Recent Kauffman Proposal for More Inventor Choice Stirs Controversy at Universities; IP Advocate Poll Finds Two-Thirds of Respondents Support Inventor Choice

AUTM annual conference

NEW ORLEANS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Who should control how an invention is brought to market? Experts on both sides of this controversial topic – including IP Advocate (www.IPAdvocate.org) founder and inventor-advocate Dr. Renee Kaswan – will square off on Thursday at the Annual Meeting of the Association of University Technology Managers (AUTM), to debate the role of academic researchers in commercializing their inventions.

On Thursday, March 18, 1:30 – 3 p.m., Dr. Kaswan will participate in the AUTM Debate Forum: Role of Inventors in Negotiating License Transactions. This highly anticipated session will offer perspectives on the following issues:

• Should university tech transfer offices let inventors influence the outcome of commercialization, or just keep them informed?
• What if inventors are consulting with a prospective licensee or have competing plans to form a startup?
• Should institutions be taken out of the equation and let faculty own their inventions?

Brian Darmody considers himself an entrepreneurial bureaucrat - and he doesn't think that's an oxymoron.

Before he became associate vice president for research and economic development at the University of Maryland, College Park, he worked in state government and hatched the idea of an economic development authority aimed solely at technology more than a decade ago.

That entity, the Maryland Technology Development Corp., known as TEDCO, has become instrumental in funding promising tech start-ups in Maryland.

The 54-year-old Darmody recently spoke with The Baltimore Sun about research, economic development and the work his department does to convert the university's work into new companies and commercial products.

In the advertising world, it’s commonly agreed that the headline is responsible for about 90% of an ad’s effectiveness. Same thing in the book world. The title does nearly all the heavy lifting. And, it’s no different in newspapers and social media, especially places like twitter where all you’ve to sell the click is the headline. Or digg.com, where a brief glance at the headline makes or breaks your shot at hitting the front page.

Your headlines can either launch you…or bury you.

Which makes you wonder. Why do so many bloggers spend so much time on the body of a post, then punt when it comes time to create the headline?

So, how do you write headlines that rock?

Here are 7 things that’ll help make your headlines sing, pull, lure and lull. One big picture and 6 a bit more under the radar…

First, SEO Optimize Your Headlines.

Let’s talk about SEO first, because that’s the, how do I say this, suckier part of writing headlines at least for me. In fact, it’s the part I bailed on for most of my blogging career, until I realized how critical it was in driving search engine traffic to my blog.

In India, it is easier to raise two million dollars than it is to raise $200,000.

As the country’s growth story attracts more interest globally, the number of funds and the amount of growth capital available to private companies here is unprecedented.

But there are only a handful of professionally managed, genuine early stage venture capital funds - those targeting pre-revenue, unproven businesses - in India with an aggregate of about $150 million or so under management.

Organized angel investing (an affluent individual who provides investment for a startup) is a very recent phenomenon too, with a handful of companies earning only about $8 million in the last few years.

Bill Carleton and Joe Wallin: Senator Christopher Dodd's massive financial regulatory reform bill is back and it's even uglier than before for startup companies trying to raise seed capital. Ugly for startups?

A bill that means to address "too big to fail" and systemic risk to the financial system? Yes. And we're not talking about some indirect, attenuated, downstream effect from new regulation of big banks or Wall Street investment firms. The bill directly targets the way startups raise capital.

This "reform" occupies only a few pages in Sen. Dodd's massive bill, at Section 926, entitled "Authority of State Regulators Over Regulation D Offerings" (pages 816-819).

Under the old rules, startup companies could raise money from "accredited investors" simply and easily.

Now they are going to have to make a filing with the SEC and the SEC will have 120 days to review the filing.

Researchers at Stanford University have just made a major breakthrough that may impact the technology industry for years to come: they've built a better battery. The project, an attempt to use lithium-sulfur in place of the lithium-ion technology that is used in batteries today, has been in development since 2007. Recently, the scientists' efforts were rewarded when they created a battery that lasts four times as long as its lithium-ion counterparts while also having the benefit of being "significantly safer" than today's batteries which occasionally explode after short-circuiting.

Although still a ways off from commercial viability (and availability), the lithium-sulfur batteries promise advances like 80% more capacity, 10 times the power density and, theoretically, the ability to last four times as long as modern batteries.

It used to be, if you were serious about starting a tech company, you went to Silicon Valley. But emerging entrepreneurial hubs around the country are giving startup aspirants options. In this series, we talk to leading figures in those communities about what makes them tick. Here, part nine in our series.

When you look around the country, you see that second-generation entrepreneurs play a big role in thriving communities. They serve as mentors, cheerleaders and early capital sources. Philadelphia is an exception to the rule. Because despite a Web 1.0 legacy of hits like CDNow (acquired by Bertelsmann in 2000 for $117 million), Half.com (acquired by eBay in 2000), e-commerce company GSI ($1.55 billion market cap) and VerticalNet (valued at $12 billion in 1999), the city is mainly driven by first-generation entrepreneurs and few of them have hit a serious scale or impact yet.

But what Philadelphia's current startup scene lacks in experience it makes up for in enthusiasm. Blake Jennelle, a self-appointed leader of the community, founder of Philly Startup Leaders and a serial entrepreneur (Anthillz, TicketLeap), calls it a "self-help ethos." That sounds about right for a place known as the City of Brotherly Love.

Last week’s Global Entrepreneurship Congress (GEC) in Dubai was a historic gathering not only because -- under the patronage of Sheik Nahayan Mabarak Al Nahayan of the UAE -- it brought together entrepreneurship leaders from nearly 100 nations, but because it heralded a new era of global commitment to this field.

As the chair and emcee of the gathering, I was astounded by the level of bottom up commitment to entrepreneurialism from all corners of the globe. It is aptly named a Congress for it is comprised of representatives of the leaders from those nations now committed to advancing entrepreneurship as the means to build economies and expand human welfare. As a grassroots movement, the "Unleashing Ideas" network that has been created around this is becoming a powerful force not just for inspiring people to become entrepreneurs, but in guiding policymakers and opinion leaders who want to help them.

The other day, I came across a heated forum discussion that went back and forth debating over the definition of a “true” entrepreneur versus just a regular small business owner. The thread was over 5 pages long and participating in this discussion were a wide variety of different business owners. Some of them ran brick and mortar retail stores. Some of them ran small-medium sized internet consulting or software companies. And some of them were freelancers looking to eventually start their own firms.

The main crux of the debate was whether a person opening a brick and mortar business like an ice cream store or a freelancer with no employees could be considered a true entrepreneur. Where do you draw the line between true entrepreneurship and just running a small business?

As the two sides argued back and forth, I couldn’t help but think…who the heck cares? Why are you guys wasting your time on such a stupid topic and who are you to define what a “true” entrepreneur is? As the discussion progressed, the small brick and mortar business owners as well as the freelancers were clearly getting miffed because they were being excluded from the entrepreneurship category. Since when did entrepreneurship become a club?

US veteran "angel" investor Bill Payne has put US$1.5 million (NZ$2m) into about 50 technology start-ups during the past 30 years and reckons he has achieved an average annualised return of 20 per cent to 25 per cent, thanks mainly to "four really nice exits".

Now he is spending five months in New Zealand as "entrepreneur in residence" at Auckland University, sponsored by BNZ and other businesses, trying to pass on what he learnt along the way to entrepreneurs and other angels. Last year he won the US Angel Capital Association's highest honour, the Hans Severiens Award.

Funding options for entrepreneurs include using their own savings or mortgaging their homes, borrowing or accepting investments from friends and family, "organically" growing their businesses by reinvesting profits from early sales, and seeking out angel investment or venture capital.

Mr Payne says no-one knows how much money entrepreneurs invest in their own companies. "We do know that in the United States about 500,000 companies are formed each year, and what we have found out recently - which shocked me - is that friends and family invest about three times as much annually as angels and venture capital funds."

Research Triangle Park, N.C. — Credit Suisse will manage the new $230 million North Carolina Innovation Fund, N.C. State Treasurer Janet Cowell announced Monday at an event in Durham.

The funds are to be invested in companies that have primary operations in North Carolina.

The fund had been announced initially at being worth a total of $250 million.

Credit Suisse has a large operation in Research Triangle Park where it is in the process of adding about 300 employees, primarily in information technology, to its work force of about 1,000.

The banking conglomerate is based in Switzerland.

The Cade Museum Foundation announced it will sponsor an annual competition—beginning in 2010—to recognize and promote Florida innovators. The award will consist of a $50,000 cash prize, plus one year of in-kind support provided by the Gainesville Chamber of Commerce and admission to the Gainesville Technology Enterprise Center incubator program. The competition is open to Florida-based innovators. Project summaries should demonstrate that the ideas are innovative, creative, interdisciplinary and commercializable.

"The long-term goal of the prize is to promote the culture of innovation and to tap the tremendous job-creating potential of the brilliant ideas springing forth from this region every year," said Richard Miles, Executive Director of the Foundation.

Earlier today Dale Halling, of Halling IP and State of Innovation Blog, brought to my attention an article on the IAM Magazine Blog from a few weeks ago. Joff Wild of IAM blogged about a study conducted by IPVision, Inc., which focused on analyzing the intellectual property positions of over 9,000 US venture capital backed technology companies. The study was conducted with the assistance of faculty at the MIT Sloan School of Management, and not surprisingly determined that there is a strong correlation between intellectual property assets, particularly strong patent portfolios, and success. In fact, the IPVision study shows that VC-backed technology “[w]inners are many times more likely to hold intellectual property than losers.” Further proof that those who due to ideological reasons forgo pursuing a patent portfolio are dooming themselves, and their investors, to an unnecessary uphill struggle right from the start.

According to the IPVision study:

Analysis shows that across all sectors a significantly higher percentage of venture capital backed winners (companies that have been acquired or have gone public) have patent portfolios as opposed to losers (companies that are out of business

Innovations targeting markets for industrial coatings, wireless communication, human resource management, equine distress notification (and prevention) and unmanned aircraft systems were approved in the first two submission rounds of USTAR Technology Commercialization Grants (TCG) at Utah State University.

Created in 2009, the grant program was designed to bring innovative new technologies to market from Utah’s public colleges and universities. To date nine submissions have been approved by the USTAR Governing Authority representing aggregate funding of $506,696. Faculty members are encouraged to apply for grants in the final remaining two submission rounds.

Detailed descriptions of the most recently approved projects (Round 2) can be found at https://economicdevelopment.usu.edu/htm/in-the-news/articleID=8698. 

“We are very pleased with the caliber of proposals received during the early submission rounds,” said Ray DeVito, director of USU’s technology commercialization office. “The USTAR TCG program was designed to assist inventors and researchers in the final stages of idea implementation and drive the commercialization of technology forward.”

Society of Manufacturing Engineers - Eight game-changing innovations are about to enhance production on the factory floor. Outlined in the Society of Manufacturing Engineers (SME) annual Innovations That Could Change the Way You Manufacture, these innovations could help manufacturers save 80 percent of the cost of RFID tags, reduce the costs of producing nano fibers or even change the way electronics are designed. SME’s Innovation Watch Committee compiled the list and its members serve as “innovation researchers” who seek and publish information about

As MIT political scientist and China expert Ed Steinfeld says, "China [is] one of the most entrepreneurial places on earth."

Perhaps this observation doesn't surprise you, given what's been happening to the Chinese economy in recent years. But you might not recognize how widespread entrepreneurship is in China, or why the country is so full of entrepreneurs.

What the Data Show

The latest numbers from the Organization for Economic Cooperation & Development (OECD) show that China's rate of self-employment far exceeds that in the U.S.—51.2% versus 7.2%—a gap that hasn't changed much since 2001, when the data first became readily available.

Lest you think that self-employment represents something other than entrepreneurship, consider some other statistics. According to the 2009 GEM report, China exceeds the U.S. in its rate of nascent entrepreneurship (a measure of people in the process of starting a business), rate of ownership of new businesses, and rate of ownership of more established businesses. And, as the figure to the right shows , the differences aren't trivial.

With the job market still rocky, a growing number of MBA students are launching their own businesses straight out of school. Recruiting remains down at many campuses this year, and as a result, starting a company looks more appealing than ever to beleaguered B-school students. At business schools across the country, students are signing up for entrepreneurship classes in droves, entering business school competitions, and dangling their carefully crafted business plans before angel investors and venture capitalists. In response, schools are escalating the support they offer to aspiring entrepreneurs, launching new classes and counseling them on how to get a business off the ground in a difficult economic climate.

At the Zell Lurie Institute for Entrepreneurial Studies at the University of Michigan Ross School of Business (Ross Full-Time MBA Profile),entrepreneurship is thriving. The institute runs a business competition, the Michigan Business Challenge, which awards nearly $60,000 in funding to winners. This year the contest received a record 85 applications from Michigan University teams. Business plans ranged from an online retailer of premium hair care products for black women to a company that will sell electric motors to long-haul truck manufacturers.

Increasingly, innovation is what is enabling companies to differentiate themselves, secure industry leadership positions, and maintain long-term success in today's increasingly competitive marketplace.

Chief Technology Officers (CTOs) are often the executives tasked with spearheading strategies and employing tactics to ensure their company remains consistently innovative. In the wake of increasingly competitive products and services arising from emerging economies, increasing levels of global collaboration, and a still uncertain macroeconomic climate, CTOs at U.S. companies are facing significant challenges to foster innovation in the future.

To help CTOs identify leading R&D management practices to promote continuous innovation, The Corporate Executive Board's (CEB) Research & Technology Executive Council recently held an Innovation Summit that included 25 Chief Technology Officers and Aneesh Chopra, the Chief Technology Officer of the United States. Summit attendees represented many highly reputed U.S. companies, including PepsiCo, Proctor and Gamble, DuPont, Johnson & Johnson and Caterpillar.

Why is it that you have more potential to make money as an entrepreneur or small business owner than you do working for the man? Here are my top 5 reasons.

1. You Obtain All Money from a Project

Chris Hanks, faculty member of The Entrepreneur School, often cites the stat that says you must generate 3 times as much money as you make at a company. If your salary is $100k a year, you must be bringing in $300k of business. This pays for your health insurance, supplies, and profit for the company. But in working for yourself, if you generate $300k of business, you keep $300k. Granted you will have marketing costs, supplies, and other overhead, but you keep more of the money earned as an entrepreneur.

2. You Control Your Workload

When I worked for a company, I had a set list of tasks to perform in any given week. If I did those tasks in 2 days, I would make the same amount of money I did if I stretched those tasks out over 5 days. But if I am working for myself, if I complete my tasks in 2 days, I get paid for those tasks and can focus on new business for the other 3 days. Additionally, I can work extra hours and make more money bringing in new business.

Engineers are challenged by poor public perception. According to multiple surveys conducted by the American Society for Engineering Education, engineering falls far below professions in fields such as medicine and academics in terms of prestige. The common public understanding is that engineers simply build or fix things.

These viewpoints do not line up with the perception engineers have of themselves. In a recent survey of 190 first-year Engineering students at UBC conducted by the teaching assistants of Applied Science 150, 83 per cent of students considered engineering to be a “helping profession.” When ranking the role of engineering in society, 72 per cent of students polled chose “to address societal problems and needs” in the top three of six choices. “Getting drunk and throwing people in ponds” was not included as a choice in the survey.