The world's most innovative communities share their secrets at at Building the Broadband Economy 2010, New York City, 19-21 May

On May 19-21, the leaders of ICF's Top Seven Intelligent Communities will share success stories from around the world in creating and retaining the talent that powers an innovation economy.  At the annual Building the Broadband Economy summit in New York City, you will hear from speakers including:

• Premier Shawn Graham of New Brunswick, Canada
• Christopher Zimmerman, Vice Chairman of the Board, Arlington County, Virginia, USA
• Mayor Larry O'Brien of Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
• Mike Galloway, Director of City Development, Dundee, Scotland, UK
• Professor Cheol-Soo Park, SungKyunKwan University
• Dave Carter, Head, Manchester Digital Development Agency, Manchester UK
• Dana McDaniel, Deputy City Manager, Dublin, Ohio, USA
• J.M.L.N. Mikkers, Mayor of Veldhoven in the Eindhoven Region of the Netherlands
• Anette Scheibe, CEO, Electrum Foundation & Kista Science City AB, Stockholm Sweden

In 2010, the BBE summit theme is about talent and how to keep it.  In today's Broadband Economy, communities must continually raise the skill levels of citizens at all ages and in all walks of life.  But investments in education pay no dividends to the community if the people with new skills cannot find desirable and challenging work in the local economy.  You will hear from Smart21 and Top Seven Intelligent Community leaders who have grappled with this challenge and developed innovative strategies to close the education "last mile."

An exclusive, invitational event produced by the Intelligent Community Forum and the Polytechnic Institute of New York University, the summit attracts attendees from North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia and Africa.  It is a unique opportunity to learn from the world’s most dynamic communities how to use information and communications technology to build prosperous, inclusive and sustainable communities.  

The audience for BBE 2009 is limited to 300 attendees in order to provide the right environment to share knowledge and build relationships.  Attendance is principally by invitation but a limited number of paid registrations are also available for Innovation America readers at a 20% discount. (Register under VIP Registration at www.icfsummit.com using VIP Code PTR2010.) Registration is now open.  . 

Intelligent Community Forum
www.intelligentcommunity.org    

Health-care reform was a tale of two Presidents.

The first, President Barack Obama (circa 2009), had the expectation that health-care reform could be driven through Congress and straight to his desk with little more than his mandate that it get done. Last summer, he demanded a bill on his desk by Labor Day.

Washington laughed.

His leadership was in question. The innovation that got this little-known senator from Illinois elected was nowhere to be seen.

Facing failure, President Obama (circa 2010) remembered the skills required to cajole a team into working together. He recalled the leadership and creative innovation necessary to craft a workable bill. In February, he held a televised address with GOP leaders at a Conservative conference. He crossed the country to attend Town Hall meetings and other public forums. He took an Ohio woman who lost her health insurance before being diagnosed with cancer and made her the face of reform.

On Mar. 21, Congress passed the Health-Care Reform Bill.

IBM researchers used a new nanopatterning technique to create the "world' smallest" 3D map of the Earth. Approximately 1000 of them would fit on a single grain of salt. Separately, they also carved out a 25-nanometer tall model of the Matterhorn. A nanometer, of course, is one-billionth of a meter, so that's a 1:5 billion scale nano-mountain.

(Reuters) - Index Ventures, a leading European technology venture capital firm, is stepping up the pace of its early-stage investments as the plummeting costs of starting up a business make smaller investments more meaningful.

Index -- which has backed Skype, Net-a-Porter and MySQL -- is strengthening its team and allocating a dedicated pool of capital with the aim of closing about 20 deals in the next two years, compared with about 30 such deals in the last five.

Partner Saul Klein, one of the five-strong team leading the new drive, said on Monday venture capital firms needed to get involved earlier with sums as small as $50,000, or risk being too late to help entrepreneurs shape their strategy.

For much of the past two years, China watchers have been increasingly vocal about the need for the country and its businesses to move from captive manufacturing towards creating entirely new products based on innovation.

As the United States economy has deteriorated, many of these voices have been motivated by the prevailing wisdom that once Chinese businesses make the adjustment towards innovation, price pressure on US manufacturers will decrease, and entirely new industries based on new products coming out of China will become possible.

Among the rationales that have so excited Western businessmen since China's opening are not only the sheer size of China's

The title of this week’s post is a deliberate play on the old showbiz quote that it takes twenty years to become an overnight success. The recent attention given to entrepreneurship initiatives at the University might give an outsider the impression we’ve just leaped onto the stage, but the real story of innovation and business creation at UT Austin is one of legacy, perseverance, and unseen toil.

The vibrancy we see in the system today is due to pioneering effort going back to the days of Dean George Kozmetsky and even before, which blossomed into initiatives across campus supporting innovation, creativity, entrepreneurship and commercialization.

BANGALORE: India is set to be the next big market for global risk capital, according to data collated by early stage venture capital firm IDG Ventures.

The firm estimates that $75 billion of private equity and venture capital will flow into India over the next five years, nearly double the $40 billion capital that came into the country between 2004-2009.

Over half this capital inflow will go to new businesses in sectors such as information technology services, manufacturing, healthcare, engineering and construction, while nearly a tenth of the money is expected to fund early stage, high-risk ventures in the technology segment.

India is now an attractive market for global risk capital, as the economy expands at an average of 7% and the appetite for such capital shrinks in the US, the world’s largest market for private equity and venture capital, following the global economic slowdown.

The face of the typical startup entrepreneur these days is a bit wrinkly, sporting some gray hair, and having the wisdom that comes with age. But is it a good financial move to start a business late in life?

According to recent research, these days those 55 and over are more likely than young people to be starting businesses, says Professor Scott Shane, writing in BusinessWeek.

He cites research by Dane Stangler of the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation that showed in every year from 1996 to 2007, Americans aged 55 to 64 had a higher rate of entrepreneurial activity than those aged 20 to 34.

The twentieth-century workplace meets the twenty-first-century workforce in this examination of the mashup between Boomer employers and Millennial employees that Jim Finkelstein and Mary Gavin say will ignite the full power of the creative economy.

Twenty-first-century business requires the skill and experience of Boomer managers and CEOs, but also the “technosmarts,” wide-ranging creative thinking, and consensus-based work style of Millennials, the 80 million Americans born between 1975 and 1995. But while 64 million skilled Boomers will retire by the end of the decade, the Millennials set to replace them are finding corporate life alien to them, resulting in an 80 percent job-dissatisfaction rate, the authors write; the high rate of turnover costs businesses about $75k per incident.

Millennials are different from other generations in their attitudes, work styles, ability to take risks, and the ways in which they process information and are motivated. “They do not perceive boundaries of time, space, age, gender, race, ownership, or country of origin,” say the authors, and the failure to take these differences into consideration will be costly to American business.

WASHINGTON, May 3 (UPI) -- The U.S. Department of Commerce has announced a $12 million innovation competition designed to drive technology commercialization and entrepreneurship.

The Commerce Department Office of Innovation and Entrepreneurship and its Economic Development Administration said the "i6 Challenge" will be held in partnership with the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation.

Officials said up to $1 million will be awarded to each of six U.S. teams with the most innovative ideas. The NIH and NSF will award up to $6 million in additional funding to Small Business Innovation Research grantees associated with winning teams.

A reader asks:  We’re trying to negotiate a partnering agreement with a marketing firm, and we’re worried about sharing our click rates and other sensitive information with them.  I assume we should have them sign a non-disclosure agreement. Can you give us a heads-up regarding some of the key issues.  Thanks!

Answer: There are five key issues to think about with regard to your non-disclosure agreement (commonly referred to as an “NDA,” a “confidentiality agreement” or a “CA”).

Scope of “Confidential Information”.  Most NDA’s will include a definition of “Confidential Information” or a similar term to address the issue of what information specifically is being protected.  You, as the discloser, should push hard to protect all of the confidential or proprietary information you provide to the recipient, regardless of its form (whether written, oral or otherwise).  The recipient, on the other hand, may try to define Confidential Information more narrowly – meaning just written materials marked “Confidential” or “Proprietary.”

May 3, 2010 - The University of Virginia has named W. Mark Crowell, vice president for business development at The Scripps Research Institute, to the newly created position of executive director and associate vice president for innovation partnerships and commercialization.

He will join the Office of the Vice President for Research, guiding faculty and students to new and expanded partnerships. He will build the University's corporate, private and government partnerships and enhance licensing, entrepreneurship and commercialization activities, assuming primary responsibility for the University's commercial alliances.

Crowell, 55, will assume his new job on May 26.

"This is a transformational moment for U.Va.," said Thomas C. Skalak, U.Va. vice president for research. "Mark is a top leader in innovation who has consistently created new opportunities based on the intellectual assets of academic institutions, including Scripps - one of the world's most distinguished research institutions."

The increase in cash invested in growing UK-based companies contrasted with an overall fall in financing across Europe, with the total invested down 10pc on the same period in 2009.

It means that UK venture capital represented 42pc of the funding made available across Europe so far this year, up from 24pc last year, and prompted industry observers to say that European venture capital funds and entrepreneurs were consolidating in London.

"It's early days but there's something really interesting happening," said Simon Clark, managing partner of Fidelity Growth Partners Europe, and chairman of the British Venture Capital Association's venture committee.

As Executive Director of the National Angel Capital Organization, I am constantly asked what business angel investors are looking for by entrepreneurs.

There is no one-size-fits-all answer. Entrepreneurs must always remember that angels, acting alone or in groups, are all individuals, with their own motivations for and interests in investing.

Some angels will only invest in one industry. Some angels will invest in many industries. Some angels will be extremely hands on – even taking senior roles within their investee company – mentoring the company and leveraging their network and expertise to help insure its success. Some angels will invest in a company and leave it to other investors to help ensure the company’s success. No one size or set of motivations describes all angels.

Ever since Google Inc. launched its venture capital arm about a year ago, it’s remained furtive about staffing.

The company said in March 2009 that Google Ventures‘ investments would be vetted by William Maris, the founder of Web hosting company Burlee.com who joined Google in 2008, and Rich Miner, a co-founder of Android. Until yesterday, those two were the only ones listed on Google Ventures’ team page, even though a few names have trickled out, such as Joe Kraus, a serial entrepreneur who sold JotSpot to Google in 2006, and Wesley Chan, an early employee responsible for Google Analytics and Google Voice.

We heard Google Ventures was staffing up - and now we see they’ve got a full roster. The firm revamped its Web site and now lists eight partners (including Maris as the managing partner) and two venture partners. Some of these people we’ve seen floating around but there’s been no official word from Google.

For every aphorism there is an equal and opposite aphorism. How do we reconcile "A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush" with "Nothing ventured nothing gained?" How do we make peace between "Better safe than sorry" and "He who hesitates is lost?"

The owner's manual for human life is at best conflicted and confusing, and no one feels this tension more than entrepreneurs. They are often up at night, with visions of bankruptcy and failing in a spectacularly public way dancing in their heads. The faith investors have put in them is a heavy weight most people will never experience. Entrepreneurs venture forth into the unknown, butterflies in the stomach, and wonder — for the sake of their reputation, their security, their children, and even their reputation in their children's eyes — if they might not have been smarter to have stuck with the bird they had in their hand.

You're about to go on vacation, so you dutifully set up the classic "Out of the office, will reply to your message when I get back" email auto-responder. While that auto-reply gives you a socially acceptable pass to do nothing about most incoming email for awhile, it doesn't make the nagging feeling that you're missing the one or two really important items go away. So, while you're at a resort in some Carrbbean paradise, you have to surreptitiously check your email for any ticking timebombs while your spouse shoots you disapproving looks.

Which is to say that, by and large, email auto-responders don't work.

Perhaps the most common vacation auto-responder reads something like this:

I'm out of the office and will get back to you when I return on April 5th. If this is an emergency, contact John Smith at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Though the more ambitious effort to reform California's broken system of government through a constitutional convention was stymied this year, one thing has been made very clear: the craving for, and spirit of reform that launched the convention is alive and well in California and elsewhere.

In that spirit I'd like to suggest another group of five "radical" ideas for overhauling our government at all levels. Each is evidence of a much needed tsunami of innovation for the public sector. In fact, they're all examples of applying the energy and drive of private sector innovation to public challenges. They also offer the needed improvements in performance required for credible fiscal health in the years ahead. All are representative of the type of creativity we expect to see from the state that gave the world Google, Genentech, Avatar, and the iPhone. Better still, each one can be executed for less than the cost of placing a single initiative on a state ballot (currently running $1-3 million depending on the state), and together form the beginning of a portfolio of initiatives for concrete action intended to jolt the status quo.

Lots of companies talk big about ‘sustainability,’ bragging about how much they are cutting energy use, greenhouse gas emissions, and their impact on the planet. Many — from Ford to Sun Microsystems — now have vice-presidents for ‘sustainability’ or ‘eco-responsibility’ to oversee these efforts.

Some of this is public relations, of course. But proven reductions in energy or emissions are important, no matter what the original motives. And companies usually get a bottom line benefit. DuPont, for instance, pegs its ‘green’ savings at more than $2 billion.

But I have a question. How many companies are taking actions that go beyond providing an immediate or short-term payback? I look forward to hearing from readers on this question. But over and over, I hear from the ‘sustainability’ or energy efficiency gurus in companies that their efforts can be a hard sell. Both top execs and the guys in the factories or stores have to be convinced that the bottom line will be helped — or at least not hurt.

With the launch of a Green Paper and public consultation this week, the European Commission is looking to boost cultural and creative industries as part of efforts to accelerate economic growth. But access to finance for small firms remains a barrier.

Encouraging small businesses is seen as a key element of Brussels' plan to develop a sector which already provides five million jobs.

Arts, cultural heritage, film, music, publishing, design and new media are part of a growing industry which accounts for 2.6% of Europe's GDP but the full potential of the sector has yet to be unlocked, according to the European Commission, which launched a public consultation in tandem with a Green Paper.