This is why youths should be encouraged to strike out on their own when they are still young.

Youths below 26 years old are less likely to be held back from entrepreneurship because of fear of losing their income and jobs. This makes them a key target segment to be entrepreneurs, according a recent motivation survey conducted by the Action Community for Entrepreneurship or ACE.

The survey found that 26% of youths below 26 years old strongly agree that fear of losing their income and jobs is a key barrier to entrepreneurship.

This percentage rises to 35% for those aged 26 – 30, and 44% for those aged 31 – 35. The survey also found that youths are more likely to be inspired by successful entrepreneurs, with 75% of 267 young respondents agreeing with the statement.

Smart grids could save the EU €52 billion annually, according to leading smart grid companies that have teamed up to promote European leadership in smart grids.

The sizeable savings would arise from reducing losses in the electricity distribution network through automation and encouraging consumers to cut energy consumption with smart meters that provide more accurate and timely information, experts from the Smart Energy Demand Coalition said at its launch yesterday (15 November) in Brussels.

Utilities will also be able to lower the system voltage level and make meter-reading redundant, argued Chris King, chief regulatory officer at eMeter. After deducting necessary costs like the installation of smart meters and new software, the net benefit would still be €31 billion per year, he said.

Many of the psychologists, artists and moral philosophers I know are liberal, so it seems strange that American liberalism should adopt an economic philosophy that excludes psychology, emotion and morality.

Yet that is what has happened. The economic approach embraced by the most prominent liberals over the past few years is mostly mechanical. The economy is treated like a big machine; the people in it like rational, utility maximizing cogs. The performance of the economic machine can be predicted with quantitative macroeconomic models.

These models can be used to make highly specific projections. If the government borrows $1 and then spends it, it will produce $1.50 worth of economic activity. If the government spends $800 billion on a stimulus package, that will produce 3.5 million in new jobs.

EVANSTON, Ill. — If any of the 70 undergraduates in Prof. Bill White’s “Organizational Behavior” course here at Northwestern University are late for class, or not paying attention, he will know without having to scan the lecture hall.

Their “clickers” will tell him.

Every student in Mr. White’s class has been assigned a palm-size, wireless device that looks like a TV remote but has a far less entertaining purpose. With their clickers in hand, the students in Mr. White’s class automatically clock in as “present” as they walk into class.

They then use the numbered buttons on the devices to answer multiple-choice quizzes that count for nearly 20 percent of their grade, and that always begin precisely one minute into class. Later, with a click, they can signal to their teacher without raising a hand that they are confused by the day’s lesson.

Scientists have tracked the flow of nanoparticles from the lungs to the bloodstream for the first time. The work could enable the development of new drugs and show how pollution can cause respiratory problems.

Researchers from Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and the Harvard School of Public Health injected fluorescent nanoparticles into rats' lungs and used near-infrared imaging to watch as the particles moved through their bodies. The researchers tracked how far nanoparticles of different size, shape, and surface charge were able to travel—and how quickly—after being injected. They found that nanoparticles between six and 34 nanometers in diameter were able to get past the lung's defenses to reach the lymph nodes and the bloodstream. This may provide valuable guidelines for designing nanoparticle-based drugs.

Researchers have repaired large muscle wounds in mice by growing and implanting "microthreads" coated with human muscle cells. The microthreads—made out of the same material that triggers the formation of blood clots—seem to help the cells grow in the proper orientation, which is vital for rebuilding working muscle tissue.

"We hypothesize that cells migrate along these scaffolds, which act like a conduit," says George Pins, associate professor of bioengineering at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. Pins developed the microthread technology. The implanted cells quickly integrate into the existing muscle and reduce formation of scar tissue. "The cells grow into the space where muscle used to be, but they grow in a guided way."

Valuation based on the assets of the company is relatively straightforward.

This method is the “tried and true” method: objective, proven and certain.

However, it is also prone to significant understatement. As intangible assets become the dominant driver of value in the business, the valuation method based solely on assets will be less likely to be relied upon by buyers and sellers.

So why do Banks still use this method? Security! Banks are very risk averse and they can seldom sell an intangible if called upon to do so as a result of business closure.

Creativity is under threat. It happens whenever and wherever there's a squeeze on the ingredients of creativity, and it's happening in many businesses today. According to the Labor Department's most recent stats, productivity is up. But stretching fewer employees to cover ever more work in our job-starved recovery is no way to run the future. Without the creativity that produces new and valuable ideas, innovation — the successful implementation of new ideas — withers and dies. Creativity depends on the right people working in the right environment. Too often these days, the people come ill-equipped, and their work environments stink.

A recent story about the 40th anniversary of Xerox PARC stirred my memories of how the creativity ingredients overflowed at that place, in that time. PARC was a first light in the dawning of Silicon Valley. By 1973, when I moved there, PARC researchers had invented the first user-friendly computer, laser printing, object-oriented programming, a personal workstation, and the foundation of the Ethernet. By the time I left Palo Alto in 1977, they had developed the first graphical user interface (GUI) with icons, pop-up menus, overlapping windows, and the basics of point-and-click screen navigation. At this moment, you are almost certainly using something that sprang from the blossoming creativity at Xerox PARC in the 1970s.

Institutional America has knocked the start out of us. We need to get back to being great at starting things in our country. Calling all entrepreneurs. This means you.  Yes, you.  In talking with some of the most entrepreneurial people on the planet I am surprised by how many don’t think of themselves as entrepreneurs.  When did that happen?  Our economic history is all about starting stuff but we have gotten away from our entrepreneurial heritage. We need a national entrepreneurship movement, one that transforms our current entrepreneurship conversation.

Many visitors to the Entrepreneur StoryBooth, an on-line platform the Business Innovation Factory (BIF) launched with Babson College to capture the voice and experience of entrepreneurs, have shared that despite significant experience in starting stuff they don’t think of themselves as entrepreneurs. The prevailing definition of an entrepreneur just doesn’t seem to apply.  I consistently reply asserting the opposite, their experience is exactly what we need in the mix. These diverse stories are critical to changing our national entrepreneurship conversation and launching a new economic era. It’s a big ‘aha’ for me so many entrepreneurs don’t think of themselves that way.  I have to admit, upon personal reflection, as much as I love to start new projects, ventures, and movements, I too don’t think of myself as an entrepreneur.  Go figure.  Clearly, we have serious work to do if our economic future is about entrepreneurship.

Development based on science and technology has the capacity to add jobs with higher salaries and greater staying power. Pursuing the right strategies to make these fields flourish may be the solution to generating more sustainable economic growth for Arizona.

For many years, Arizona enjoyed the Sun Belt boom. Drawn by relatively low costs and a high standard of living, new residents flocked to the state from all over the country. Arizona experienced growth not only in housing, but also in many high-tech fields. But the latest downturn has vividly demonstrated that unfocused growth is not the path to stable long-term prosperity. Like the rest of the country, Arizona is confronting tough choices as it navigates a serious recession.

Arizona’s state, regional, and university leaders have already made efforts to stimulate elements of a high-tech economy, including the creation of development plans in several key industries. This study assesses where Arizona stands in light of those previous efforts and examines the best courses of action for building on that initial momentum.

To be clear, Arizona has pivotal resources with which to pursue more aggressive technology-based development. It is home to three large research universities (Arizona State University, the University of Arizona, and Northern Arizona University) and several mature high-tech industries. The state also has in place organizations dedicated to promoting technology growth, such as Science Foundation Arizona, and boasts a unique ability to attract businesses and talent from around the country.

In order to compete on a national level—as well as with key Western rivals such as Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, and Oregon—the state will need to supply the missing pieces of the puzzle: a deeper pool of skilled, educated workers; sufficient capital to fund research and expansion by entrepreneurs; and state-level leadership that is informed and committed to implementing well-considered, long-range development strategies.

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Throughout this week, when another 80 countries launch Global Entrepreneurship Week (GEW), there will be a significant number of events organized by GEW partners at universities, schools, companies, professional associations, technological centers and municipalities. Like last week’s events in Muslim countries, the activities will be diversified, ranging from thematic conferences to networking with investors and entrepreneurs, presentation of business plans, recreational events, sport events, cultural events, etc. There will be something for everyone and I encourage all to take advantage of these opportunities.

I am currently in Portugal where much has changed since the country joined the EU in 1986. Over these years, Portuguese governments have liberalized some areas of the economy, such as the telecommunications sector, unleashing a wave of opportunity-recognition among its people. At the same time, the status of entrepreneurs, particularly of the innovative, high-risk-taker kind, has rapidly evolved in a positive way. As a recent article on INSEAD’s site explains, in the past there was a strong tradition of family business and industrial organizations that dominated sectors and government-held companies. High-growth, high-impact entrepreneurship was not mainstream. Today, it is not hard to come up with a list of Portuguese innovators like ISA, a global technology company that spun off Portugal’s the University of Coimbra, and BA Glass and Purificação Tavares, whose entrepreneurs were all recognized during the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Of The Year 2009 ceremony.

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.

A little known fact about innovation is that many breakthroughs have not been the result of genius, but "happy accidents" -- those surprise moments when an answer revealed itself for no particular reason.

The discovery of penicillin, for example, was the result of Alexander Fleming noting the formation of mold on the side of petri dish left uncleaned overnight.

Vulcanized Rubber was discovered in 1839 when Charles Goodyear accidentally dropped a lump of the polymer substance he was experimenting with onto his wife's cook stove.

Leonardo da Vinci was born on April 15, 1452. He was an Italian Renaissance architect, musician, anatomist, inventor, engineer, sculptor, geometer, and painter. A "Renaissance man", Leonardo demonstrated a universal genius. He is well known for his paintings, such as The Last Supper and Mona Lisa which are two of the most recognizable pieces of art since his time. He is known for designing many inventions that couldn’t be made because the technology was not available. He persevered anyway and kept his ideas even though only a few of his designs were constructed during his life. Leonardo also helped advance the study of anatomy, astronomy, and civil engineering.

Leonardo da Vinci serves as our patron icon for World Creativity and Innovation Week because his example reminds us we can achieve genius in our everyday life by following his principles. He didn’t stay with the status quo, instead he nurtured and used his curiosity, mixed logic with emotion, and embraced ambiguity.

A few days ago, Bernie Knight, General Counsel of the USPTO, stated that in order to ensure optimal ROI on tax-payer-funded university research, the Patent Office would likely come out in support of giving universities stronger ownership rights.   Some people are surprised to learn that most U.S. research universities own large portfolios of patents and copyrights; universities also stake claim to other by-products of federally funded research created by faculty and students such as research tools, integrated circuit chips, biological organisms, engineering prototypes and data.  Right now, federal law (the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980) is somewhat vague about who has a greater ownership rights, the university inventor or her university.  As a result, most universities clarify this grey area by writing intellectual property policies that put them in control of anything invented on campus.  

How today’s U.S. research universities manage, or protect, their intellectual property portfolios is an increasingly controversial topic.  Managing ownership issues around research results, patents, and knowledge in general is not a straightforward matter.  Depending on who you ask, one person’s idea of protection could be another person’s idea of being shaken down, as evidenced by high-profile IP disputes such as Stanford vs. Roche.   The debate goes something like this:  those in favor of the current tech transfer model claim that universities are indeed protecting tax-payer funded innovation by owning research, patenting it, and trying to making money off of licensing royalties.  Other stakeholders, however, claim that some universities, in the name of ”protecting” their IP portfolios, are actually not protecting anybody but their own interests, sort of like a mob thug in a mobster movie who ”protects” civilians from harm in exchange for hefty payments.  The truth lies somewhere in the middle. 

When you are starting up your own company, you’re generally not thinking about acquisition. Any stock you give for services (or sweat equity) is likely done out of necessity and expediency.

For the successful and the lucky, those distant dreams of acquisition can become reality. But there are a number of hurdles you can inadvertently set up for yourself in the early days of your company that can make that more difficult. Here are five to beware of:

Not following the formalities of issuing stock - This may seem obvious, but before anyone can own shares, a corporation has to issue the stock. Generally this is a two-step process. The bylaws will say “we, company X, authorize the issuance of Y number of shares.” But then you actually have to go through the corporate formality of issuing those shares, which includes issuing the physical share certificate after receipt of consideration. It’s just as critical to keep track of the shares.

In recent years, an increasing portion of the growth in Canada's tech industry has come from small, nimble startups. Quietly, cities such as Toronto and Waterloo are producing some of the hottest smart phone app developers and Web 2.0 firms in the world.

With companies such as Research In Motion and Google setting up shop beside the University of Waterloo, and startup incubation chambers such as Ryerson's Digital Media Zone in Toronto, it is becoming easier for young, hungry entrepreneurs to turn their visions into reality. But such companies still face difficult challenges: Canada's venture capital ecosystem isn't nearly as robust as it is south of the border, and brain drain is still a serious concern.

Question: Is a venture capitalist’s website the best place to learn about their investment strategy and investment portfolio?

Answer: The data suggests it is not.

We reviewed 200 venture capital firms’ websites (the largest, most prominent, most active firms) to see if they accurately reflected the firm’s investment strategy, investment history and portfolio of investments and found that an overwhelming majority (92%) are inaccurate. Specifically, we compared what the venture capitalist’s website says about their investment preferences and portfolio vs. their actual investment history to see how closely (or not) the two were.

And the news wasn’t good (you read that right: 92% wrong). VC websites are inaccurate on at least one of the key evaluation criteria an entrepreneur would use when analyzing an investor to determine fit. (see below for lots of graphs given our proclivity for data) The reality based on our analysis is that, unfortunately, venture capital websites do a pretty abysmal job of accurately educating startups and entrepreneurs about their investment strategy.

As I outlined last week, trophy angel investors are always looking for trophy entrepreneurs. In many areas, not enough entrepreneurs meet the criteria, so it’s still a buyer’s market. The result is that the Main Street Venture Fund consistently has more money available than good opportunities for investment.

After considering about 200 investment opportunities over the past two years, we have established a decision making process to identify trophy entrepreneurs and startups. It consists of eight major criteria, which we call the “Eight P’s for Successful Funding”.

Proposition. A poorly understood value proposition causes false starts, lost time, costly mid course corrections and general frustration for all stakeholders involved. The value proposition is a short statement that clearly communicates the target customer, the customer’s problem and the pain that it causes, the unique solution that addresses this problem, and the net benefit of this solution (value derived versus relative cost) from the customer's perspective. Creating a strong value proposition requires substantial customer insight, thorough study, an understanding of the real value of intellectual property, thoughtfulness, and several iterations.