Entrepreneurship 101 lecture on boards of directors and advisory boards was a real treat.

Moderator Ron Close assembled a panel including Bill Wignall, Kerri Golden and myself. As we were introduced to the panel we could only be impressed with the diverse level of board experience our group had from not-for-profits to TSX-listed to early stage start-ups. We had the expertise to cover the topic from all angles and help to shore up the foundation.

First on the agenda was to explain the difference between a board of directors and an advisory board. In simplistic terms, the board of directors is elected by the shareholders to enhance management’s decision making capability. Under Canadian law, the board is there to serve in the “best interests of the corporation” which is to say that they must consider the interests of a broad group of stakeholders. These stakeholders include the shareholders, the bond holders, employees, customers, regulators and non-government organizations (NGOs) to name a few.

For innovative companies to have adequate access to capital, accounting and lending standards must be updated to accurately assess the value of intangible assets such as intellectual property and other forms of know-how.

Finding funding for a new business or idea is almost always challenging. With the recent near-collapse of the financial sys- tem, however, funding innovation is even more difficult. Credit to businesses has tightened dramatically. The market for ini- tial public offerings is moribund, and ven- ture capital has been reduced to a trickle. As a result, the “valley of death” between a promising idea and a mar- ketable product appears to be even more of an unbridge- able chasm. For many innovative companies, funding to move from a promising new concept to commercialization is simply not there.

One sign of hope is the emerging practice of providing funding to companies on the basis of their intellectual prop- erty (IP) and other intangible assets. Although IP, effective management, worker know-how, and business methods are widely recognized for their role in propelling the growth of the U.S. economy, the country is still largely failing to acknowledge the real value of these intangible assets and to provide innovative companies with the funding they need to capitalize on them.

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Author: KENAN PATRICK and JARBOE IAN ELLIS

Paul CarttarPaul Carttar will be officially announced today (April 7) as director of the Social Innovation Fund at the Corporation for National and Community Service. April 8th is the due date for the first round of proposals from entities that want to be designated as re-grantmaking intermediaries. These intermediaries will collectively distribute $50 million in Social Innovation Fund dollars plus a dollar-for-dollar or higher private sector match that they will bring to the program. Carttar talked with the Rick Cohen of the Nonprofit Quarterly on April 6th to share his perspectives on the Social Innovation Fund.

Carttar inherits a rapidly moving program to lead, the subject of lots of public attention and commentary, including some in the pages of the Nonprofit Quarterly (see here and here). But he’s no newbie to the concepts behind this program.

According to his official bio provided by the Corporation, Carttar was one of the co-founders of Bridgespan in 1999, the nonprofit management consulting firm affiliated with Bain and Company, the prestigious for-profit global business consulting firm where he worked from 1983 to 1992. More recently, he has been chief operating officer for the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation (with a mission of promoting entrepreneurial success), Executive Vice Chancellor for External Affairs at the University of Kansas, Executive Partner with New Profit, a national venture philanthropy fund emphasizing innovation and entrepreneurship, and a Senior Advisor with the Monitor Institute, a nonprofit consulting group and self-described “think tank” helping “innovative leaders develop and achieve sustainable solutions to significant social and environmental problems.”

I've [Author] been interested in technology for as long as I remember. But when I decided I wanted to be in the technology business, and not just a consumer and watcher of technology, I decided to build a "fake VC portfolio."

Whenever I try out, or hear about a new company, I don't just ask myself whether I like it, but whether, if I were in a position to, I would write a check of my own money and invest in that company in the early stages.

It's one thing to think a given product or service is really good, or even that it will be popular. It's quite another to think that it will one day be a huge business. And it's even quite another to stake your own money on that goal. I think it's useful because it forces on you a mental discipline, and to think of each new web product as a business.

There's a new trend in the French startup ecosystem: the rise of so-called superangels, often highly successful entrepreneurs themselves, who pool together funds and resources, and invest in the early stages alongside VCs.

This is obviously a good thing.

France doesn't have a great reputation as a startup hub, and part of the reason is a lack of early stage financing, especially early stage financing from really experienced investors with an appetite for risk.

These new superangels all have very successful track records as entrepreneurs and business angels, have built companies that are the leaders in their markets, and are determined to take risks in the early stage and make it work.

When the train replaced the horse carriage as a major form of transport, many horse carriage-related businesses closed shop. The horse was not fashionable anymore.

When the car replaced the train, many train-related jobs and businesses were lost whilst car-related businesses sprouted and made money.

Imagine when the Star Trek transporter is invented and sold at an affordable price right now. Will your business survive?

Disruptive Innovation

Disruptive innovations replace a dominant technology or way of doing things and most other businesses related to it when something much better comes along. In a theoretical sense, if the Star Trek transporter becomes a reality, then entire industries would be lost as well as new businesses will be created.

Russia is finalizing plans to launch a Silicon Valley-like "innovation center" near Moscow. The Kremlin has selected a patch of farmland near a private business school, has set aside funding, and this week named a Nobel laureate, the physicist Zhores Alferov, as the project's science advisor. Now comes the hard part: making it work.

This means deciding what kind of operating and funding model to pursue, and making sure Russia's legal and financial structures will support entrepreneurship. "There certainly isn't any shortage of really bright technical people with great technological ideas in Russia, and that's a strong suit," says Josh Lerner, a professor of investment banking at Harvard Business School. "But the big thing has to be: 'What are the barriers to being an entrepreneur and how can we address them?' The entrepreneurial environment represents somewhat of a challenge."

In particular, Russia will need to prove that inventors can secure intellectual property and protect it in the courts, and that investors won't face onerous taxes or other restrictions in financing new ventures. "I think all those areas represent challenges to them," Lerner adds. "My guess is that litigating intellectual property will be challenging."

There are many ways for marketing professionals to bamboozle customers into believing they are getting a better deal than they actually are — notable among them “as low as” pricing come-ons and offers that promise to deliver “up to” some standard of service.

The Internet is no stranger to this sort of gauzy offering, but it has become too central to the way Americans communicate to rely on dubious metrics. A consistent federal standard is needed to determine the speed at which Americans navigate the Internet so consumers can make informed choices about their service.

Broadband providers argue that their dazzling promises of “up to” speeds are not a gimmick. The National Cable and Telecommunications Association, a lobby group, is protesting a Federal Communications Commission report that says the typical speeds experienced by American consumers are less than half the “up to” speed advertised.

The $50 million Social Innovation Fund has a new director. According to an announcement from the Corporation for National and Community Service, the fund will now be run by Paul Carttar, cofounder of Bridgespan, an executive partner at New Profit, Inc, and in general, a seriously thoughtful dude.

I met Paul last year at the Skoll World Forum and was really impressed with the way that Paul had carved out a space at the intersection between doing business and doing good. Even more, he struck me as a person who was also looking to understand the future in the context of past and present trends.

His more formal bio reads like, well...like the Director of the Social Innovation Fund. In 1999, Paul co-founded the Bridgespan Group out of Bain & Company consulting and helped grow it into one of the most respected nonprofit consulting groups in the country. He has also served as the Chief Operating Officer for the Kauffman Foundation -- the only foundation focused entirely on promoting and enabling entrepreneurship. For the last few years, he's been working as a partner with the innovative venture philanthropy firm New Profit, Inc.

Is "checking in" the next tweeting? So say the tech cognoscenti, adherents of a new breed of online social service called "geolocation." When members visit their favorite restaurant, bar, or laundromat, they use their smartphone (in most instances) and a site such as Foursquare or Gowalla to tell their friends where they are. Foursquare, which is racking up at least a million check-ins a week, prods its users to keep coming back by turning ordinary life into a kind of game. Users earn points each time they use the service; the most ardent fans keep checking in at the same locations over and over, eventually winning the prestigious title of "mayor" of, say, Happy Hamburger.

What's the point of telling everyone you're at the dentist? That's a bit like asking why anyone would use Facebook, or, in an earlier time, the telephone. Novel social applications seem useless -- until they cross the Rubicon and begin to be indispensable. Foursquare, which launched in March 2009, has been surging, thanks largely to the iPhone and other GPS-enabled mobile devices. Media outfits such as HBO, Zagat, and Bravo TV have joined Foursquare's game, enabling Top Chef fans to win points for going to restaurants that appear in the show and Zagat readers to get tips and unlock a "foodie" badge.

Marketers too are wondering if consumers are finally ready to tell them where they are so they can be offered in-the-moment specials. "Our growth curve no longer looks like a hockey stick," Foursquare recently tweeted. "It looks like a skateboard ramp with 4 feet of vert."

A group of executives from the financial-services industry has started what they call a peer-to-peer platform for early-stage investing, with the hope of connecting angel investors with promising start-ups.

Austin, Texas-based MicroVentures officially launched this week, and has already signed on more than a dozen investors who are scouting for good start-ups, said Bill Clark, chief executive of MicroVentures.

“I expect to have 1,000 to 2,000 [investors] by the time we ask businesses to participate,” Clark said.

MicroVentures is not an incubator program, he said. The organization has no current plan to raise a fund to back start-ups itself, nor does it intend to take a stake in companies that receive investments through its service, he said.