When the Chinese government announced in April it was establishing a government-controlled patent-operations fund in April, there were few people besides Asian trade analysts who gave the news much attention.

The Beijing-backed effort, Ruichuan IPR Funds, was seeded with the equivalent of nearly $50 billion to assist in “the development and acquisition of core patents to boost market power and profitability of domestic companies.” On the surface, that could appear to be a good thing, a signal the Chinese are moving toward the West on issues of intellectual-property protection.

image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net 

Happy Labor Day!!

Every Monday, tune in to Fast Company Leadership for a quote to get your week started right.

From "The Simple Secrets That Make People Fascinating," comes this gem from Sally Hogshead, CEO of Fascinate, Inc.:

"To be successful, you don’t have to change who you are; you have to become more of who you are."

Image: Design by Robbie Jones for Fast Company 

As PDE prepares to expand in the fall and to move to kauffman.org, we look back today at ten of the most popular posts to date as we say farewell to entrepreneurship.org. Post a comment and let us know what you thought.

Today marks the 600th edition of PDE News. For 600 weeks, we have blogged about different issues, geographic communities and constituencies within the world’s entrepreneurial ecosystems while discussing how smarter policies could make the path easier for the entrepreneurs they are trying to nurture. Perhaps not being as smart as some of you prolific authors out there, this has been my way of contributing to the thought leadership on these important questions.

image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net 

Two years ago, the entrepreneurial landscape at University Park looked markedly different than it does today. There were 28 fewer startup companies in existence, 70 jobs had yet to be created, $1.3 million in revenue had not been generated, five spots in the business incubator in Innovation Park were still vacant, and 18 research projects at Penn State were not commercialized.

Image: Professor Tony Jun Huang's work in using acoustic waves to sort cells on a chip formed the core of start-up company Ascent Bio-Nano LLC, with assistance from the Ben Franklin TechCelerator program, which helps Penn State faculty bring their research to the commercial marketplace. Image: Patrick Mansell

Although I had taught for more than 20 years, I didn’t realize that I had forgotten what it was like to teach in a classroom without cellphones until I came up with a plan to relive those halcyon days. It was near the end of the semester, and I offered one point of extra credit per class period for my psychology students who turned off their cellphones before class and put them on the front desk.

Some guy in some 0.1-horse town in the ass-end of America’s great nowhere put up a crowdfunding appeal on the web: “I want to bake an apple pie for my mom but I don’t have the money to do it.” A couple of days later there was $49,000 in his bank account. I like to think he’ll now bake many, many apple pies and deliver them widely throughout the States to the needy – like some Johnny Apple-Pie-Seed, but in all probability he’ll just trouser the cash.

Image: All-American dish: a plate of apple pie. Photo: Koflers Hutte/Flickr

Last year, I remember the days leading up to the Founder’s Retreat.  I felt nervous and anxious, wondering if others would see me as a legitimate entrepreneur.  I was excited to be around other like-minded people and meet some new VCs / angel investors.  Most of all, I wondered if I would have a moment of clarity and receive some long-awaited answers to questions that had been ringing around my mind for months.  Were the two years and $120,000 I was about to spend worth it or should I spend that time and money launching a company?  Should I launch a biz during school or would I be happier getting a job and launching one later down the road? Are the faculty at Wharton engaged in entrepreneurship or simply happy to teach their classes and conduct their research?

Image: Free Digital Photos

New venture firm TenOneTen pays homage to the 10 and 110 freeways bisecting Los Angeles, but geography doesn’t limit its focus–just half its startups are based in L.A.

“We aspire to be great investors in L.A., not great L.A. investors,” said David Waxman, who co-founded the firm in 2013 with Gil Elbaz.

The firm, which is in the process of raising a debut fund of up to $25 million, according to a regulatory filing, is part of a wave of new seed-stage funds. In the first half of this year, 19 debut funds were raised that were $100 million or smaller, according to Dow Jones VentureSource, the most since the research group began tracking the industry in 1992

Image: TenOneTen co-founders Gil Elbaz, left, and David Waxman TenOneTen

So, it’s true. The top 2 spots in Modern Healthcare’s 2014 list of the 100 most influential people in healthcare are black men. If you look at the top 10, there are two white women. The remaining 6 people are white guys.

If you look at who makes the most money, it’s a much more familiar picture. Not only are all top 10 earners – $8 million and above – white men, there’s not a doctor among them.

Image: http://medcitynews.com

Women account for less than 8% of chief executives at venture-backed firms, occupy just 17% of board seats at Fortune 500 companies and own a mere 30% of all companies. But early data suggest that they are outperforming men in another arena: raising money online via crowdfunding.

Image: Cheryl Kellond raised $408,000 on kickstarter for her smart watch startup Bia Sport. Most of the backers were female athletes. Stuart Palley for the Wall Street Journal

Existing wearable devices such as Google’s head-mounted computer Google Glass require battery charging at least once a day, even with light use. A new kind of low-power chip aimed at such wearable devices could not only extend battery lives but also allow the devices to constantly listen for voice commands.

No question about it: The Networked Economy is the next economic revolution. In the coming years, it will offer unprecedented opportunities for businesses and improve the lives of billions worldwide.

In fact, the revolution is already under way.

“Over the last few decades, we’ve grown beyond the industrial economy to the IT economy and the Internet economy, each of which led to significant inflection points in growth and prosperity,” says Vivek Bapat, SAP’s global vice president for portfolio and strategic marketing. “Now we’re looking at the Networked Economy.” This new economy, resulting from a convergence of the economies that came before it and catalyzed by a new era of hyperconnectivity, is creating spectacular new opportunities for innovation.

Image: Free Digital Photos

Summers in the U.S. have been warming since the 1970s due to climate change, though it might not seem like it if you’re riding out this unusually cool August in the northeast and midwest.

If you're in a city, though, your perception of the heat might be all messed up. Cities get it the worst because of something additional known as the urban heat island effect. Due to all of the dark, paved surfaces in cities that are good at absorbing sunlight, urban areas tend to be hotter than their surrounding rural areas, where vegetation reflects more sunlight. That’s why green roofs have such environmental benefits; they help cool cities down.

Image: http://www.fastcoexist.com

In 2005, along with colleagues Steve Newman and Claudia Carpenter, Sam Schillace created a browser-based web processor called Writely. A Silicon Valley darling, it was eventually acquired by Google and became the basis for Google Docs. Now the SVP of engineering at Box, a cloud storage and file sharing service, Schillace says that despite today's ubiquity of cloud-based computing, Writely was at first considered a bad idea and a waste of time.

Image: http://www.fastcompany.com

The University of Pennsylvania recently launched the President’s Engagement Prizes, which will allow students to obtain up to $150,000 to take on local, national or global engagement projects the first year after they graduate.

An eligible project, for example, could be one that creates an institutional food recovery program to aid local food banks or even instating an initiative that empowers youth in a different country.

Image: (University of Pennsylvania) University of Pennsylvania President Amy Gutmann.

We’re all inundated with meeting requests these days. It’s easy to say no to the egregious ones, like the stranger who recently emailed me to suggest that I meet with him on a specific date so I could provide him with free career coaching. But — though I know better than to ask for pro bono resume critiques — I’ve certainly been on the other side of the equation at various times, having my meeting requests turned down or ignored altogether. In fact, most of us probably have; in an increasingly time-pressed world, almost no one has the leisure to connect “just because.” Here are the strategies I’ve learned over time to ensure the people I want to meet are more likely to say yes.

Image: Free Digital Photos

According to local reports (read here), hardware, software and services company Acer has launched a new venture capital initiative. With an amount of US$33.5m, the company aims to make long-term investments to strengthen technology development generate financial returns.

Johnson & Johnson and Sanofi are using IBM Watson’s computer brain/big data cruncher to support research and development. It will be used to identify new applications for drugs that have already been developed and to leaf through scientific papers that detail clinical trial outcomes, according to a statement from IBM. The partnerships follow a new development in Watson’s evolution that help it visually uncover patterns and pinpoint connections in related data to accelerate the discovery process and advance science research.

Image: http://medcitynews.com