Good thing nobody takes movies seriously – well, besides studio executives, SAG, the Oscars Selection Committee, tens of thousands of employees who make their living in the industry, and the millions of shareholders who invest in studios’ stock (and even they couldn’t take “Yogi Bear” seriously).

Of course, “serious” isn’t what all movies are about. For every “Gone With The Wind” there are at least ten in the “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” and “Hangover” genre. And for every depressing frame of “Sophie’s Choice” there are 100 inspiring scenes like those from “Rocky” or “Field of Dreams”.

Millions of dollars have been raised for projects ranging from films to world records on crowd funding platforms such as Indiegogo and Kickstarter. We wanted to discuss this phenomenon, so during Social Media Week, here in San Francisco we hosted a panel on how to use social media to crowd fund an idea. You can read Read, Write Web’s great write-up on the panel here, but here is the video of the session recorded in full.

Tech Coast Angels (TCA), the nation's largest angel investment network, today announced it funded 31 investments, including 12 new deals and 19 follow-on investments in a broad range of start-up businesses, demonstrating its angel investment leadership. TCA raised over $40 million of total investment for its entrepreneurial companies, including over $6 million through direct TCA investment and approximately $33.9 million through other sources of venture and angel capital. The total number of investments is up significantly from 2009 when 24 deals were completed. In addition, 2010 marked a year of profitable exits for TCA portfolio companies, including an IPO for Green Dot Corporation that yielded over 100x return for early investors, the acquisition of Language Weaver Inc. by SDL for $42.5 million, and an IPO for Trius Therapeutics.

"This past year was a dynamic time in our history. Coming out of an economic recession, we turned the tide and invested in more innovative, game-changing entrepreneurial companies and experienced several profitable exits. This is the result of our commitment to making the angel funding process faster, easier and more accessible to entrepreneurs to generate more investment. We've streamlined the process and added new events and opportunities for entrepreneurs to connect with our members," said Mike Napoli, Chairman, Tech Coast Angels. "The entrepreneurial community in Southern California is growing dramatically and Tech Coast Angels is committed to identifying the brightest, most innovative new companies and fostering their growth through both capital investment and mentoring leadership. Already, 2011 is shaping up to continue on this upward trend."

Electric bicycles are almost looking like they might make it to everyday markets instead of just being science fair projects or proof of concept only. The Shadow eBike has solved a few of the nagging features that have made other varieties less than realistically usable. The eBike encloses all of its dynamo, battery and electronics within the closed shell front wheel. The only exposed components are the controls mounted on the handlebars. These simple levers control breaking and speed wirelessly, using 2.4GHz RF signals. No dangling wires and no easy to strip parts accessible for damage or stealing. A full battery charge takes only around 5 hours.

It's a dirty little secret that every year companies waste billions of dollars building products that never get to market. In most large consumer product companies, only about one in three products that are developed ever gets launched. Companies routinely spend $5 million to $10 million or more per product, keeping alive ideas that have no market potential.

Procter & Gamble (PG), for example, spent more than $500 million developing and building a manufacturing plant for Olestra, a new fat substitute designed to help people lose weight. Only after P&G made these investments did it test the product and discover that there wasn't a meaningful market for Olestra. In 2002, P&G sold its Olestra plant to Twin Rivers Technology at a substantial loss.

Scores of angels are descending on India’s booming entrepreneurial sector as risk capital for very early stage firms emerges as a profitable investment category.

In Mumbai, early stage investment firm Seedfund has set up Seed Farm, a dedicated facility to incubate business ideas that will be funded by a sub-$7-million corpus. Sasha Mirchandani, one among India’s successful angel investors and founder of the Mumbai Angels network, is setting up Kae Capital, a seed fund that will help germinate high-risk high-reward business ideas.

Although the region is radically different today than the landscape that greeted Andrew Carnegie and George Westinghouse in the 19th century or Jonas Salk in the 20th century, the same synergy that worked then drives job creation today, experts say.

Indeed, many of today's innovators can trace their roots to the universities, companies and research institutes that those early innovators left behind.

"We have one of the most vibrant innovation systems anywhere in the country," said Richard Lunak, CEO of Innovation Works, a Pittsburgh nonprofit that provides early-stage seed money investments and business resources to technical start-up companies.

Natalie Sweeney is one of those people who does more in the standard day than most. (I get accused of that too, and believe me, it’s often an accusation, not a compliment, as if I have some magic time machine in my middle desk drawer.)

People call it ‘time management’, as if time doesn’t have any qualities that one might consider before trying to push it around or demanding it move in the direction that satisfies your momentary desire.

Natalie specializes in getting people ‘unstuck’. I like that idea better than trying to turn the tides.

If you are an entrepreneur starting a business for the first time, I recommend that you find a product concept that is already accepted and improve on it, rather than tackling that ultimate disruptive technology. Notice that I’m not suggesting that you steal someone else’s idea, but simply limit your risk by adding innovation to a proven entity.

Evidence of success using this approach is all around us. Look how the Japanese entered the auto industry, or how McDonalds imitated White Castle, or how Wal-Mart “perfected” the low-price high-volume approach. Once you have experience in running a successful startup this way, you may decide that the disruptive technology of your dreams was a bad idea in the first place.

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Why Cleveland?

It's a question local economic development officials have been asked -- and answered -- a lot in the days following President Barack Obama's recent visit to Cleveland with top Cabinet members.

Ray Leach, chief executive of the nonprofit JumpStart Inc., said he has fielded dozens of calls from investors, national foundations and the national media since Obama held the first of several of his "Winning the Future Forums on Small Business" at Cleveland State University on Tuesday.

To me, one thing seems pretty clear: the changes wrought over the coming 10 years by mobile devices are going to be even more far-reaching than those we’ve seen over the past 20 years from desktop and laptop PCs. The shifts in the ways we communicate, learn, shop, travel, and do business might not be as starkly noticeable as the last time around, since the Internet, which was insignificant before the PC era, is now an important constant tying together PCs and mobile devices. Even so, we’re talking about order-of-magnitude increases in the number of people affected, the new capabilities afforded, and the amount of money to be made.

To grapple with those changes and their implications, Xconomy pauses every spring for a half-day conference on mobile technology. The third edition, Mobile Madness 2011, is coming up on March 9. I’ll be emceeing much of the program, and as part of my prep work I started a two-part column last week on seven of the key unanswered questions about where the changes will be most dramatic and about the kinds of opportunities that are being created for mobile innovators and entrepreneurs. Today it’s time for Part 2.

With more foreign-born students now returning to booming economies in countries such as China and India, technical communities hope a proposed bill will stop the brain drain.

The bill, soon to be reintroduced in Congress, pitches a let’s-make-a-deal plan for immigrant entrepreneurs: Want a green card? Start a company.

The StartUp Visa Act targets startup efforts across all sectors, but enthusiasm for the bill is especially high in tech communities where foreign-born students want to stay and develop a company.

LINCOLN — At least three buildings are under discussion for the research park planned at the former Nebraska state fairgrounds.

Two would be jointly financed by the University of Nebraska and a private developer; a third would be built by the federal government.

The proposed buildings:

>> The existing 4-H Building would undergo a $20 million-plus renovation for use as a commons building.

>> A Life Sciences Research Collaboration Center, a $45 million facility that would house University of Nebraska-Lincoln researchers and their private-sector counterparts.

Gang Mills, N.Y. —

U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand traveled through wind and snow Friday morning to announce she’ll seek to make permanent an annual tax credit that encourages innovation and research.

Gillibrand, D-N.Y., detailed the proposal during a brief press conference at Corning Inc.’s Sullivan Park research center.

Along with expanding the tax credit – which gives tax breaks to companies that invest in research and development – Gillibrand said she wants to make it easier for companies to obtain.

“With leading research institutions and cutting edge business, New York is poised to lead America’s high-tech economy,” Gillibrand said in the center’s atrium. “My number one focus is on creating good-paying, family supporting jobs.”

The World Is Obsessed With Facebook from Alex Trimpe on Vimeo.

Are we obsessed with Facebook? It’s hard to argue with the numbers presented visually in this artistic little video by Alex Trimpe. One data point that struck me (if true): 48% of young Americans learn about the news, about what’s happening in the world, through Facebook. A big shift in the way information gets into people’s hands.

To be an entrepreneur, you have to be navigate lots of unknowns, and the path is fraught with risk. Once you are past a certain mental age, you know too many of the things that can go wrong, so you never start. Sort of like the old saying that if we didn’t have young men to fight our wars, we could achieve world peace in no time.

People who are young, or young at heart, don’t know all the negatives, or don’t worry about them. The result is that they achieve things that no one else ever thought possible. That’s the definition of a true entrepreneur. Many people, including Mike Michalowicz, in his highly irreverent book, “The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur,” have identified specific reasons for this:

1. Resilience. Youth brings an ability to rebound that many people lose with age, unless they remain young at heart. This resilience allows you to bounce back after defeat and try again, unscathed. The entrepreneurial path is littered with pitfalls and roadblocks; you need the capacity to come back again and again relentlessly.

Who knew it was so expensive to start up and run a new business? According to the Wall Street Journal, not many.

In a recent survey by Bermuda-based insurer Hiscox, one third of 500 U.S. business owners with fewer than 100 employees said higher-than-expected costs was their single biggest start-up mistake, followed by hiring the wrong people, not knowing how to market and sell products, and not securing enough financing.

Many of the new entrepreneurs discovered that they lacked a necessary understand of the taxes they would have to pay, detailed information about financing and credit, and the necessities behind hiring and firing employees. They were not discovering this need for information until it was too late, after their business had already been launched. Even though they have the enthusiasm needed to market their product, they still need to work on those basic business skills.

Phillip Singerman serves as Associate Director for Innovation and Industry Services at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). In this capacity he is responsible for the NIST suite of external partnership programs, including the Hollings Manufacturing Extension Partnership, the Technology Innovation Program, the Baldrige Performance Excellence Program, and NIST technology transfer and small business innovation research programs.

The position of Associate Director was established in October 2010 as part of the first major realignment of NIST programs in 20 years; Mr. Singerman was appointed to this position in January 2011. Immediately prior to joining NIST, he was a Senior Vice President at B&D Consulting, a DC-based firm providing strategic advice and technical assistance on federal economic development programs to non-profit organizations, local governments, and universities.

If the Supreme Court gives universities greater control over the inventions created by their faculty and grad students, the Court should also require universities to publish metrics that shed light into how they are managing their invention portfolios. As the Stanford vs. Roche case makes its way to the Supreme Court, we will see a public and thorough examination of the nuances surrounding ownership of inventions created on university campuses. Good arguments that highlight what’s at stake have been made in favor of, and against Stanford, such as MIT’s amicus brief and Gerry Barnett’s ongoing analysis.

If Stanford wins, hopefully there will be consensus in the university technology transfer community on a least one issue: with privilege comes accountability. If universities enjoy complete control over anything invented by their employees, they should also commit to a transparent technology transfer process. Simple transparency is key. When I say metrics, I don’t mean that the federal government should add new reporting requirements to over-burdened university tech transfer offices. Universities already struggle to manage unfunded mandates that accompany federal funding (see the Goldwater Institute article on administrative bloat in universities – a data-based and very interesting read by JP Greene, Brian Kisida and Jonathan Mills.) Instead, we should implement a mandatory but simple system of checks and balances that’s based on data that’s already being tracked, or is easy to pull from the tech transfer office’s in-house database. Today’s software tools and database technology, combined with the Internet, make it simple to open a low-cost window into the inner workings of a university tech transfer office.