WASHINGTON, DC – TechAmerica is calling upon the 111th Congress take concerted action in support of American innovation before adjourning for good.

The Association asked leaders on both sides of the aisle to cooperate to strengthen and extend the long-expired Federal Research and Development Tax Credit, pass several well-supported cybersecurity measures and delay a pending withholding requirement for government payments to contractors.

“This Congress still has the opportunity to help hone America’s competitive edge in the global innovation economy,” said TechAmerica President and CEO Phil Bond. “Consensus exists for swift passage of key cybersecurity measures critical to our national and economic security. Congress must delay the three percent withholding requirement for contractor payments until the implications for agencies and companies can be better understood. The R&D Credit is a jobs credit—an extension should be a no-brainer in a time of uncertain recovery.”

The German Center for Research and Innovation (GCRI), in cooperation with HANNOVER MESSE Research & Technology, the leading international trade fair for R&D and technology transfer in Hannover, Germany, hosted a panel discussion on national frameworks, practices, and funding schemes for early- stage high-tech companies in the U.S. and Germany on October 26, 2010. At the German House New York, Richard Bendis, President & CEO of Innovation America, Edward Reinfurt, Executive Director of the New York State Foundation for Science, Technology and Innovation, and Christos Christodoulatos, Associate Provost to the Office of Academic Entrepreneurship, Stevens Institute of Technology, discussed how to adopt best practices and to access seed money to establish university spin-offs and other successful examples of research commercialization. Kurt Becker, Associate Provost for Research and Technology Initiatives and Professor of Physics at the Polytechnic Institute of New York University, moderated.

Referring to the 7th Annual Conference of the Technopolicy Network, which took place in Heidelberg, Germany, on September 30 and October 1, 2010, the first speaker Richard Bendis said that transatlantic knowledge clusters are an emerging and growing trend.

However, one of the challenges for small businesses, according to all speakers, is the relationship between competing in a global market and international collaboration. Mr. Bendis, a seasoned entrepreneur with experience as a corporate executive and venture capitalist, gave an overview of the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program, which has been supporting small businesses since 1982. While in Germany the first research program was established at a Berlin university as early as 1821, in the U.S., the impetus for innovation historically has come from the adoption of technology from military to private market use. The 1982 SBIR/STTR (Small Business Technology Transfer) programs represent one of the first national policies intent on systematically fostering innovation in the U.S. alongside state-level economic development initiatives. Additional programs were initiated by the Clinton and Obama administrations in the 1990s and 2000s.

European health technology clusters in Leuven (Belgium) and Heidelberg (Germany) form new alliance to cross‐leverage their innovation resources

Heidelberg (G) | Representatives of the European health technology clusters in Leuven (Belgium) and the Rhine‐Neckar Metropolitan Region (Biotech Cluster Rhine‐Neckar BioRN, Germany) now announced at the Regional Development Summit in Heidelberg the launch of a new initiative called “Health Axis Europe”. The members of the Health Axis Europe committee include key individuals of each cluster representing the local industry, science, politics and venture capital. In a first kick‐off meeting the committee members convened in Heidelberg to discuss the outline and the next steps of the Health Axis Europe initiative. A representative of the Cambridge life science cluster also attended the conference as Cambridge is the next candidate to be invited to join the alliance. The event was organized by BioRN Cluster Management GmbH.

The purpose of the Health Axis Europe initiative is to cross‐leverage the innovation resources and thus jointly increase the international competitiveness of the clusters in Cambridge, Leuven and Heidelberg. The clusters share a common innovation culture, are comparable in strength and have complementary areas of expertise. All three clusters are located around internationally outstanding universities with excellent health sciences and a strong tradition in top education and research. They have a substantial health industry base and are driven by strong key individuals that are personally committed to foster economic growth and entrepreneurship. In addition, the three clusters are focused on complementary health technology areas covering regenerative medicine and stem cells (Cambridge), medical electronics and nanotechnology (Leuven) as well as personalized medicine and cancer research (Heidelberg).

I have the honor of hosting Dr. Tidona of BioRN in Philadelphia today as he looks at Biosicence Cluster partnering opportunities with the Greater Philadelphia Bioscience Cluster stakeholders.................Rich Bendis

The world may be flat for information and capital, but not for infrastructure or labour. Locations are stationary and to succeed and prosper, they must develop the capability to establish a path to prosperity that key local and regional players can agree upon. One of the challenges faced by locations is to
combine organized effort, targeted funding and partnerships to create a sustainable innovation and entrepreneurship culture.

In New Brunswick, Tech South East has emerged as an economic development community that exemplifies the benefits of sustained, organized effort towards creating a prosperous innovation engine. Tech South East was incorporated in 2009 as a non-profit, member-based organization supporting the information and communication technology and health and life science industries. Chaired by Spielo founder John Manship, Tech South East's board of directors possesses innovation, technology and entrepreneurship experience and represent technology-based business, research institutions, venture capital and local government. The organization's members include companies focused on digital media gaming and animation, software development, e-health, biotechnology and medical devices. Tech South East's members share a common goal of building on the community's strengths, such as Atlantic Lottery Corp., to accelerate the growth of Moncton's knowledge-based economy.

Flip open the next issue of GQ, and you'll find a full-page photograph of the classic rock band Heart beside Nobel laureates Elizabeth Blackburn and Phillip Sharp, equally decked out in rocker fashion. It's one image from a 6-page spread of rock stars mingling with scientists in the men's magazine with some 7 million readers, intended to help seal the growing gap between science and the public.

But some are less than optimistic. "If you are operating under the illusion that all scientists run around with pens and slide rulers in their lab coat pockets, then this campaign will say no, scientists look like ordinary people," said Jon Miller, director of the International Center for the Advancement of Scientific Literacy at Michigan State University. "But if you expect to ignite popular support for science with this campaign, I doubt that will happen."

Bloomberg reports that the patent licensing office at the University of New Mexico has launched a lawsuit against Intel alleging infringement of a UNM patent for a process of making circuit boards.

The lawsuit comes on the heels of rumoured successful negotiations by UNM with Samsung and Taiwan Seminconductor in respect of the same patent.

• New contacts with individuals with complementary expertise
• New opportunities with firms that could benefit from your own expertise
• New technical ideas in line with the potential solutions you’re exploring
• Potentially valuable and useful discussions
• Concrete experience with open innovation

• Leaders of the Quebec City region’s main research centres (CEOs, CTOs,

• Business leaders working in sectors in which success depends on innovation
• Researchers, scientists, engineers and technologists whose work experience is in line with the

• Regional innovation stakeholders (financing, intellectual property, consultants, etc.)
• Frank Piller, professor of management at RWTH University (Aachen, Germany), co-director of

A regional initiative to create a roadmap to Virginia’s innovation economy.
 
HERNDON, Va. (November 17, 2010) – The Center for Innovative Technology (CIT) announced today the release of reports on the Commonwealth Innovation Index, the first comprehensive, long-term planning tool designed to foster the formation, retention, and expansion of technology-based economic development opportunities throughout the Commonwealth.
 
Established in 2008 by an Act of the Virginia General Assembly, the Innovation Index is a grassroots, community-driven tool that helps regional leaders look five to 15 years ahead for common economic opportunities in the form of industry clusters, and then identify and address barriers, or “gaps,” that may impede those opportunities. CIT, Virginia’s state-chartered nonprofit charged with accelerating innovation and technology, is working with the Commonwealth’s ten regional technology councils and other area leaders to advance the initiative.
 

Check out this video from Jeff Bezos of Amazon in which he distils his learnings from fifteen years at Amazon in three things – and he says it is a complete list. You need to watch the video (or at least the first six minutes of it) to really understand what he is trying to say, but here is the crib sheet for you to come back to afterwards.

1. Obsess over customers
2. Invent
3. Think long term (I like this one the most for the way he talks about needing the confidence to tolerate being misunderstood)

Is your company looking for talent? Don't look at Pittsburgh. The region, as the editor of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette once told the world, is suffering from acute brain drain:

If there's a road map to Rust Belt renaissance, a model of postindustrial success, it may be in Buffalo's one-time steelmaking soul mate, a city once described as hell with the lid off.

The leaders of the world's economic powers convened there Thursday for the two-day Group of 20 summit, prompting the question, "Why Pittsburgh?"

"It's a wonderful story of redemption, renewal and renaissance," said David M. Shribman, executive editor of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

As an entrepreneur, you always need to be on the lookout for ways to expand your current business, and always on the lookout for your next big thing. The competition never stands still, and new opportunities are evolving, based on culture changes in your customers, new technologies, and new problems in the world which need to be solved.

Steven Schussler, in his new book “It’s a Jungle In There” characterized this well in relation to his own success by recommending to all entrepreneurs that you observe the world around you and make a consistent, conscious effort to ask yourself: “Is there something here I could change (by providing a service or product) that would bring me financial gain?”

He provides several examples of how he used this approach to advantage in his own career. I’ve netted out his and others to create the following basic strategy for entrepreneurial growth:

1. Apply your core competency to related markets. Look for competitors that have the same capabilities as you in a different market area, or for different customers. By utilizing economies of scale, location, and common design, you may be able to provide a better solution faster for a lower cost.

In today's economy, early stage innovators from all walks of business could use a little help getting organized and getting ahead. But is it possible to get it all in one place? What sort of business operation can meet the demand of early stage innovators seeking such business development assistance?

It was from this inquiry that the idea of a business incubator was born. As a matter of fact, according to a 2008 Rochester Business Journal article, the business incubator concept was created right here in New York state. It was started by a man named Joseph Mancuso, whose business development group started in a warehouse in Batavia. The group has since spawned several incubator companies under the umbrella of the Mancuso Business Development Corp., a founding member of the Business Incubator Association of New York State.

Everyone seems to be in such a rush to get shacked up these days.

In normal times investors will look for “traction” before investing. We want to make sure we’re in love. This sometimes frustrates entrepreneurs who just want to “get back to running the business.” But if you understand it you’ll see that it is perfectly rational and it should also influence how you form relationships with investors. And remember, if we get married you’re stuck with us, too.

Clearly there is a great need to learn more about establishing innovation measurement programs. The topic of the workshop “ Measuring for Innovation”, held in Stockholm on November 10th, attracted participants from major multinational companies as well as guests from the Chinese embassy in Stockholm.

A poll among the participants showed that roughly 70 percent of the organizations represented did not measure innovation explicitly. And less than one percent had a complete measurement program.

Åsa Norrby, Innovation Development Leader from Volvo CE (Construction Equipment) was very interested in learning more about how to measure for innovation:

-   At Volvo CE we are very interested in developing our innovation capabilities and knowing how to measure our work is of course a very important factor. I really enjoyed the workshop discussions. It´s interesting to exchange ideas and it seems like a lot of us are dealing with the same kinds of challenges.

Let’s start with defining cloud computing. Cloud computing can simply be defined as a computing model in which services (e.g. web based email) and storage (e.g. web hosting) are provided over the Internet.

When most small business owners or new software companies talk about cloud computing, they usually mean an application that runs from the web and not directly from your not-connected-to-the-Internet desktop (software as a service or SaaS).

Cloud computing software solutions, for our purposes here, mean software that has a low monthly fee rather than a one-time capital expenditure.

Many people are curious about what the average small business owner earns. The IRS Statistics of Income provides some data on the average income of sub chapter S corporations and sole proprietorships, which helps to estimate small business owners’ earnings.

In the table below, I show the income and sales of the average sub chapter S Corporation in the latest year the data are available. The figure shows that the average S corp generated about $100,000 income on about $1.5 million in sales in the last year before the Great Recession.

A frequent reader of The Chronicle might conclude that our universities are haunted by the specter of a campus clogged with geriatric professors waving canes in one hand and tattered lecture notes in the other. There seems to be a widespread assumption that junior faculty are productive and engaged, and senior faculty are nonproductive and disengaged. We—those of us 50 and above—are criticized for consuming excessive salaries, held responsible for the alarming rise in the costs of health insurance, viewed as dull and obsolete, and condemned for blocking the careers of more dynamic, and younger, faculty.

The dire implications of an aging faculty preoccupy a lot of academic pundits. A recent essay in The Chronicle Review argued that "retirement is central to the renewal of the American university" and went on to urge us to "make a timely retirement alluring" by inspiring faculty to "envision their retirement." More pointedly, the economist Paul Romer told Arnold Kling and Nick Schulz, authors of the 2009 book From Poverty to Prosperity, "If we are not careful, we could let ... things like tenure and hierarchical structures and peer review slowly morph over time so that the old guys control more and more of what's going on and the young people have a harder and harder time doing something really different, and that would be a bad thing for these processes of growth and change."

We had a bunch of questions about vesting in the comments to last week’s MBA Mondays post. So this post is going to be about vesting.

Vesting is the technique used to allow employees to earn their equity over time. You could grant stock or options on a regular basis and accomplish something similar, but that has all sorts of complications and is not ideal. So instead companies grant stock or options upfront when the employee is hired and vest the stock over a set period of time. Companies also grant stock and options to employees after they have been employed for a number of years. These are called retention grants and they also use vesting.

Vesting works a little differently for stock and options. In the case of options, you are granted a fixed number of options but they only become yours as you vest. In the case of stock, you are issued the entire amount of stock and you technically own all of it but you are subject to a repurchase right on the unvested amount. While these are slightly different techniques, the effect is the same. You earn your stock or options over a fixed period of time.

I had a chance to spend some time on the phone yesterday with Peter Thiel, the PayPal co-founder, venture capitalist, hedge fund manager — and early Facebook investor. He’s speaking at MIT this coming Tuesday night, at an event organized by the MIT Enterprise Forum of Cambridge.

We talked about Thiel’s new fellowship program, which will provide twenty $100,000 grants to potentially world-changing young entrepreneurs in the for-profit and non-profit sectors; why it might be better for would-be entrepreneurs to drop out of school today than it was when he attended Stanford; whether Facebook could have thrived if it had stayed in Boston; what Thiel sees as a dearth of innovation globally; and the risk tolerance of Boston investors.